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Comment by freepor | Hacker News Reader

Ultimately when you mail something there is no way to prove what you mailed. You can mail a brick and say it was a camera or you can mail a camera and the buyer can say it was a brick. There’s an opportunity here for companies with big real estate footprints like UPS store or Office Depot to offer verified shipping and/or receiving, where you hand them the items and they pack them up and ship them with a certification of what’s inside.

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Good but not scam-proof, there can be a brick in a camera case in a box. The verified shipping says camera in a box. I don't really mean brick here but the item could be a defective item, a different model or something the verification process could miss.

The UPS or something can take a photo of the product or item they received. They are not verifying what's inside. They are just verifying the weight, a photo from few angles, available only in case of dispute.

Seller can also do that, but a third party doing it with no horse in the race can act like a notary. We are verifying what we saw. A camera box with X pounds of weight.

If seller wants them to verify the inside contents, he needs to Show them the inside contents. Then UPS will be confirming by photos that yes, an item with this serial number is there inside and we packed it.

Its kind of slippery slope. What if its just a empty camera body? What is its a junk camera? What if buyer says these above falsely?

That would be great and raise the bar, but the same dispute issues would exist, just with authenticity of goods.

Scammy buyer would purchase say, 32GB sticks of RAM and ship back 1GB sticks with the stickers swapped.

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