10TB portable SSDs on Amazon UK are scams
amazon.co.uk
amazon.co.uk
It turned out to be a metal box with a 60GB SD card inside (although actually, I couldn't even get the card to work properly when I took it out). The SD card was on a carrier board that made it present as 16TB, although I couldn't create any partitions on it.
I posted a review saying it was a scam and the product disappeared quickly. I got approved for a return, but it said "seller will send you a return label within 5 days." They didn't. I got on chat support and got a full refund without having to return the product.
With sys-usb configured as disposable. ;)
I'm sure the scam is even older than that.
It attempts to write the full storage and then read it back. If its fake, the read will fail. It's also useful for detecting storage that has become unreliable.
Just so folks are aware: this kind of behavior doesn't constitute a good faith purchase. If you suspect something is wrong, you aren't allowed to push the risk management off onto a retailer just because they aren't as clued in as you are. It's the same principle that says you can't take advantage of mislabeled prices or leaked discount codes.
In this case, where it's just one item and the poster was probably willing to eat the cost, it's a no-harm-no-foul thing and it was good customer service of Amazon to refund the price. But in general this is a game people shouldn't be playing.
(Edit: and as expected everyone wants to argue based on who the bad guy is supposed to be and not what I actually said. Amazon may be bad. This is still fraud if you do this expecting to get refunds if you can't use the item. Don't do that.)
OP didn't profit from this exercise, so "fraud" doesn't enter into the conversation. If more people did what OP is doing, incentives would maybe finally align for Amazon to do the right thing, if for purely financial reasons.
As it stands today, apparently there's more profit in ignoring these scams then there is preventing them, so Amazon doesn't apply effort in that direction.
Was OPs purchase in good faith? No, I guess it wasn't if they were certain it was a scam. But it sure isn't fraud.
In point of fact, of course, neither side is a "scam" here and you know it. Amazon had an automated system that got exploited, the only human being deliberately trying to cheat was their supplier. And the above poster was just idly trying to probe the exploit and not get a free SSD. But all the same, demanding a refund (of a product that you knew was going to be fraudulent!) is a little sketchy.
But this scam has been going around for a while. I remember hearing about a scammer pawning 8-track tapes as hard drives back in the day.
The seller on the other hand has lied to customers - they claimed it was 16TB drive and it was not. This is 100% definition of the fraud, and ideally seller would be penalized for that.
Based on what law? This seems to be importing the concept of good faith purchase that has relevance to the transfer of title (if the buyer doesn’t have a reasonable good-faith belief that the seller has good title to the goods being sold, and the seller only has voidable title, the buyer will receive only a title voidable by whomever the seller’s title was voidable by), but outside of its domain.
There is, that I am aware of, no generally-applicable rule (e.g., under the UCC) applicable to the sale of goods in the United States where the purchaser’s doubts about the seller’s representation as to the description of the item that they were selling would prevent the formation of a sale contract and the buyer’s right to inspect, reject, and return nonconforming goods under that contract. You may be confusing reasonable belief that the seller is actually offering the goods with reasonable belief that the seller actually intends to fulfill the contract, which are different issues.
Could you cite statute or case law on point, or reference a work which does?
In the UK the law is clear and explicit: it’s on the retailer (and not the manufacturer or wholesaler) to make sure the goods are “Fit for purpose”, “As described”, and of “Satisfactory quality”.
There’s no wiggle room for “consumer guessed the goods might not be as described”.
https://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/regulation/consumer-...
I can imagine there are some US jurisdictions where something similar is also true.
Probably in most US jurisdictions; to my knowledge generally Amazon has failed in court where they have tried to escape obligations of sellers by pretending not to be retailer but a marketplace facilitator, and generally sellers are going to be obligated to refund if they accept money and don’t deliver the product represented.
Under the UCC, for instance, the buyer would not only be entitled to refund, would also be entitled to make a good faith purchase of substitute goods matching what the seller represented, and also recover the difference between the purchase price of the substitute goods and the purchase price of the original goods (the latter already covered by the refund) or, even if they don’t “cover” with a substitute, recover the amount by which fair market price of a substitute at the time the buyer learned the goods were not as described exceeds the refund. (See, UCC Sections 2-711 through 2-713.) [0]
> If you order something you know is junk
Suspecting and actual knowledge are…different things.
But you can’t provide references. You haven’t even explained why you think this fits into the legal definition of fraud (hint: it doesn’t).
Doing something like this is the only way to effect any sort of change anyway. It’s not like regulators are particularly interested in solving this problem. And clearly neither is Amazon. So maybe enough returns where they have to eat the cost will actually motivate them to enact some change.
Should we also quickly hang up on phone scammers so we don't waste their time that could be spent convincing grandma to pay tax in Apple gift cards?
We took it back in the next day (with lots of photographic evidence showing our other thermometers, digital and analog, all showing -40, and the one outlier showing a scattered -34) for a refund.
When we bought it - I kind of thought it was too good to be true. So - did I commit fraud when I purchased it from home hardware in the belief that it would work as advertised, only to refund it the next day - and was that a game I shouldn't be playing (that is, taking a retailer at their word))?
There's an argument to be made that if we want Amazon to fix this issue once and for all, we should head to Amazon and buy these devices en masse, then complain when we get products that are designed such that they could not serve any purpose other than to deceive and defraud consumers.
There's also an argument to be made that we, as informed individuals, are obligated to take this action to prevent others from being scammed.
Buyers that risk their own time purchasing potentially scam items do a service to all the buyers that might unwittingly buy such items and not know until it is too late.
In short, skepticism of a purchase does not mean bad faith.
Isn't it better from the retailer's point of view if someone buys this and returns immediately and posts a negative review? It would reduce the number of future returns and actually work for Amazon's benefit.
Literally none of the comments argue that. You are just very wrong in your understanding of the relevant consumer protection laws.
Says who? Surely the retailer is responsible for vetting what they're selling.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/LuBanSir-External-Design-Portable-C...
Note the reviews refer to all different stuff - phone chargers, arm slings, extension cord organisers. What a total shitshow.
A more targeted approach might be to disallow sellers from adding variants to products which are not currently for sale. I suspect that would cut down on most of the abuse.
If you want to deal with this problem rather than channel more of it into a place some of it already goes, it should, because completely different products are added as “sizes” or “colors” of existing products already.
If you add a review fraud control and leave this an escape hatch, well, the results are predictable.
This is an exploit which has been abused for years -- as I understand it, Amazon sellers can list their products as a "variant" of another, often unrelated, product which is no longer available for sale. When they do so, their product inherits all of the reviews from the previous product, and no obvious indication is given that the other variant ever existed (because it's not available).
How can you even expect regular people to know it's a scam? I only vaguely have an indication that £30,99 (the price it gives me) for 2TB seems too good to be true. I work in IT, but I don't spend all days buying portable SSDs so I don't really know what these things cost today, and the "Amazon's choice" label makes it give a false sense of trust ("wow it's really cheap, but maybe just some discount or whatnot? Well, I guess it must be alright because it's Amazon's Choice!")
They could be legit and failed QA in the factory (flaky after all) but they "fell off a truck" on the way to the electronics recycler and ended up for sale. Semi-counterfeit "3rd shift" products that are made off the books on the official line, often with lower or nonexistent QA, are common too.
tl;dr counterfeiting is complicated and just opening it up might not give you a reliable answer
3.0 out of 5 stars Good storage capacity
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 January 20231
Colour: Black-1Verified Purchase
While the storage capacity is good for the value I would only use this for small files as it corrupted any large video files I had, additionally, the transfer speed was quite slow (especially for USB 3.0) reaching speeds of up to 16mb/s and regularly dropping to 0mb/s, this is not a fault of my pc as other USB 3.0 devices can reach speeds of 80mb/s on my pc.
I also learnt over the years what to buy and NOT to buy, but sometimes, especially for "compatible" pieces (e.g., a phone screen protector, not official from Samsung or Apple, if they exist) it's like gambling: you don't know what you're getting, and the reviews seem to be about other things (toys, remote controllers, ...literally anything).
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/17/the-fight-against-stolen-pro...
Pretty much any fungible commodity that grocery stores sell that's easily stolen, if it's available on Amazon almost certainly has stolen instances mixed into the supply chain, especially with FBA items.
Guarantee there's plenty of people making decent money doing this in San Francisco and other cities that no longer prosecute shoplifters, there's literally no risk or downside.
The people running the shoplifting ring aren’t out there doing the shoplifting. You can keep arresting the people doing it and the ringleaders will keep recruiting people and your jails and courts will just be full of people on minor shoplifting charges.
No, if you want to end it you need to go after Amazon and the other fences along with the ringleaders running the show.
In this case amazon are essentially being eBay and like eBay they will refund you if anything goes wrong. They will then deduct that refund from the seller (while still charging the seller fees). We don't sit around and wonder how eBay gets away with these things. They also cant inspect every good to see if it's stolen. If you want to allow third party sellers on an online platform this will happen and there's very little we can do to stop it.
She's simply not savvy enough to know she's getting scammed. She can't fathom that a company as big and famous as Amazon would let that sort of criminality happen on their platform, and as such refuses to believe me that most of the products on there are a scam. In her words, "Amazon wouldn't let that happen". Not only that, but because she buys this sort of shit, Amazon seems to show her even more of it through their recommend function. She's getting targeted, and Amazon is complicit in it.
This is what bothers me most. Their excuse is "the market place isn't at fault, it's between the buyer and the seller". They damn well are at fault if they're using their algorithm to fill a persons marketplace with counterfeit goods. As soon as you manipulate what a person does and doesn't see in your shop, you have agency. You are culpable.
Edit: even if the fault is not theirs.
https://www.macrumors.com/2022/09/12/iphone-fake-airpods-ale...
The only detection method then would be Apple noticing multiple products have the same S/N which I guess is how they warn users of fake products these days.
https://www.macrumors.com/2022/09/12/iphone-fake-airpods-ale...
The main problem are situations where the product mostly passes an initial inspection but fails at a later date or for specific advanced use cases (ie, it isn't easily detectable until well after a return period).
They all moved a lot faster than society and government, know when they must dish out lobbying money (and have enough to do so) and give more people what they want at the expense of fewer people.
It's coming to an end though. The boomers that don't understand the current state of the world anymore are moving out finally.
The next 10 years will be filled by the tears of abusive companies that don't understand why they are suddenly required to follow rules they didn't make themselves.
Not really, these problems have plagued ebay long before they plagued amazon. Further, these are problems that we've seen in other avenues like QVC and open marketplaces.
And the solution is dead simple, hold amazon liable for their part in distributing stolen and fake products. Stop accepting this namby pamby "Oh shucks, we sure are trying our darnest but those scammers are just cleaver with their 9000 listings of the same product under different names, all conspicuously with the same sell address/accounts."
The reason we have this problem is because it's more profitable for Amazon to sell fake goods then it is for them to increase consumer confidence that they are getting genuine products. The reason lawmakers aren't cracking down is because nobody is lobbying for them to crack down (And I'm sure amazon/google/etc are lobbying for the opposite because it's just too darned expensive to make sure people aren't scamming)
Who suggested they should?
And why would that be necessary?
Simply applying the least bit of effort vetting their sellers and aggressively pursuing the reported scams would solve most of the problem.
But they can't be bothered. Instead they run the largest sucker-mart in history.
Heck, they could even do something like twitters blue checkmark with their goods. For untrusted sources, keep their supplies in quarantined from the trusted sources and start vetting suppliers (check on where they are at, if they've got a history of selling fake goods, checking into the goods they are selling to ensure they are legitimate). Once a supplier passes that test, then move their goods in with the trusted sources.
Really, just about anything would make amazon more reliable and less scammy.
vet verb vetted; vetting; vets
to evaluate for possible approval or acceptanceThis got me curious about who pays the return costs, and after some searching it looks like the seller eats it[1]. In other words, Amazon might be making money even if the item was returned. Regardless, it also means that it might be possible to shut down these scams (or make them unprofitable) if activists purposely buys these scam listings, only to return them. The scammer would have to eat the fees, which eats into their profits. The only downside is your time plus the possibility of your amazon account getting banned if you return too much.
[1] https://blog.sellerboard.com/2022/09/19/the-actual-costs-of-...
A: You're not going to get caught selling stolen goods via Amazon.
At least the local flea markets would occasionally have police stroll through looking for merch and could act upon it then and there if found. Amazon took being a fence to a whole new level that criminals are laughing all the way to the bank from the whole experience.
Urgent Request for Action on Fraudulent Products on Amazon
Dear Jeff Bezos,
I am writing to express my concern about the increasing prevalence of scams and fraudulent items being sold on Amazon. It appears that these vendors have been operating for some time without any consequences and have consistently deceived customers with recycled reviews.
As a consumer, I am deeply troubled by this lack of action from Amazon. Not only does this violate consumer protection laws, but it also undermines the trust and confidence that customers have in your platform. This issue is not just limited to the 16TB SSD incident, as other examples such as the ultrasonic cleaning product that was actually a vibrating motor have been reported as well.
I understand the difficulties in policing a platform of this size, but I believe that it is imperative for Amazon to take more decisive steps to eliminate these scams and protect the interests of its customers. The comments of other customers reflect a similar sentiment, with some even opting to stop purchasing important items from Amazon due to this issue.
I hope that you will take the necessary steps to address this problem and ensure that Amazon remains a trusted and reliable platform for customers.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
How would you know? Part of the difficulty is that the counterfeits are often passable.
as philip k dick said, what you care is that it looks and behaves like a human
Scams earn amazon money. No manager or executive will prioritize addressing this issue because it'll hurt revenue. Can't be damaging those OKRs, that's where your bonuses come from.
The only solution to this is new regulations and enforcement. That's the only way an amazon exec looks at this and says "Oh, if we don't fix this we'll be out billions!"
The one I ran into personally is the one where a seller takes a product that sells by the case and they take the retail cases and split them up into units that aren't meant for resale. In my case it was Hartz Delectables Bisque cat treats.
These come in small cases of 12 pouches per case. The sellers will buy those cases, split them up into individual pouches, and then sell each pouch for SLIGHTLY less (eg. 11 dollars instead of 12) than the normal price of a full case of 12. The real retail cases you buy of this product have wording on them specifically saying they are meant for sale as a single unit and not to break them up, so presumably the manufacturer is aware of this sort of thing happening, but Amazon still allows marketplace users to run this fraud years after I first reported it to them (and stopped using them for any cat food related product and switched to Chewy).
If you read the fine print below the fold the sellers list a valid size in ounces, which maybe gives them some legal protection, but given both the out of band pricing and the fact that Amazon often jams all of the listings of a single product type into one big listing that you sometimes can't make heads or tails of who is actually selling the exact version you are buying (as long as they are Fulfilled by Amazon) its super easy to miss this until after you've fallen victim to it.
After running into this years ago I made Amazon very aware of what had occurred but the scam listings are still up on the site (AFAICT exactly the same listing since Amazon almost tauntingly informs me that I purchased this product in the past when I view the suspect listing), still wildly overpriced, with a bunch of reviews that talk about the scam but give it a 4 or 5 star review because I guess the people reviewing it didn't feel like trashing the product.
My review is 1 star. The product is fine, but I'm perfectly fine with 1 starring a review of a fraud listing for a good product because best case scenario that happening repeatedly maybe pushes the real OEM into getting on Amazon's case about their policies, wish more people would do the same honestly.
Occasionally I do pause to consider just how spectacularly Amazon has blown it for general online shopping.
You can tell that they're fake as the price is unrealistic.
Another way to determine if you've got a fake drive is that the I/O speeds will be much slower than a usual SSD.
I think the user journey is sort of like:
- oh let me search for a portable SSD drive with a lot of space
- wow, this one is BIG (1TB!) and costs less than Samsung ones; well who cares, even if it lasts 2 years, it's still 1/2 the price
- buy it
- be fine with the no-brand
- write a great review where you think you got a great deal and you're smarter than those who pay so much for the same size (hahah!! lol!!)
and the irony is that it might indeed last 2 years before they find out that it's BS :D
It's not possible to buy 10TB of storage for the prices listed as a hard drive, not to mention as SSD.
Further, a lot of them have the trappings of a scam: e.g., can't spell worth shit, the same product is somehow sold by 15 different companies all with very fake sounding names, etc.
Go to a reputable manufacturer, like Seagate, and find a product. E.g., a 1 TB SSD will set you back $130. Now, the listings here are half the price for 10x? Too good to be true.
Thanks to OS abstractions and all, 90% of people will never notice, or once they do, they remember that too cheap is most of the time scam :)
It has to exist
Don't buy anything unless it's an "official" store for a brand, even the "fulfilled by Amazon" tag doesn't mean crap anymore.
Some of us would, but empirical evidence suggests that most won’t.
This is the function that traditional specialty retailers like appliance stores and such used to do well. But most are forced to compete only on price now because otherwise people walk in, talk to an educated salesperson, touch and feel the item, find the one they want, and then buy it from the lowest priced competitor.
If you want some level of curation and accountability for your SSDs, try Best Buy.
What would be far more dangerous is if the prices quoted were close enough to real prices to be credible, but low enough to be attractive.
Example: Not $70 for 16 TB, but $1500 (say) for 16TB, which is roughly half-price.
With Amazon, I generally buy readily-available branded items for a lower than usual price. Or else I buy that item from a known and trusted supplier.
I wonder what makes Amazon show all those junk on its UK site, but not on its US site.
Is there any reputable auditing or investigation where I could read more about the evidence?
Amazon seems pretty clearly to not be motivated to fix the fraud problem. Economy of scale and all that.
You can avoid the situation, but the responsibility is absolutely not on you.
and of course the rule whenever you by something is "buyer beware" i cannot believe you would think otherwise
Almost every jurisdiction on the planet.
Selling something that you claim does A while in fact it empathically does not do A is illegal almost everywhere. This isn't some sort of vague subjective claim or obvious exaggeration, but a very specific objective claim. "Use this deodorant and you will get laid more often" is something no reasonable person takes literally, so it's allowed. "This drive can store 10TB" is a very specific claim, and if it can only store 64GB then it's deception.
There's mountains of jurisdiction on this, in many different jurisdictions around the world. Exact details differ, but it usually comes down to something like the above.
Oh, so maybe not firing workforce is a good idea? So, someone could go and check the listings of SSDs (very common scam). And what's about less obvious fakes? Like an SD card with a different speed after some point?