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Comment by blibble | Hacker News Reader

I had this... a third-party seller started harassing me via email to submit feedback

so I did... I gave them a two star review with something along the lines of "kept pestering me to leave feedback"

then they started emailing me demanding that I remove it, which I ignored

then they started phoning the number for the delivery, which happened to be an elderly relative (as they were the order recipient)

contacted Amazon, who responded with "we'll deal with the issue and get back to you within 48 hours", which never happened

my prime subscription will now lapse (having been a prime member for more than a decade)

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The third party sellers shouldn't get access to your contact information. On DoorDash, calls go through DoorDash's system. Same with text messages. No one gets the other person's real number. I've had one restaurant that always calls me right after I place the order to ask me for my phone number to put into their system for future orders. I always tell them no, I prefer to go through DoorDash instead. A similar system should be in place at Amazon.

I've seen a pretty common scam where items are sold for "too good to be true" prices, only to be cancelled a few days later. I assume this is to harvest people's contact info

Aha - that's what this is. I keep wondering why many sub-20$ items on eBay keep getting cancelled on me. The equivalent item on Amazon is usually 20-25$ (but doesn't quality for free tier shipping on its own) so I shop eBay for same - half the time or more recently it's either a) a drop-ship from Amazon even in its box/packaging, or b) cancelled as 'buyer requested cancel'. I knew it was a scam but I didn't know what for.

Good thing I ship to a PO box and use a generic C/O name.

Craigslist does this for emails with their email relay service. I greatly appreciate the feature.

If they’re shipping direct to you instead of Amazon fulfillment, they need your name and address. That’s plenty in a lot of cases.

They don't need your email or phone number though, even if so, and both of those are a lot easier/cheaper to spam.

I'm sure the line is that they need it in case of problems during delivery. Couriers always want it for that, or trying to ensure there aren't problems (for them) like missed deliveries by texting you to say they're delivering today or whatever.

I don't really have a problem with that in general, but yeah I don't want to deal with random third party sellers.

Also in my experience when there's a problem with the item and you need a return/refund, it never gets sorted until you escalate to Amazon. Assuming you're not happy with a 20p partial refund and a complimentary bizarre plastic children's toy (when what you ordered was nothing of the kind).

Couriers do say that, it seems, but have you ever experienced them using it? I never get anything at all, unless I look up the tracking online. Doesn't matter if the package is on time or if it disappeared somewhere in Alaska or if it got delivered 2 streets over, total radio silence.

Yeah, all the time. Very rarely for a problem (my building is slightly awkward so they do sometimes call because they're stuck at lower ground level and can't get in) but routinely 'delivering your package today between 1pm and 2pm' or whatever, then often 15min before.

This is in the UK though, obviously can't and I'm not claiming it's the norm everywhere.

Interesting. In any part of the US I've lived in, and with any shipping company I've ever used, they don't do anything like that. I wish they would.

I was supposed to get a delivery today, but it requires a signature and I was in the back yard when they knocked on the door. A quick text or call would have been great. Alas.

The New York City council recently passed a bill that requires apps, like Doordash, to share the customers real name, number, email address.

Their reasoning is that this somehow "helps" small-business.

https://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=4...

This just allows them to sell your name+email+phone+address to Google et al.

State mandated doxxing.

This is why I have a burner phone number, throwaway domain/email, and special alias for food delivery that needs my home address.

..but then they still have your home address in their archive of PII. Which is bad enough (wasn't Dominos or New York Pizza hacked the other day with PII getting leaked?).

I barely ever read spam (and receive it mainly on one of my older e-mail addresses but it does end up in the spam filter). I barely ever receive spam on my phone number. I won't say never, cause it has happened, but probably like twice a year or so. And I use my real phone number and real e-mail address everywhere. Which, in case of using an alias, isn't clever. But in your case, they still got the address.

Every street address is public. All houses order food. Nothing private is disclosed.

> Every street address is public.

Not quite, but I'll give it a pass.

> All houses order food.

Nope, not everyone orders food. Perhaps in your bubble.

> Nothing private is disclosed.

Incorrect, it is PII. It is a real name connected to a street address first of all (one could use an alias; I do). And, possibly (potentially) also containing metadata such as what is being ordered, at which time, and how much.

Moreover, it denotes activity. If you want to lay low, your street address might be officially public (mine is) yet not receive spam on it.

For some reason, it isn't possible to only give a business your address (and other PII) when they need it and force them to discard it completely afterwards. Why not? Because when leaks happen, they're not hold accountable. See the essay Data Is a Toxic Asset, So Why Not Throw It Out? by Bruce Schneier [1]

[1] https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_t...

Long time Amazon Seller here

It's against Amazon TOS to contact Amazon's customers outside the Amazon messaging system, and they are really heavy handed against sellers breaching this.

If you complain to Amazon that the seller is contacting you outside the Amazon messaging platform and harrassing you, then Amazon will close their seller account.

Alternatively you can threaten to report them to Amazon for this and they will go away.

> "contacted Amazon, who responded with "we'll deal with the issue and get back to you within 48 hours", which never happened"

Apparently, complaining to Amazon didn't solve the problem.

> Apparently, complaining to Amazon didn't solve the problem.

Amazon has different tiers of support. My understanding (from a few years ago, after being very persistent on an issue), is that their chat support people are relatively dis-empowered compared to their phone support people. So it's totally possible that one support channel could solve this problem, and other ones can't.

And if that's the case, the fault is totally Amazon's: no customer should have to understand their bureaucracy to that level of detail to get their issue resolved.

If an Amazon phone CSR can be trusted, that's still the case. I recently had an unusual issue that required escalation "all the way up" and at a certain point I reached a guy who claimed, at least, that that was as high as any customer could go - it was on the phone and he mentioned that the chat CSRs had much less power. He had managers of course but they were "not allowed" to speak to customers.

maybe the contact to Amazon said something like "The seller is harassing me" not "The Seller is contacting me outside of official Amazon channels and harassing me", and probably, if you just dropped the harassing me it would be even more important to Amazon to shut that down.

> > "contacted Amazon, who responded with "we'll deal with the issue and get back to you within 48 hours", which never happened"

> "If you complain to Amazon that the seller is contacting you outside the Amazon messaging platform and harrassing you, then Amazon will close their seller account."

What is the purpose of telling somebody to do exactly what they just told you they already did, and insisting that it will work when they just told you it didn't? Your comment is tantamount to gaslighting.

> Your comment is tantamount to gaslighting.

That's a bit strong. People can have different experiences, amazon might treat different groups differently, etc

Hi there - "gaslighting", seems a bit extreme? I'm just offering some help.

The thing with Amazon is that it's super fragmented and you have to complain through the correct channels. After six years I'm still struggling to navigate at times.

General Customer service team members' KPIs are to just close tickets, that's all they care about.

Go to the Product page and click "“Report Abuse”" on the reviews.

Or email the support team and ask them to escalate the ticket to Seller Performance.

Also complain to seller-performance@amazon.com

I have done all these things myself, and I still see the seller accounts live, or name changed.

Around 10% of items I’ve ordered have been either fakes of name brands, didn’t match the photos, or had a seller review scam thing going. It’s not an outlier, it’s standard.

> insisting that it will work when they just told you it didn't

Apt username: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antipodes

> In geography, the antipode (/ˈæntɪˌpoʊd/ or /ænˈtɪpədiː/) of any spot on Earth is the point on Earth's surface diametrically opposite to it.

> It's against Amazon TOS to contact Amazon's customers outside the Amazon messaging system

Is there some reason the seller needs to have the buyer's contact info?

> Is there some reason the seller needs to have the buyer's contact info?

I have the same question, except I'll narrow the scope a little bit. In case the order is fulfilled by Amazon.com (FBA), is there any reason for the seller to have the buyer's contact or shipping information?

I know the seller has my information because I have a similar experience to TylerRobinson, except my gift card was only USD 5:

> The situation with Amazon reviews has become unbelievable. I recently purchased a $20 item with around 30,000 reviews, overwhelmingly positive. $20 was a reasonable market price for this item from any retailer.

> There was a card inside the box from the seller saying they’d send me a $15 gift card for posting a 5-star review and then forwarding them proof I had posted it to some gmail account. I followed the instructions, and like clockwork got $15 back on Amazon.

Part of it is to do with liability and tax stuff. If amazon doesn't share the info in both directions, can they really claim to the taxman and insurance providers that the seller sold you the stuff, or did Amazon really sell you the stuff and the seller was simply their supplier?

Amazon wants to say the seller sold it (unless it was a vendor sale "sold and fulfilled by Amazon.com").

For FBA buyer info isn’t released. Emails are obfuscated and proxies via @amazon.comm domain.

They did release this info up to about 2y ago.

Sellers don't get access to customer info unless they are fulfilling the product themselves.

Sellers are obtaining this through black hat methods.

If the item isn't full-filled by Amazon (ie my stock isn't in an amazon warehouse) then I need their address details and phone number (for the courier) to ship the item.

Dealing with Amazon, as a seller, can be a terrible experience. Using their full-fillment service more so. They don't check returns so the next customer night get only part of a product, or in lots of cases a bogus product when a buyer fills the box with other cheap junk.

Do you actually need a phone number to ship? I've literally never had a shipping company call or text me, can't imagine they require phone numbers.

Courier companies DPD/FedEx/UPS request one. Sometimes it speeds up the process is a location is difficult to find.

With DPD it's certainly down to the individual driver because they're calling on their own phone ( many just wont because of thst).

I have complained to Amazon several times about sellers contacting me and AFAICT it has never done anything.

Likewise. I’ve decided to stop using Amazon altogether as I’m not sure how seller is getting my number.

I had a seller contact me directly on WhatsApp. I reported it to Amazon and never heard back. Eventually the same number that contacted me on WhatsApp changed their display photo from company logo to an exotic woman asking me for Bitcoin payment

> I had this... a third-party seller started harassing me via email to submit feedback

I has a very similar experience. I bought a cheap USB cable pack comprised of 5 USB cables of varying length, and after a span of a couple of weeks all 5 cables stopped working. Once I posted a review I started getting pestered by the seller asking to change the review and offering replacements, which was not unusual, but afterwards started offering 20$ in exchange for a retraction of the bad reviewto instead post a positive one. I recall receiving about half a dozen emails from the seller, even after I stopped replying.

I had an issue where a seller hounded me for a review. A few months later the same. Umber started asking me for Bitcoin.

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