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Comment by haunter | Hacker News Reader

The craziest scam I saw on Amazon was ordering an expensive GPU > people change the card's backplate and return a cheaper/broken one. Unsuspecting regular Joe will order the returned GPU ("open box deal!") and they get a fake one. And now you have to fight against the Amazon customer service too. It's incredible.

Amazon is basically a "premium" Wish/Aliexpress nowadays. Might as well I order from China becuase I at least _willingly know_ getting a fake.

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This is a classic scam that also exists for brick and mortar stores.

For example: customer buys Brita filter from Walmart. Takes it home, puts their old used-up filter in the box. Returns the filter. Walmart employees aren't paid enough to care to check the contents, and even if they did, would they be able to tell the filter had been used?

This is kinda on Brita. Their filters should definitely change color with water contact. Preferably, the more water has touched the filter, the more intense the color.

I'm sure that works for many product examples, but Brita filters come in a sealed white plastic wrapper. Does the customer heat-seal it closed again before they return it?

But the white plastic's probably in a cardboard box, right?

And if the shop worker bothers to open the cardboard box, the customer can simply say "Yeah I opened it and it's the wrong size"

> Amazon is basically a "premium" Wish/Aliexpress nowadays

That's an interesting point, and it got me thinking: why do I continue buying from Amazon over AliExpress etc.?

Pretty simple answer, really: logistics. I can order an adapter from Amazon and have it here by 6 PM tonight. The same thing off AliExpress will take a week or more to get here.

If Wish or AliExpress can figure out near-same day delivery, they could put a sizeable dent in Amazon's market share.

> That's an interesting point, and it got me thinking: why _do_ I continue buying from Amazon over AliExpress etc.?

I asked myself the same question back in January and also couldn't come up with an answer beyond shipping speed, so I cancelled Prime and now just use AliExpress for most things that would've been an Amazon purchase before. Even the slower speed isn't that bad: if I genuinely need it right away I'll travel to a physical store; otherwise the extended wait feels healthy for reducing useless impulse purchases.

And it's kinda exciting when you get a delivery you totally forgot about.

That means you shouldn't have ordered it in the first place? I gave up on needless consumerism when I got an amazon package, didn't bother opening it, forgot what it was, and it just sat in my closet.

Most likely yeah :)

What I mean though is when you want to fix something and you order a part off AliExpress or you have an idea for a project so you order a bunch of parts, things that aren't time sensitive so you order them, forget about it and get them at some point. Not everything has to be same day or next day delivery is all I'm saying.

Not at all! There is a large intersection between Important and Non-Urgent.v

Example - bicycle parts. A bicycle will ride without lubrication, with missing fenders and damaged brakes. Should it?

I ordered a horn, forgot about it.

Does it mean I don't need a horn? Hard to tell, it could save your life. It maybe it won't.

I don't know, much of what I order online are non-perishable staples. If I order more soap or paper towels or whatever else I'm running low on, the exact arrival date doesn't matter much but it's definitely going to get used at some point.

This makes a lot of sense. Prime shipping is fast sometimes, but not consistent enough to rely on for anything urgent. Arriving in a week rather than a few days rarely matters for most online purchases anyway.

Yeah with Amazon you'll get in 2-3 days, but you'll end up paying 2-3x as well. I considered building a browser extension that just lists the Alibaba/AliExpress item for you when you land on amazon listing and did a bit of research. Most things you search for on Amazon these days that crowd the first page results are literally just copies of AliExpress items at 2-3x the markup. Sometimes the convenience is worth it.

It's rare that I see that significant of a discount on Aliexpress. Most are within like 10% and sometimes cheaper on Amazon.

I had the same concerns about shipping speed, but then I just said fuck it and cancelled my Prime anyways. It turns out that waiting a few more days for items actually isn't a problem for me. It also brings the added benefit that I no longer feel constrained to a single shitty store, and can buy from anywhere on the internet again.

Also, when I do buy from Amazon as a non-Prime member, I find that often (not always) items tend to ship faster than the estimates claim. A few days ago I bought some RAM for my computer, and the estimate said it'd take a week to arrive. Instead, it "shipped early" and arrived in 2 days (on a Sunday). I think they've just optimized their shipping process for Prime so much that for some items it probably is cheaper to ship as fast as they can than to artificially delay shipping orders for non Prime members.

Oh, if I have this much concern about getting some item quickly, I go into a store and walk out with it.

I remember doing exactly that once last year.

I trust amazon to resolve problems with orders.

They have always resolved missing packages, late shipments, wrong item, etc.

In December I ordered an iPad Pro, and instead received a random book that has more or less the same size, plus a bunch of AA batteries to match the weight… I’m in Germany, not sure if that’s common in other places but it was a first for me. So, yeah, I’m done ordering expensive device on the platform.

> Amazon is basically a "premium" Wish/Aliexpress nowadays.

I'm totally baffled by this. What would one order off of those sites? How does one even find it? The filtering either doesn't exist or is totally worthless. Even when there is some sort of sensible filtering, the results are still far worse than Amazon. Just showing a bunch of pictures and prices is not helpful. Trying to force me to create an account to just browse the site is not helpful. Wish seems like it is setup completely for impulse buyers buying random junk they see. Aliexpress is a wee bit better than Wish, but is still trash compared to Amazon. I don't understand who would subject themselves to that sort of torture. The prices don't seem any better.

>The filtering either doesn't exist or is totally worthless.

Funny; I've always found that about Amazon. And not only is their search garbage, but so are their prices- they're usually higher than if you bought directly.

6 figure starting salaries and their recommender routine still prompts me to buy stuff I just bought. Clearly those DSA interview questions are doing them a lot of good.

>I don't understand who would subject themselves to that sort of torture.

Well, it's not like you really have any other option.

Once upon a time, we had Sears, whose business model was in no small part identical to Amazon's... except it was curated. Everything that needed a picture had one, they had their own delivery fleet and mail-order warehouses, and so on and so forth. And this model was good, though their house brands had some ups and downs over the years.

But then Sears went belly up, so now we're stuck with the discount alternative that's merely an online platform with a few extra bits. Sure, it's easier to get your product in there than it was to get it into Sears back in the early 1900s, but then again that's true for general website eCommerce platforms in general and turnkey examples of that go back nearly as far as Amazon's been popular (and Etsy exists for the lower volume and handmade items).

> people change the card's backplate and return a cheaper/broken one

People really have to ruin everything

I wonder do they ban people’s accounts for doing such things? That’s basically theft

I think the term is "mail fraud", and it's very illegal

Is it mail fraud if it does not go via USPS?

The wiki page on mail fraud quotes the definition and it would seem to include the USPS as well as any private/commercial carrier crossing state borders.

I like getting products I order online delivered overnight. And return them for free by dropping off at local UPS with my money back in less than 48 hours. Can Wish/Aliexpress do the same?

How expensive would it be to perform an airport-style x-ray scan of every box (over some price) before it's shipped out, and when it's returned? That would give the customer support agent something to look at when judging somebody's claim that they were shipped a fake product, and you could probably even train ML models to distinguish genuine from knockoff goods in many cases.

There's actually some equipment that's sorta similar - meat packing plants can get conveyor belt x-ray machines which detect bones and bolts inside burgers.

I've never heard of it for general retail, though.

but who was the seller? This should be a buyer beware situation. The marketplace is compromised.

galansito?

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