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Scammers Game Amazon A-Z Policy By Replacing iPhones With Clay

303 points by coryfklein 10y ago

username3 10y ago
Trusted buyers. Amazon can have options for sellers to only sell to buyers that have bought from Amazon X amount of times or X years.
- VLM 10y ago
  X dollar value to get past people trading $1 USB cables until they get the big score of 10 iphones or whatever.
- incongruity 10y ago
  Or maybe - Prime members? It's less likely a scammer will pay for prime - it certainly reduces the profit margins for them. IMHO Amazon could use this to their advantage - reduce fraud risk for sellers when selling to Prime members and encourage a 2% discount for them or something similar...
banku_brougham 10y ago
somebody is going to get a ? in email soon
hackerweb 10y ago
But a lot of the negative reviews for the linked seller seem to be about a locked or blacklisted phone, or one with the wrong amount of storage. Those customers would presumably have to send back their phones, so what's the buyer-side fraud there?
- yuubi 10y ago
  Buy phone, claim it's locked/blacklisted, return locked/blacklisted phone, get refund, profit?
laksjd 10y ago
I'm going to guess this only works with sellers that aren't fulfilled by Amazon? It's an annoyingly effective scam: How can sellers protect themselves?
- tomjen3 10y ago
  Some shipper has to provide verified shipment as a service: you packaged will be opened, a photo will be taken of the content and it will be packed and sealed by the shipper.
  - joezydeco 10y ago
    And the shipper can't be an accomplice in this adventure? A collusion between scammer and a dodgy shipper would work very well.
    - canuckintime 10y ago
      I believe the OP was implying a shipping service like USPS, FedEx, DHL etc offering the feature. Amazon now has their own logistics delivery team too and offering pickup with picture would be a logical next step to combat this scam.
  - Animats 10y ago
    Amazon could X-ray the items just before shipment, using a standard package inspection scanner.
- Alupis 10y ago
  Fulfilled By Amazon would provide no protection here. When you send a replenishment shipment to Amazon for a FBA item, they don't open and verify you sent the correct product. You only find out about mistakes after the items have been sold. For some common FBA items (presumably like an iPhone), you can co-mingle your inventory. This means you send in an identical item (with UPC, etc), and your inventory can be used to fulfill another seller's order (if that warehouse happens to be closer to the customer). They do the same for you. This means buyers get their order faster, but it also means the item going out the door may not have been yours (opening the door for this clay scam to spread to impact many many sellers).
vblord 10y ago
I can't believe that this works at all. I imagine that between an established seller and a brand new buyer, Amazon would be on the side of the seller. In the cases where the buyer wins, who pays the cost of the device (the seller or Amazon)?
- zingermc 10y ago
  It's difficult to have a policy or heuristic here. If you side with "trusted" sellers, then it all hinges on what your definition of "trusted" is. Scammers will behave themselves until they are considered to be trustworthy, and then start to cash out by shipping clay iPhones.
- makomk 10y ago
  This would allow sellers to carry out selective scamming: send buyers with longstanding accounts genuine iPhones, send new buyers boxes with clay and pocket the cash. Not so common on mainstream sites because it's hard to get away with currently, but apparently used to be rife on darknet marketplaces.
  - ensignavenger 10y ago
    Do sellers know the buyers history with Amazon?
    - ikeboy 10y ago
      No. If you have a database of old buyers you can see who's bought from you in the past, but otherwise you only have a name and address.
jibly 10y ago
Amazon should possibly add an ID verification step to the process when folks report such wild claims, or possibly handle these claims via the phone/camera to increase the difficulty of faking it
nabaraz 10y ago
I remember this being big on ebay days. How can retailers like Amazon/Ebay verify neither sellers nor buyers are not getting scammed? I cant think of any solution except intercept all packages and make sure the actual product is there.
- soyiuz 10y ago
  Third party escrow / verification for extra pay.
- AJ007 10y ago
  One of my friends still sells on eBay and has buyers pulling scams regularly. He lists stuff on message boards and other sources first, and uses eBay as a last resort. Personally I haven't been a seller on eBay in close to a decade. This isn't a solved problem but its certainly solvable because scammers should be pulling the trick repeatedly.
jimrandomh 10y ago
There are a couple hypotheses the author hasn't considered. It's possible the buyer stole the phone, yes, but it's also possible that it was a warehouse company employee, a shipping company employee, or a previous buyer who made a return.
- coryfklein 10y ago
  It's true, there are other possibilities. I found the given explanation most likely though: iPhones are all sold by 3rd party sellers on Amazon, so the alternatives you suggest likely wouldn't present as several buyers reporting on a single product that has multiple seller locations.
  - ikeboy 10y ago
    If they were fulfilled by Amazon, it could be people returning, Amazon not opening the box and then shipping it to the next buyer.
    - joemi 10y ago
      Also Fulfillment-By-Amazon explains that review that mentions "barcode was covered by fake barcode"... All FBA items must cover up any original barcode with Amazon's FNSKU barcode. Either the sellers do it themselves before shipping to Amazon, or they pay a small fee to Amazon to put the barcodes on.
      - ikeboy 10y ago
        You could use commingled inventory and then it doesn't need a label if there's already a barcode.
  - joemi 10y ago
    To be fair, a lot of reviewers don't realize when there are multiple seller locations. Hell, some people don't even realize that there are third-party sellers on Amazon at all. If even just one of those sellers is scamming (or just has a bad batch of products) and ships out multiple of these clay boxes, it's not at all surprising that you'd get multiple of these reviews.
sharms 10y ago
This isn't an Amazon only problem, same with Ebay etc. I would love to hear how people can sell items online safely (for the time being I only use Craigslist for this exact reason)
- ikeboy 10y ago
  You're never going to get a 100% guarantee. You can take steps to help, though. If it's above a couple hundred dollars then require a signature, which gets rid of most issues. If you have a history of selling, and have a signature, there's a chance they'll side with you. eBay is slightly better for one-off sales: you can refuse returns (if specified in the listing), and cancel sales by buyers without verified paypal accounts or no feedback. Plus they have a sellers guarantee, although I don't know how often they'll actually stick up for the seller.
- MrMullen 10y ago
  I sell my wife's and my old iPhones and Android every couple of years and what I do is take pictures of the serial number and send it to the buyer after they have paid for the device. Sends a message that I have documentation on what the device is and I can report it stolen if they try pull a scam on me. It also helps the buyer because they can check to see if the phone is reported stolen before even taking possession of the device.
Someone1234 10y ago
These might be buyer scammers, or sellers themselves have been scammed upstream. This article is right you'd have to be bonkers to try and pull this on Amazon as a seller. But he's assuming the seller knows there is no iPhone in the sealed box. Perhaps Amazon Sellers are attempting to buy iPhones on the grey market at a discount, in order to resell them on Amazon at a profit. However the person they're dealing with upstream is actually shipping them clay or similar and plans to disappear when discovered. Don't get me wrong, buyer scams exist, and that might be what is happening here. But why even post a review at all? The A-Z guidelines don't require it. He's also making the assumption that an Amazon Seller is going to open a sealed phone, or that their channels never get fraud in them.
- coryfklein 10y ago
  > Perhaps Amazon Sellers are attempting to buy iPhones on the grey market at a discount, in order to resell them on Amazon at a profit. However the person they're dealing with upstream is actually shipping them clay or similar and plans to disappear when discovered. I hadn't considered this possibility, but it is definitely possible as well. I see it as less likely, because the Amazon Seller that is the responsible party would probably get flagged for fraud and their account disabled. Additionally - the profiles of the buyers posting the reviews raises suspicion on their part. > But why even post a review at all? The A-Z guidelines don't require it. Claims that aren't resolved between buyer and seller involve a customer service individual from Amazon. If the buyer can point to pictures/reviews they posted, it likely strengthens their case and encourages the customer service to resolve in their favor, especially when the seller has no alternative picture evidence.
  - joemi 10y ago
    How exactly are the profiles of the buyers posting the reviews raising suspicions? You realize that the "buyer profiles" you're mentioning are actually "reviewer profiles" that only list what other reviews that buyer has posted. It does not tell you a buyer's history (unless they post a review for an item), nor does it tell you when they signed up. It's not uncommon for people who have been using Amazon for years to never post any reviews, at least not until they're disappointed by their purchase. And I'm not so sure that pointing to a review they posted strengthens an A-z Claim, at all. If images played a role, they'd let buyers upload an image when filing a claim, but they don't let that happen. They just let you fill in info about the shipment and then give you 2000 characters to explain the claim. That said, Amazon definitely sides with the buyer most of the time. Filing a claim makes it so that the seller is automatically guilty unless they can prove otherwise. Auxiliary proof of wrong-doing is not necessary at all, especially since, as you mentioned, most sellers do not have proof that they _didn't_ ship the clay.
Animats 10y ago
Why is Amazon even selling new iPhones from sources other than Apple? That's eBay's job. Looking on Amazon, I'm not seeing any iPhone 6 sellers other than Apple.
- dangrossman 10y ago
  Neither Apple nor Amazon sell iPhones on Amazon as far as I can tell. All the listings you see are third-party sellers. If you click on any of the listings, you'll see the list of sellers in the right-hand column under the checkout buttons. Ex: https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00NQGP3L6/ref=dp_olp_all_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=all https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00NQGP3L6/ref=dp_ol... The "by Apple" under each listing in search results identifies the manufacturer/brand, not who is selling the product or fulfilling the order.
- ci5er 10y ago
  > Looking on Amazon, I'm not seeing any iPhone 6 sellers other than Apple. Look for "used" or "refurbished iPhone 5", there are many (many!) sellers like BREED and Vius. Most fulfill through Amazon, so this may be their way of trying to tackle this problem?
- ChuckMcM 10y ago
  For a long time now Amazon has been taking over that part of Ebay's market. (I think of it as the Ebay 'buy it now' market). Its a pretty sweet deal for them, skim off the tasty transactional cost cream off the top, leave the buyer and seller to hold all the liability.
silveira 10y ago
It is also possible that the buyer is a seller of iPhones and is trying to get rid of competition.
brador 10y ago
The only solution is a verifying third party. Postal service could offer this for a fee to make some easy money.
- soyiuz 10y ago
  I would use this service. However, see my comment above. How would the Postal Service verify counterfeit merchandise, for example?
  - brador 10y ago
    They can't verify counterfeit merchandise but they could take a picture of the contents of the box and turn a device on to verify it works, like a pawn shop. There is no perfect way to solve this but the above solution would help.
  - VLM 10y ago
    Gray market would be a ... gray area. This took some work to find, but I found it: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HT4BF4U https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HT4BF4U Its a control theory textbook for $44 from a 3rd party. Which is a pretty good deal because the "real" book sitting on my desk is somewhat more expensive. https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Control-Systems-13th-Richard/dp/0134407628 https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Control-Systems-13th-Richard/d... In very tiny letters the cover of the cheap version reads "Circulation of this edition outside the Indian Subcontinent is Unauthorized" Something I find hilarious is the grey market edition is full of reviews that boil down to "this textbook sux and I hate my prof" but the genuine edition has one review by one guy who probably doesn't exist because if you click thru his reviews all look like stereotypical three word filler material.
- circuitslave 10y ago
  The verification could be on either end - maybe a packing & shipping service that verifies an item was packed (with photos, etc).
Scirra_Tom 10y ago
I wonder if the postal services could create an additional service which calculates a heat map of the weight distribution for the package. You could then very accurately I imagine determine if there is actually an iPhone in there, and if someone shows a photo of clay it will be obvious they are scamming if the weight distribution passed as an iPhone distribution during transit.
- soyiuz 10y ago
  One could then return broken iPhones. There needs to be stronger verification.
  - mikehollinger 10y ago
    Yep. This also wouldn't protect against the "it was damaged in transit" scam either. Depending on how much time you had, I could see someone swapping just enough of a working handset onto a broken handset to "prove" it is was broken, then returning it.
- Shank 10y ago
  This is such a complex solution, I'm sure it would be an additional fee, time consuming to implement, and in general, outside the scope of most shipping carriers.
- jrowley 10y ago
  Or they could x-ray the box on the conveyer belt and intercept any suspect packages in real time for closer inspection.
- rosege 10y ago
  how about the item has to get opened in front of a third party such as the post office and confirmed that its ok
soyiuz 10y ago
I've had a similar thing happened to me a few years back when I sold a no longer needed but still unopened Windows Vista DVD that I purchased directly from MS Store (on Microsoft campus). The buyer returned the package, but the returned merchandize was clearly counterfeit. The box was of a light material, missing holograms, faded colors etc. The buyer's history was full of similar purchases. I've been careful about documenting shipments since. Overall, I am reluctant to sell on Amazon these days because of the A-Z guarantee, which is only sustainable for large sellers. Fraud is a sticky problem at scale. A few bad actors poison the well for everyone. As a buyer I appreciate Amazon's policies, but as an occasional seller I find them completely draconian. There is very little you can do to contest a decision against you.
- waterphone 10y ago
  They're draconian in some other areas, too, which affect regular customers. I was blacklisted from Amazon Payments, which I've only ever used to fund a few Kickstarter Projects. They will not tell me why, will not consider an appeal, and will not respond to further inquiries anymore. From reading online, this is due to their use of Experian for identity verification. But if you don't have any credit history, as I do not, you do not exist within Experian's system and are automatically considered by Amazon to be a fraud threat and so are effectively cut out of the system and blacklisted without recourse, even if you're a longstanding good customer with other Amazon products.
  - coderdude 10y ago
    I hate to say this but you basically have to trust these types of authorities when it comes to this type of "trust." You wouldn't believe how many people are out to scam. It's endemic in anything that involves money. I'd say "few bad eggs" but it's mostly shit eggs amongst a few good eggs.
    - eric_h 10y ago
      I think it's really more that the bad "hens" lay many bad eggs, and the good ones only lay one good egg at a time.
codecamper 10y ago
Amazon could set up some honey pots.. whereby they themselves send out the product. They know its good. If a customer tries to scam that one... then Amazon has found their scammer. Also... I'm surprised that Amazon just hands out these sorts of refunds on big ticket items. If I were them I'd require some sort of biometric data for the refund.
- nkozyra 10y ago
  But as the story relates, these people tend to set up new accounts each time. There's little risk here involved for the scammer.
  - codecamper 10y ago
    When they come asking for their refund.. get some information about them. And then go after them.
  - Maarten88 10y ago
    Can't they blacklist shipping addresses and/or credit cards? These people open new accounts for a reason; I'd think Amazon could connect and analyze data to discover and mark/blacklist scammers.
    - rtkwe 10y ago
      Hard to stop with pre-paid debit cards and PO boxes or mail forwarding services. It'd be pretty easy to just open a new one PO/forwarding address and use a different pre paid debit/VISA gift card to keep scamming.
  - iofj 10y ago
    Wouldn't they still need to use the same address ?
w8rbt 10y ago
There are too many counterfeits and schemes like this on Amazon. Finding a reliable seller that has a legitimate product and a good reputation has become almost impossible.
AJ007 10y ago
Interesting conclusion to the article. I stopped buying Apple items off Amazon a really long time ago because they let counterfeit chargers list as real Apple products and did jack shit about it. To some extent this has begun flowing in to other product categories for me as well. "Meanwhile, the product page is flooded with fraudelent (sp) reviews, poisoning the well and moving future customers away from Amazon and towards trusted Apple retailers. Amazon and customers lose, but Apple possibly gets more customers."
- coryfklein 10y ago
  Thanks for pointing out the typo, fixed.
- r00fus 10y ago
  Same situation with "authentic" Apple earpods (which run about 30-50% of the Apple MSRP). I'm surprised Amazon hasn't been sued by Apple for still allowing these to be sold.
  - hh2222 10y ago
    Watch out for counterfit memory cards too. The jerks openly label them Sandisk, Kingston etc., but of course they are junk. I am puzzled why Amazon can't "follow the money" and completely shutdown these crooks.
    - r00fus 10y ago
      I would assume they're following their own money. Still not sure why the name brands (Sandisk, Apple, etc) can't just sue Amazon for contributing to the trademark infringements...
- ikeboy 10y ago
  They've begun restricting more and more products to approved sellers, which helps.
- CPLX 10y ago
  Buying Apple brand products on Amazon at this point is just essentially impossible. Buying printer ink I have found to be essentially impossible. And there are more examples, those are just two obvious ones. It really doesn't seem like it would be all that hard for Amazon to distinguish between things they themselves are selling and things they are brokering through third parties. The site claims to do this but in reality it doesn't. For one simple example, all reviews for a specific product are in common, so the reviews for off-brand fake printer ink and OEM real stuff are just all in the same product listing page because they have the same SKU presumably. These problems are obvious, and it seems like Amazon is more than capable of fixing them, so you have to assume they don't by choice.
codecamper 10y ago
Another thing that could be done... is that shippers could help out. UPS, Fedex, USPS could all offer last step photo verification of packages, as a service. A few more dollars and you get a photo of what is inside and the handler packs the box up.
- jrowley 10y ago
  They could automate it by x-raying instead of taking a photo. It would clearly show the iphone vs a piece of clay and save them a bunch of time opening/resealing boxes.
- codingdave 10y ago
  That opens up opportunities for package handlers to start stealing stuff. For the most part, employees of UPS, Fedex, etc are not allowed to open packages (with international shipments being the exception, when they check for customs compliance). Your suggestion would be a massive policy change, possibly regulatory changes, and would open up more holes in the system.
  - unabst 10y ago
    Indeed. Not to mention that content swapping fraud is also incredibly rare.
- eli 10y ago
  That seems like a service that would cost quite a few dollars to implement and would only force the fraudsters to try a little bit harder. I had someone buy my cell phone on eBay and then return it as broken by sending back a different nonfunctional phone. They even swapped the serial number sticker inside the battery compartment.
- analog31 10y ago
  Perhaps a low tech solution might be transparent packaging. "Do not accept this package from the shipper if it doesn't contain what you ordered."
swanson 10y ago
Question: how should a seller document and defend that they indeed shipped an iPhone (not clay)?
- Rzah 10y ago
  Amazon is handling the warehousing and shipping for a lot of this stuff, they could xray the shipping box as it goes out, in the event of a dispute, it would be pretty easy to check the scan to see if they shipped electronics or clay.
  - phamilton 10y ago
    Sure, but then this just turns into "Bought iPhone 6s, received box with iPhone 3s."
jseliger 10y ago
Interestingly, too, I noticed in 2013 that Amazon's general marketplace is rife for abuse: https://jakeseliger.com/2013/02/16/is-amazon-coms-marketplace-encouraging-buyers-to-scam-sellers-by-filing-a-refund-claim/ https://jakeseliger.com/2013/02/16/is-amazon-coms-marketplac.... I assume that Amazon tracks the number of returns a particular account engages, but still, I wouldn't sell anything of real value on the site.
balls187 10y ago
Looking at the reviews, many have only left a single review.
aandon 10y ago
My guess is sellers absorb this as a cost of doing business. As long as fraud rates remain in low single digit percentage, it's probably not worth it for the seller or Amazon to fight it. It is always fun to dissect these scams. There's an interesting e-commerce scam prevalent in India that popped up as the country embraced e-commerce without much credit card infrastructure in place (most online orders are paid to the delivery person in cash) https://simility.com/delivery-fraud https://simility.com/delivery-fraud: "The fraudster businesses ordered hundreds of products from the victim’s website to be delivered on a daily basis. Meanwhile, if customers came into their store asking for an out-of-stock product, they were told it would be in stock later that day. Then the fraudsters paid the delivery person in cash for the small fraction of products they had pre-sold to customers, while returning the vast majority of unsold products without paying for them at the cost of the e-commerce company, thus completing the delivery fraud cycle."
- analog31 10y ago
  Indeed, fraud and shrinkage are costs of doing business for practically any enterprise. My worst experience was being a nice guy and accepting a personal check, which of course bounced, so I was out my cost-of-goods plus an additional fee from the bank. My main protection is that my cost-of-goods is about 1/5 of my selling price. Also, it's a niche market product that would probably be hard to re-sell. Because of my healthy mark-up, I can afford to handle practically any dispute by offering a prompt refund. It's tougher if you're not a retailer, but an individual selling a few items, in which case you don't have a mark-up or the law of averages to fall back on.
profeta 10y ago
given the amount of garbage amazon sells nowadays, if it didn't favoured the buyer they would be gone by now. Almost everything i buy that is not books i have to return once or twice until i receive the item from a seller that is not trying to fence a couterfeit version. This happens with $100 pro SD cards down to $15 arduinos clones (which i think amazon still do not carry the original, but all ads show the original in the picture)
- JonathonW 10y ago
  Which is why I don't generally purchase from Amazon unless the item's shipped and sold by Amazon or a third-party seller I trust (I only have a few of those). If I wanted to play the eBay "buy it now" roulette, I'd buy off eBay.
ortusdux 10y ago
I wonder if using Amazon's fulfillment service would help prevent against this. It is possible to get merchandise directly delivered to a fulfillment center from the vendor? It would be pretty easy for a seller to battle a fraud claim if they can show that they never got within 500 miles of the product.
- mikeash 10y ago
  While that certainly sounds like an effective way to prove that the seller isn't at fault, I have to wonder just what purpose they actually serve in such a scenario.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
As others have pointed out, dealing with fraud at scale is really really difficult. As a result its cost are often priced into sales (either transaction costs or product costs). While the privacy implications are large, it is an area where the more data around the transaction can identify systemic fraud. (which is to say organized group that spread their activity across a wide area to keep it below the radar of fraud detection algorithms). In the case of phones, the seller has a lot of power. They can record the serial number/IMEI data from the box prior to selling it. At which point you can track where the phone is and if its being used. The challenge has always been taking action against the scammers. So perhaps there is a startup idea for a private investigation group in large cities that would go get scammers and recover merchandise. Such action would quickly reveal if the scammers were part of a larger organization or acting independently.
- thebokehwokeh2 10y ago
  > So perhaps there is a startup idea for a private investigation group in large cities that would go get scammers and recover merchandise. Such action would quickly reveal if the scammers were part of a larger organization or acting independently. You mean the police?
  - treebeard901 10y ago
    Nice home you have here, Mr. Amazon Seller. Be a shame if somebody disrupted it.
  - ChuckMcM 10y ago
    I would, if the police were filling that particular niche. As most police departments have limited funds, simple economics steers them to putting their resources on the highest impact cases. So "Some guy defrauded me when {buying|selling} an iPhone." is below the activation threshold for the police. But investigating these "small time" frauds benefits from scale. And like the company that was fixing parking tickets (normally a time consuming and costly exercise for the ticket receiver) by apply resources across a lot of people with parking tickets, I could imagine an equivalent "fraud fighter" business where the "fee" was 1/2 the recovered value. So the company investigates 1000 fraudulent amazon sales in the greater New York area, lets say they can prove half the time that it was fraud and get the appropriate fraud protection coverage to kick in. If they keep 50% of that value, they have now a revenue stream that is 25% of the defrauded value. The mechanic here is that small time fraud allows millions (maybe billions) to be siphoned out of the commercial shopping stream. That burden is generally born by the sellers who raise prices to cover their losses. If a startup can mitigate those losses by 50%, and the seller is willing to split the mitigation 50/50 with the startup, then the seller has 25% less "loss due to fraud" and the startup has 25% of revenue from defeating fraud. It takes money out of the fraud pipeline. When larger fraud rings are uncovered by the startup they can hand them off to the police who are willing to go after multi-million dollar criminal enterprises.
bdrool 10y ago
Amazon is complete crap these days. It's becoming more and more difficult to figure out who you are buying from, and as a result there are outright scams sitting on Amazon's store at this moment that they continue to do nothing about: https://www.amazon.ca/ORIGINAL-MACBOOK-Magsafe-ADAPTER-CHARGER/dp/B011J9W1H0/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1458520459&sr=8-13&keywords=macbook+pro+charger https://www.amazon.ca/ORIGINAL-MACBOOK-Magsafe-ADAPTER-CHARG... See that? That's the infamous "dangerous" counterfeit Apple Macbook charger that made the rounds[1][2] a while back. Notice how it says "by Apple-Computers"? This is a scam. It's not by Apple. It's a dangerous fire-hazard knockoff. Yet it's tagged in a way that will no doubt mislead people into thinking it's safe and "official". People were pointing this out months ago[3], yet it's still there on Amazon's store, no doubt along with countless other dangerous misleadingly-branded ripoffs. This is fraud, pure and simple. And Amazon continues to profit from it, right out in the open. It's disgusting. [1] http://www.righto.com/2016/03/counterfeit-macbook-charger-teardown.html [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11325150 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11325464
- jakelazaroff 10y ago
  If you read the article, it's actually Amazon and sellers who's being scammed by the buyers, who are purchasing iPhones, replacing them with blocks of clay, and claiming the refund for "fraud".
  - anon1234321 10y ago
    To be fair, I don't think bdrool is claiming the situations are analogous. He's just using the opportunity to point out other problems with Amazon's operations.
  - bdrool 10y ago
    Yes, I realize that. I was not saying this is the exact same thing that is being discussed in the article. However, it is similar in that Amazon should be exercising more control over their inventory and logistics, not to mention the case I am talking about is arguably much more egregious and much more within Amazon's control to fix. I think that makes it highly relevant as a comment to this story.
lordnacho 10y ago
Maybe I'm being naive, but won't there be a record of the address the item was delivered to? And credit card details? How do you avoid that?
- lost_name 10y ago
  You can get service from a 're-shipper' to mask your address and use gift cards or other prepaid cards to hide the credit card info.
n-gauge 10y ago
So is the clay endorsed with the fingerprints of the scammer?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ericabiz 10y ago
I wrote about this back in 2013 (and made it to the front page of HN): "Scammed By Amazon’s 'A-to-Z Guarantee'" https://medium.com/this-happened-to-me/scammed-by-amazons-a-to-z-guarantee-759e4b63a925 https://medium.com/this-happened-to-me/scammed-by-amazons-a-... tl;dr I sold my old cell phone on Amazon and the buyer claimed it was stolen. Amazon refunded him in full and took the money out of my bank account. I also sold a computer on Amazon around the same time and the buyer tried to do the same thing. That one I caught and argued successfully for, but it was still a pain to go back and forth. I had another laptop I wanted to sell online, but because of these two experiences I was really gun-shy. I ended up stuffing it in a cabinet for over a year and eventually sold it to a friend for significantly less than I would have sold it for online--but at least I knew I wouldn't get scammed. I've had better luck with the Amazon trade-in program, especially since they sometimes do incentives. I've traded in two Kindles and ended up getting a new Paperwhite for only about $40-50 after all the incentives from both old Kindles were in my account.
jedberg 10y ago
When I worked at eBay, we constantly debated whether the policies should be pro seller or pro buyer. You can't be both in a two sided market. Throughout my time there, we switched back and forth, but ultimately decided happy sellers brought in more revenue that happy buyers (but maybe that changed again). Apparently Amazon has decided to be pro buyer right now, which fits with their general model of making happy customers.
- gregmac 10y ago
  Why isn't it based more on a trust system? Amazon records a ton of information about people.. Buyers with a history of claims should generally not be trusted when opening a new claim, and likewise, sellers with a history of claims should not be trusted. New buyers and new sellers (no history) require some more scrutiny, but the default should probably be to be skeptical as well. When new, how hard is it to link an IP address (or some other fingerprint) as likely to be from other accounts? Eg: new buyer/seller opens dispute, has no history, but IP is linked to a no-longer active account that has a trail of disputes... that's pretty fishy. I'd probably say that accounts from shared addresses (internet cafes, coffee shops, etc) are probably also treated a suspicious by default... an unfortunate side effect if nothing else.
  - mywittyname 10y ago
    You're right, it seems like there are a few cheap and easy fraud solutions. You can probably trust the older account that makes regular purchases on Amazon. I bet you can trust a long-time Amazon Prime member even more. Heck, maybe "seller insurance" can be a feature of Prime. Fraud is exactly the reason just let old electronics sit in my closet. I'd rather let them rot than risk having to pay to give them to somebody else.
    - jedberg 10y ago
      > You're right, it seems like there are a few cheap and easy fraud solutions You'll just have to take my word for it that eBay and Amazon, companies that have been dealing with fraud since 1995, have implemented all of the cheap and easy solutions. :)
rietta 10y ago
Gosh. It's almost worth it to never resell anything. Just throw old electronics away even though that's bad for the environment and squanders value both for the owner of no longer needed gear and the potential new user of it. The world would be so much nicer if everyone were honest dealing.
- x3sphere 10y ago
  Well I've sold a lot on Amazon and eBay with success, probably like $40K worth of computer equipment over the last 10 years. Never been scammed or had any complaints. Guess I've been lucky.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  After getting tired of dealing with rude hagglers on the local Craigslist-a-like, I just end up giving away used stuff now. Either hand-me-downs to family and friends or to goodwill.
jliptzin 10y ago
This happened to me about 5 years ago on ebay when selling an iPhone. I was an eBay member since 1999, 100% positive feedback, occasional seller (about once a month). I sold a perfectly fine iPhone, buyer with no feedback history complains to eBay he never received the phone despite tracking showing it was delivered. He also leaves me negative feedback (in broken English). eBay sided with the buyer immediately and attempted to withdraw the money out of my paypal account which I'd fortunately already withdrawn. They demanded for over a year that I pay them the money they claim I owe them or they'd destroy my credit. Fuck eBay, fuck PayPal, terrible companies that should have gone out of business long ago.
- kirubakaran 10y ago
  After a year they just let it be?
  - jliptzin 10y ago
    Yes, but I am permanently banned from using PayPal now. Which is fine for me, but since then I've pushed literally millions of dollars of revenue through Stripe which would have more than accounted for their 'loss' had they not been so idiotic about the whole thing. I'm sure I'd have integrated with PayPal by default since Stripe was still nascent back then, but thanks to PayPal I was forced to use a different option for my business.
- kingnothing 10y ago
  When World of Warcraft was released, I had the same thing happen to me. It was a hot item and my local retailer happened to have it on the shelves, so I bought 10 extra copies and sold the CD keys on ebay for about 3x retail pricing. Almost half of the keys I sold were allegedly bought from Paypal customers who "had their accounts hacked", so ebay withdrew the money from my account and refunded it to the buyers leaving me without merchandise or money. Seriously: Fuck eBay.
  - aaron695 10y ago
    This is very common for digital items. Because you need no postal address. It's a easy way to turn stolen credit cards to money (or stolen Paypal accounts) Someone tried the same arbitraging bitcoins on ebay and got burned. Not totally sure this is eBays fault. I'd guess the actually were bought with stolen assets.
pyrophane 10y ago
This sort of thing is why I pretty much only sell things like this locally, in-person, and transact in cash. Buyer gets the chance to check out the item, verify the serial number, and so on. I get the guarantee that if they walk out happy it is a done deal. No one has been able to improve upon this online. Sure, it can be more convenient to sell online, and for people who sell at volume the cost of fraud may be worth it, but for individuals who occasionally sell desirable items that are likely targets of fraud, selling online is too fraught with risk.
bambax 10y ago
This doesn't make much sense: why would supposedly fraudulent buyers bother with leaving a (public) review with photos of the clay?? This is not only a waste of time and energy but could potentially be harmful to them since it's usually possible to extract clues from a photograph. Isn't it possible that the story is rather this: - bad buyer 1 buys a phone, takes the phone out of the case, replaces it with clay, re-seals the box and returns it, claiming he didn't even open it - seller restocks the package without verifying it - good buyer 2 buys what they think is an iPhone and turns out to be a box full of clay, is upset and leaves a review
- cloudsloth 10y ago
  Edit: sorry for re-stating some of your points. I'm sort of delirious with a head cold right now. What's pretty interesting is that it could be both. Sellers get's a return. Upon receiving returned item they check that packaging is still sealed and when it is, they send it back to amazon's fulfillment center to be sold again. Amazon receives the item. Amazon's system (obviously) doesn't open boxes. They at the very most check the barcode, visually inspect for sealed box, and check weight. Now the items are co-mingled with other new items Now a buyer can receive a box of clay when they buy from an entirely different seller. Co-mingled items allow for a ton of fraud. They also save Amazon a lot of money on logistics. They make prime shipping possible. For Amazon, the acceptable rate of fraud is very high because everyone wants to be on their marketplace (huge sales volume) and the system they use allows them to offer such value at such a low cost.
Paul-ish 10y ago
Do these buyers use the same shipping address multiple times? That seems like a good way to track them. Alternatively, if they use something like a PO box, you could disallow new accounts from shipping their first few things to a PO box.
WalterBright 10y ago
You'd think with all the datamining Amazon does, this would be a worthwhile problem to solve with it. After all, it is good for Amazon if people can trust their transactions there.
capote 10y ago
Partially related: Is anyone else bothered by the volume of negative reviews on Amazon that simply target an individual seller rather than the product? All instances of any product are covered by the same set of reviews, regardless who the seller was, so reviews like this are totally unfair in dragging the product's rating down. Why doesn't Amazon have a policy against this?
tempestn 10y ago
I doubt it would ever work in practice, but in theory this kind of thing could be solved by having both parties deposit an additional say 20% of purchase price to an escrow account. So buyer deposits 120% and seller deposits 20%. Once buyer confirms receipt, 120% is sent to seller and 20% back to buyer. If there is a problem, buyer can send the item back to the seller, and once seller confirms (re-)receipt, they each get back their original contributions. However, if buyer claims the item wasn't received and seller claims to have sent it, the money remains in escrow. So the side that's lying doesn't benefit. They actually lose 20%. And therefore there's no rational reason to attempt this scam. However, in the real world there are several problems. The person being "scammed" would be out 120% of the value (whether they're the buyer or the seller), which wouldn't fly with most people, even if the scam is theoretically unlikely. It would also require significantly greater trust of Amazon. Something like this might work with hyper-rational actors using something like a bitcoin multi-sig address, but not for Amazon. Which means I'm back to not seeing any perfect solution to this kind of problem.
- neolefty 10y ago
  How about X-raying expensive items before shipping?
- rosege 10y ago
  how about the item has to get opened in front of a third party such as the post office and confirmed that its ok

303 points by coryfklein 10y ago

Trusted buyers. Amazon can have options for sellers to only sell to buyers that have bought from Amazon X amount of times or X years.

VLM 10y ago
X dollar value to get past people trading $1 USB cables until they get the big score of 10 iphones or whatever.
incongruity 10y ago
Or maybe - Prime members? It's less likely a scammer will pay for prime - it certainly reduces the profit margins for them. IMHO Amazon could use this to their advantage - reduce fraud risk for sellers when selling to Prime members and encourage a 2% discount for them or something similar...

banku_brougham 10y ago

somebody is going to get a ? in email soon

hackerweb 10y ago

But a lot of the negative reviews for the linked seller seem to be about a locked or blacklisted phone, or one with the wrong amount of storage. Those customers would presumably have to send back their phones, so what's the buyer-side fraud there?

yuubi 10y ago
Buy phone, claim it's locked/blacklisted, return locked/blacklisted phone, get refund, profit?

laksjd 10y ago

I'm going to guess this only works with sellers that aren't fulfilled by Amazon? It's an annoyingly effective scam: How can sellers protect themselves?

tomjen3 10y ago
Some shipper has to provide verified shipment as a service: you packaged will be opened, a photo will be taken of the content and it will be packed and sealed by the shipper.
- joezydeco 10y ago
  And the shipper can't be an accomplice in this adventure? A collusion between scammer and a dodgy shipper would work very well.
  - canuckintime 10y ago
    I believe the OP was implying a shipping service like USPS, FedEx, DHL etc offering the feature. Amazon now has their own logistics delivery team too and offering pickup with picture would be a logical next step to combat this scam.
- Animats 10y ago
  Amazon could X-ray the items just before shipment, using a standard package inspection scanner.
Alupis 10y ago
Fulfilled By Amazon would provide no protection here. When you send a replenishment shipment to Amazon for a FBA item, they don't open and verify you sent the correct product. You only find out about mistakes after the items have been sold. For some common FBA items (presumably like an iPhone), you can co-mingle your inventory. This means you send in an identical item (with UPC, etc), and your inventory can be used to fulfill another seller's order (if that warehouse happens to be closer to the customer). They do the same for you. This means buyers get their order faster, but it also means the item going out the door may not have been yours (opening the door for this clay scam to spread to impact many many sellers).

vblord 10y ago

I can't believe that this works at all. I imagine that between an established seller and a brand new buyer, Amazon would be on the side of the seller. In the cases where the buyer wins, who pays the cost of the device (the seller or Amazon)?

zingermc 10y ago
It's difficult to have a policy or heuristic here. If you side with "trusted" sellers, then it all hinges on what your definition of "trusted" is. Scammers will behave themselves until they are considered to be trustworthy, and then start to cash out by shipping clay iPhones.
makomk 10y ago
This would allow sellers to carry out selective scamming: send buyers with longstanding accounts genuine iPhones, send new buyers boxes with clay and pocket the cash. Not so common on mainstream sites because it's hard to get away with currently, but apparently used to be rife on darknet marketplaces.
- ensignavenger 10y ago
  Do sellers know the buyers history with Amazon?
  - ikeboy 10y ago
    No. If you have a database of old buyers you can see who's bought from you in the past, but otherwise you only have a name and address.

jibly 10y ago

Amazon should possibly add an ID verification step to the process when folks report such wild claims, or possibly handle these claims via the phone/camera to increase the difficulty of faking it

nabaraz 10y ago

I remember this being big on ebay days. How can retailers like Amazon/Ebay verify neither sellers nor buyers are not getting scammed? I cant think of any solution except intercept all packages and make sure the actual product is there.

soyiuz 10y ago
Third party escrow / verification for extra pay.
AJ007 10y ago
One of my friends still sells on eBay and has buyers pulling scams regularly. He lists stuff on message boards and other sources first, and uses eBay as a last resort. Personally I haven't been a seller on eBay in close to a decade. This isn't a solved problem but its certainly solvable because scammers should be pulling the trick repeatedly.

jimrandomh 10y ago

There are a couple hypotheses the author hasn't considered. It's possible the buyer stole the phone, yes, but it's also possible that it was a warehouse company employee, a shipping company employee, or a previous buyer who made a return.

coryfklein 10y ago
It's true, there are other possibilities. I found the given explanation most likely though: iPhones are all sold by 3rd party sellers on Amazon, so the alternatives you suggest likely wouldn't present as several buyers reporting on a single product that has multiple seller locations.
- ikeboy 10y ago
  If they were fulfilled by Amazon, it could be people returning, Amazon not opening the box and then shipping it to the next buyer.
  - joemi 10y ago
    Also Fulfillment-By-Amazon explains that review that mentions "barcode was covered by fake barcode"... All FBA items must cover up any original barcode with Amazon's FNSKU barcode. Either the sellers do it themselves before shipping to Amazon, or they pay a small fee to Amazon to put the barcodes on.
    - ikeboy 10y ago
      You could use commingled inventory and then it doesn't need a label if there's already a barcode.
- joemi 10y ago
  To be fair, a lot of reviewers don't realize when there are multiple seller locations. Hell, some people don't even realize that there are third-party sellers on Amazon at all. If even just one of those sellers is scamming (or just has a bad batch of products) and ships out multiple of these clay boxes, it's not at all surprising that you'd get multiple of these reviews.

sharms 10y ago

This isn't an Amazon only problem, same with Ebay etc. I would love to hear how people can sell items online safely (for the time being I only use Craigslist for this exact reason)

ikeboy 10y ago
You're never going to get a 100% guarantee. You can take steps to help, though. If it's above a couple hundred dollars then require a signature, which gets rid of most issues. If you have a history of selling, and have a signature, there's a chance they'll side with you. eBay is slightly better for one-off sales: you can refuse returns (if specified in the listing), and cancel sales by buyers without verified paypal accounts or no feedback. Plus they have a sellers guarantee, although I don't know how often they'll actually stick up for the seller.
MrMullen 10y ago
I sell my wife's and my old iPhones and Android every couple of years and what I do is take pictures of the serial number and send it to the buyer after they have paid for the device. Sends a message that I have documentation on what the device is and I can report it stolen if they try pull a scam on me. It also helps the buyer because they can check to see if the phone is reported stolen before even taking possession of the device.

Someone1234 10y ago

These might be buyer scammers, or sellers themselves have been scammed upstream. This article is right you'd have to be bonkers to try and pull this on Amazon as a seller. But he's assuming the seller knows there is no iPhone in the sealed box. Perhaps Amazon Sellers are attempting to buy iPhones on the grey market at a discount, in order to resell them on Amazon at a profit. However the person they're dealing with upstream is actually shipping them clay or similar and plans to disappear when discovered. Don't get me wrong, buyer scams exist, and that might be what is happening here. But why even post a review at all? The A-Z guidelines don't require it. He's also making the assumption that an Amazon Seller is going to open a sealed phone, or that their channels never get fraud in them.

coryfklein 10y ago
> Perhaps Amazon Sellers are attempting to buy iPhones on the grey market at a discount, in order to resell them on Amazon at a profit. However the person they're dealing with upstream is actually shipping them clay or similar and plans to disappear when discovered. I hadn't considered this possibility, but it is definitely possible as well. I see it as less likely, because the Amazon Seller that is the responsible party would probably get flagged for fraud and their account disabled. Additionally - the profiles of the buyers posting the reviews raises suspicion on their part. > But why even post a review at all? The A-Z guidelines don't require it. Claims that aren't resolved between buyer and seller involve a customer service individual from Amazon. If the buyer can point to pictures/reviews they posted, it likely strengthens their case and encourages the customer service to resolve in their favor, especially when the seller has no alternative picture evidence.
- joemi 10y ago
  How exactly are the profiles of the buyers posting the reviews raising suspicions? You realize that the "buyer profiles" you're mentioning are actually "reviewer profiles" that only list what other reviews that buyer has posted. It does not tell you a buyer's history (unless they post a review for an item), nor does it tell you when they signed up. It's not uncommon for people who have been using Amazon for years to never post any reviews, at least not until they're disappointed by their purchase. And I'm not so sure that pointing to a review they posted strengthens an A-z Claim, at all. If images played a role, they'd let buyers upload an image when filing a claim, but they don't let that happen. They just let you fill in info about the shipment and then give you 2000 characters to explain the claim. That said, Amazon definitely sides with the buyer most of the time. Filing a claim makes it so that the seller is automatically guilty unless they can prove otherwise. Auxiliary proof of wrong-doing is not necessary at all, especially since, as you mentioned, most sellers do not have proof that they _didn't_ ship the clay.

Animats 10y ago

Why is Amazon even selling new iPhones from sources other than Apple? That's eBay's job. Looking on Amazon, I'm not seeing any iPhone 6 sellers other than Apple.

dangrossman 10y ago
Neither Apple nor Amazon sell iPhones on Amazon as far as I can tell. All the listings you see are third-party sellers. If you click on any of the listings, you'll see the list of sellers in the right-hand column under the checkout buttons. Ex: https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00NQGP3L6/ref=dp_olp_all_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=all https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00NQGP3L6/ref=dp_ol... The "by Apple" under each listing in search results identifies the manufacturer/brand, not who is selling the product or fulfilling the order.
ci5er 10y ago
> Looking on Amazon, I'm not seeing any iPhone 6 sellers other than Apple. Look for "used" or "refurbished iPhone 5", there are many (many!) sellers like BREED and Vius. Most fulfill through Amazon, so this may be their way of trying to tackle this problem?
ChuckMcM 10y ago
For a long time now Amazon has been taking over that part of Ebay's market. (I think of it as the Ebay 'buy it now' market). Its a pretty sweet deal for them, skim off the tasty transactional cost cream off the top, leave the buyer and seller to hold all the liability.

silveira 10y ago

It is also possible that the buyer is a seller of iPhones and is trying to get rid of competition.

brador 10y ago

The only solution is a verifying third party. Postal service could offer this for a fee to make some easy money.

soyiuz 10y ago
I would use this service. However, see my comment above. How would the Postal Service verify counterfeit merchandise, for example?
- brador 10y ago
  They can't verify counterfeit merchandise but they could take a picture of the contents of the box and turn a device on to verify it works, like a pawn shop. There is no perfect way to solve this but the above solution would help.
- VLM 10y ago
  Gray market would be a ... gray area. This took some work to find, but I found it: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HT4BF4U https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HT4BF4U Its a control theory textbook for $44 from a 3rd party. Which is a pretty good deal because the "real" book sitting on my desk is somewhat more expensive. https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Control-Systems-13th-Richard/dp/0134407628 https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Control-Systems-13th-Richard/d... In very tiny letters the cover of the cheap version reads "Circulation of this edition outside the Indian Subcontinent is Unauthorized" Something I find hilarious is the grey market edition is full of reviews that boil down to "this textbook sux and I hate my prof" but the genuine edition has one review by one guy who probably doesn't exist because if you click thru his reviews all look like stereotypical three word filler material.
circuitslave 10y ago
The verification could be on either end - maybe a packing & shipping service that verifies an item was packed (with photos, etc).

Scirra_Tom 10y ago

I wonder if the postal services could create an additional service which calculates a heat map of the weight distribution for the package. You could then very accurately I imagine determine if there is actually an iPhone in there, and if someone shows a photo of clay it will be obvious they are scamming if the weight distribution passed as an iPhone distribution during transit.

soyiuz 10y ago
One could then return broken iPhones. There needs to be stronger verification.
- mikehollinger 10y ago
  Yep. This also wouldn't protect against the "it was damaged in transit" scam either. Depending on how much time you had, I could see someone swapping just enough of a working handset onto a broken handset to "prove" it is was broken, then returning it.
Shank 10y ago
This is such a complex solution, I'm sure it would be an additional fee, time consuming to implement, and in general, outside the scope of most shipping carriers.
jrowley 10y ago
Or they could x-ray the box on the conveyer belt and intercept any suspect packages in real time for closer inspection.
rosege 10y ago
how about the item has to get opened in front of a third party such as the post office and confirmed that its ok

soyiuz 10y ago

I've had a similar thing happened to me a few years back when I sold a no longer needed but still unopened Windows Vista DVD that I purchased directly from MS Store (on Microsoft campus). The buyer returned the package, but the returned merchandize was clearly counterfeit. The box was of a light material, missing holograms, faded colors etc. The buyer's history was full of similar purchases. I've been careful about documenting shipments since. Overall, I am reluctant to sell on Amazon these days because of the A-Z guarantee, which is only sustainable for large sellers. Fraud is a sticky problem at scale. A few bad actors poison the well for everyone. As a buyer I appreciate Amazon's policies, but as an occasional seller I find them completely draconian. There is very little you can do to contest a decision against you.

waterphone 10y ago
They're draconian in some other areas, too, which affect regular customers. I was blacklisted from Amazon Payments, which I've only ever used to fund a few Kickstarter Projects. They will not tell me why, will not consider an appeal, and will not respond to further inquiries anymore. From reading online, this is due to their use of Experian for identity verification. But if you don't have any credit history, as I do not, you do not exist within Experian's system and are automatically considered by Amazon to be a fraud threat and so are effectively cut out of the system and blacklisted without recourse, even if you're a longstanding good customer with other Amazon products.
- coderdude 10y ago
  I hate to say this but you basically have to trust these types of authorities when it comes to this type of "trust." You wouldn't believe how many people are out to scam. It's endemic in anything that involves money. I'd say "few bad eggs" but it's mostly shit eggs amongst a few good eggs.
  - eric_h 10y ago
    I think it's really more that the bad "hens" lay many bad eggs, and the good ones only lay one good egg at a time.

codecamper 10y ago

Amazon could set up some honey pots.. whereby they themselves send out the product. They know its good. If a customer tries to scam that one... then Amazon has found their scammer. Also... I'm surprised that Amazon just hands out these sorts of refunds on big ticket items. If I were them I'd require some sort of biometric data for the refund.

nkozyra 10y ago
But as the story relates, these people tend to set up new accounts each time. There's little risk here involved for the scammer.
- codecamper 10y ago
  When they come asking for their refund.. get some information about them. And then go after them.
- Maarten88 10y ago
  Can't they blacklist shipping addresses and/or credit cards? These people open new accounts for a reason; I'd think Amazon could connect and analyze data to discover and mark/blacklist scammers.
  - rtkwe 10y ago
    Hard to stop with pre-paid debit cards and PO boxes or mail forwarding services. It'd be pretty easy to just open a new one PO/forwarding address and use a different pre paid debit/VISA gift card to keep scamming.
- iofj 10y ago
  Wouldn't they still need to use the same address ?

w8rbt 10y ago

There are too many counterfeits and schemes like this on Amazon. Finding a reliable seller that has a legitimate product and a good reputation has become almost impossible.

AJ007 10y ago

Interesting conclusion to the article. I stopped buying Apple items off Amazon a really long time ago because they let counterfeit chargers list as real Apple products and did jack shit about it. To some extent this has begun flowing in to other product categories for me as well. "Meanwhile, the product page is flooded with fraudelent (sp) reviews, poisoning the well and moving future customers away from Amazon and towards trusted Apple retailers. Amazon and customers lose, but Apple possibly gets more customers."

coryfklein 10y ago
Thanks for pointing out the typo, fixed.
r00fus 10y ago
Same situation with "authentic" Apple earpods (which run about 30-50% of the Apple MSRP). I'm surprised Amazon hasn't been sued by Apple for still allowing these to be sold.
- hh2222 10y ago
  Watch out for counterfit memory cards too. The jerks openly label them Sandisk, Kingston etc., but of course they are junk. I am puzzled why Amazon can't "follow the money" and completely shutdown these crooks.
  - r00fus 10y ago
    I would assume they're following their own money. Still not sure why the name brands (Sandisk, Apple, etc) can't just sue Amazon for contributing to the trademark infringements...
ikeboy 10y ago
They've begun restricting more and more products to approved sellers, which helps.
CPLX 10y ago
Buying Apple brand products on Amazon at this point is just essentially impossible. Buying printer ink I have found to be essentially impossible. And there are more examples, those are just two obvious ones. It really doesn't seem like it would be all that hard for Amazon to distinguish between things they themselves are selling and things they are brokering through third parties. The site claims to do this but in reality it doesn't. For one simple example, all reviews for a specific product are in common, so the reviews for off-brand fake printer ink and OEM real stuff are just all in the same product listing page because they have the same SKU presumably. These problems are obvious, and it seems like Amazon is more than capable of fixing them, so you have to assume they don't by choice.

codecamper 10y ago

Another thing that could be done... is that shippers could help out. UPS, Fedex, USPS could all offer last step photo verification of packages, as a service. A few more dollars and you get a photo of what is inside and the handler packs the box up.

jrowley 10y ago
They could automate it by x-raying instead of taking a photo. It would clearly show the iphone vs a piece of clay and save them a bunch of time opening/resealing boxes.
codingdave 10y ago
That opens up opportunities for package handlers to start stealing stuff. For the most part, employees of UPS, Fedex, etc are not allowed to open packages (with international shipments being the exception, when they check for customs compliance). Your suggestion would be a massive policy change, possibly regulatory changes, and would open up more holes in the system.
- unabst 10y ago
  Indeed. Not to mention that content swapping fraud is also incredibly rare.
eli 10y ago
That seems like a service that would cost quite a few dollars to implement and would only force the fraudsters to try a little bit harder. I had someone buy my cell phone on eBay and then return it as broken by sending back a different nonfunctional phone. They even swapped the serial number sticker inside the battery compartment.
analog31 10y ago
Perhaps a low tech solution might be transparent packaging. "Do not accept this package from the shipper if it doesn't contain what you ordered."

swanson 10y ago

Question: how should a seller document and defend that they indeed shipped an iPhone (not clay)?

Rzah 10y ago
Amazon is handling the warehousing and shipping for a lot of this stuff, they could xray the shipping box as it goes out, in the event of a dispute, it would be pretty easy to check the scan to see if they shipped electronics or clay.
- phamilton 10y ago
  Sure, but then this just turns into "Bought iPhone 6s, received box with iPhone 3s."

jseliger 10y ago

Interestingly, too, I noticed in 2013 that Amazon's general marketplace is rife for abuse: https://jakeseliger.com/2013/02/16/is-amazon-coms-marketplace-encouraging-buyers-to-scam-sellers-by-filing-a-refund-claim/ https://jakeseliger.com/2013/02/16/is-amazon-coms-marketplac.... I assume that Amazon tracks the number of returns a particular account engages, but still, I wouldn't sell anything of real value on the site.

balls187 10y ago

Looking at the reviews, many have only left a single review.

aandon 10y ago

My guess is sellers absorb this as a cost of doing business. As long as fraud rates remain in low single digit percentage, it's probably not worth it for the seller or Amazon to fight it. It is always fun to dissect these scams. There's an interesting e-commerce scam prevalent in India that popped up as the country embraced e-commerce without much credit card infrastructure in place (most online orders are paid to the delivery person in cash) https://simility.com/delivery-fraud https://simility.com/delivery-fraud: "The fraudster businesses ordered hundreds of products from the victim’s website to be delivered on a daily basis. Meanwhile, if customers came into their store asking for an out-of-stock product, they were told it would be in stock later that day. Then the fraudsters paid the delivery person in cash for the small fraction of products they had pre-sold to customers, while returning the vast majority of unsold products without paying for them at the cost of the e-commerce company, thus completing the delivery fraud cycle."

analog31 10y ago
Indeed, fraud and shrinkage are costs of doing business for practically any enterprise. My worst experience was being a nice guy and accepting a personal check, which of course bounced, so I was out my cost-of-goods plus an additional fee from the bank. My main protection is that my cost-of-goods is about 1/5 of my selling price. Also, it's a niche market product that would probably be hard to re-sell. Because of my healthy mark-up, I can afford to handle practically any dispute by offering a prompt refund. It's tougher if you're not a retailer, but an individual selling a few items, in which case you don't have a mark-up or the law of averages to fall back on.

profeta 10y ago

given the amount of garbage amazon sells nowadays, if it didn't favoured the buyer they would be gone by now. Almost everything i buy that is not books i have to return once or twice until i receive the item from a seller that is not trying to fence a couterfeit version. This happens with $100 pro SD cards down to $15 arduinos clones (which i think amazon still do not carry the original, but all ads show the original in the picture)

JonathonW 10y ago
Which is why I don't generally purchase from Amazon unless the item's shipped and sold by Amazon or a third-party seller I trust (I only have a few of those). If I wanted to play the eBay "buy it now" roulette, I'd buy off eBay.

ortusdux 10y ago

I wonder if using Amazon's fulfillment service would help prevent against this. It is possible to get merchandise directly delivered to a fulfillment center from the vendor? It would be pretty easy for a seller to battle a fraud claim if they can show that they never got within 500 miles of the product.

mikeash 10y ago
While that certainly sounds like an effective way to prove that the seller isn't at fault, I have to wonder just what purpose they actually serve in such a scenario.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

As others have pointed out, dealing with fraud at scale is really really difficult. As a result its cost are often priced into sales (either transaction costs or product costs). While the privacy implications are large, it is an area where the more data around the transaction can identify systemic fraud. (which is to say organized group that spread their activity across a wide area to keep it below the radar of fraud detection algorithms). In the case of phones, the seller has a lot of power. They can record the serial number/IMEI data from the box prior to selling it. At which point you can track where the phone is and if its being used. The challenge has always been taking action against the scammers. So perhaps there is a startup idea for a private investigation group in large cities that would go get scammers and recover merchandise. Such action would quickly reveal if the scammers were part of a larger organization or acting independently.

thebokehwokeh2 10y ago
> So perhaps there is a startup idea for a private investigation group in large cities that would go get scammers and recover merchandise. Such action would quickly reveal if the scammers were part of a larger organization or acting independently. You mean the police?
- treebeard901 10y ago
  Nice home you have here, Mr. Amazon Seller. Be a shame if somebody disrupted it.
- ChuckMcM 10y ago
  I would, if the police were filling that particular niche. As most police departments have limited funds, simple economics steers them to putting their resources on the highest impact cases. So "Some guy defrauded me when {buying|selling} an iPhone." is below the activation threshold for the police. But investigating these "small time" frauds benefits from scale. And like the company that was fixing parking tickets (normally a time consuming and costly exercise for the ticket receiver) by apply resources across a lot of people with parking tickets, I could imagine an equivalent "fraud fighter" business where the "fee" was 1/2 the recovered value. So the company investigates 1000 fraudulent amazon sales in the greater New York area, lets say they can prove half the time that it was fraud and get the appropriate fraud protection coverage to kick in. If they keep 50% of that value, they have now a revenue stream that is 25% of the defrauded value. The mechanic here is that small time fraud allows millions (maybe billions) to be siphoned out of the commercial shopping stream. That burden is generally born by the sellers who raise prices to cover their losses. If a startup can mitigate those losses by 50%, and the seller is willing to split the mitigation 50/50 with the startup, then the seller has 25% less "loss due to fraud" and the startup has 25% of revenue from defeating fraud. It takes money out of the fraud pipeline. When larger fraud rings are uncovered by the startup they can hand them off to the police who are willing to go after multi-million dollar criminal enterprises.

bdrool 10y ago

Amazon is complete crap these days. It's becoming more and more difficult to figure out who you are buying from, and as a result there are outright scams sitting on Amazon's store at this moment that they continue to do nothing about: https://www.amazon.ca/ORIGINAL-MACBOOK-Magsafe-ADAPTER-CHARGER/dp/B011J9W1H0/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1458520459&sr=8-13&keywords=macbook+pro+charger https://www.amazon.ca/ORIGINAL-MACBOOK-Magsafe-ADAPTER-CHARG... See that? That's the infamous "dangerous" counterfeit Apple Macbook charger that made the rounds[1][2] a while back. Notice how it says "by Apple-Computers"? This is a scam. It's not by Apple. It's a dangerous fire-hazard knockoff. Yet it's tagged in a way that will no doubt mislead people into thinking it's safe and "official". People were pointing this out months ago[3], yet it's still there on Amazon's store, no doubt along with countless other dangerous misleadingly-branded ripoffs. This is fraud, pure and simple. And Amazon continues to profit from it, right out in the open. It's disgusting. [1] http://www.righto.com/2016/03/counterfeit-macbook-charger-teardown.html [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11325150 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11325464

jakelazaroff 10y ago
If you read the article, it's actually Amazon and sellers who's being scammed by the buyers, who are purchasing iPhones, replacing them with blocks of clay, and claiming the refund for "fraud".
- anon1234321 10y ago
  To be fair, I don't think bdrool is claiming the situations are analogous. He's just using the opportunity to point out other problems with Amazon's operations.
- bdrool 10y ago
  Yes, I realize that. I was not saying this is the exact same thing that is being discussed in the article. However, it is similar in that Amazon should be exercising more control over their inventory and logistics, not to mention the case I am talking about is arguably much more egregious and much more within Amazon's control to fix. I think that makes it highly relevant as a comment to this story.

lordnacho 10y ago

Maybe I'm being naive, but won't there be a record of the address the item was delivered to? And credit card details? How do you avoid that?

lost_name 10y ago
You can get service from a 're-shipper' to mask your address and use gift cards or other prepaid cards to hide the credit card info.

n-gauge 10y ago

So is the clay endorsed with the fingerprints of the scammer?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

ericabiz 10y ago

I wrote about this back in 2013 (and made it to the front page of HN): "Scammed By Amazon’s 'A-to-Z Guarantee'" https://medium.com/this-happened-to-me/scammed-by-amazons-a-to-z-guarantee-759e4b63a925 https://medium.com/this-happened-to-me/scammed-by-amazons-a-... tl;dr I sold my old cell phone on Amazon and the buyer claimed it was stolen. Amazon refunded him in full and took the money out of my bank account. I also sold a computer on Amazon around the same time and the buyer tried to do the same thing. That one I caught and argued successfully for, but it was still a pain to go back and forth. I had another laptop I wanted to sell online, but because of these two experiences I was really gun-shy. I ended up stuffing it in a cabinet for over a year and eventually sold it to a friend for significantly less than I would have sold it for online--but at least I knew I wouldn't get scammed. I've had better luck with the Amazon trade-in program, especially since they sometimes do incentives. I've traded in two Kindles and ended up getting a new Paperwhite for only about $40-50 after all the incentives from both old Kindles were in my account.

jedberg 10y ago

When I worked at eBay, we constantly debated whether the policies should be pro seller or pro buyer. You can't be both in a two sided market. Throughout my time there, we switched back and forth, but ultimately decided happy sellers brought in more revenue that happy buyers (but maybe that changed again). Apparently Amazon has decided to be pro buyer right now, which fits with their general model of making happy customers.

gregmac 10y ago
Why isn't it based more on a trust system? Amazon records a ton of information about people.. Buyers with a history of claims should generally not be trusted when opening a new claim, and likewise, sellers with a history of claims should not be trusted. New buyers and new sellers (no history) require some more scrutiny, but the default should probably be to be skeptical as well. When new, how hard is it to link an IP address (or some other fingerprint) as likely to be from other accounts? Eg: new buyer/seller opens dispute, has no history, but IP is linked to a no-longer active account that has a trail of disputes... that's pretty fishy. I'd probably say that accounts from shared addresses (internet cafes, coffee shops, etc) are probably also treated a suspicious by default... an unfortunate side effect if nothing else.
- mywittyname 10y ago
  You're right, it seems like there are a few cheap and easy fraud solutions. You can probably trust the older account that makes regular purchases on Amazon. I bet you can trust a long-time Amazon Prime member even more. Heck, maybe "seller insurance" can be a feature of Prime. Fraud is exactly the reason just let old electronics sit in my closet. I'd rather let them rot than risk having to pay to give them to somebody else.
  - jedberg 10y ago
    > You're right, it seems like there are a few cheap and easy fraud solutions You'll just have to take my word for it that eBay and Amazon, companies that have been dealing with fraud since 1995, have implemented all of the cheap and easy solutions. :)

rietta 10y ago

Gosh. It's almost worth it to never resell anything. Just throw old electronics away even though that's bad for the environment and squanders value both for the owner of no longer needed gear and the potential new user of it. The world would be so much nicer if everyone were honest dealing.

x3sphere 10y ago
Well I've sold a lot on Amazon and eBay with success, probably like $40K worth of computer equipment over the last 10 years. Never been scammed or had any complaints. Guess I've been lucky.
kalleboo 10y ago
After getting tired of dealing with rude hagglers on the local Craigslist-a-like, I just end up giving away used stuff now. Either hand-me-downs to family and friends or to goodwill.

jliptzin 10y ago

This happened to me about 5 years ago on ebay when selling an iPhone. I was an eBay member since 1999, 100% positive feedback, occasional seller (about once a month). I sold a perfectly fine iPhone, buyer with no feedback history complains to eBay he never received the phone despite tracking showing it was delivered. He also leaves me negative feedback (in broken English). eBay sided with the buyer immediately and attempted to withdraw the money out of my paypal account which I'd fortunately already withdrawn. They demanded for over a year that I pay them the money they claim I owe them or they'd destroy my credit. Fuck eBay, fuck PayPal, terrible companies that should have gone out of business long ago.

kirubakaran 10y ago
After a year they just let it be?
- jliptzin 10y ago
  Yes, but I am permanently banned from using PayPal now. Which is fine for me, but since then I've pushed literally millions of dollars of revenue through Stripe which would have more than accounted for their 'loss' had they not been so idiotic about the whole thing. I'm sure I'd have integrated with PayPal by default since Stripe was still nascent back then, but thanks to PayPal I was forced to use a different option for my business.
kingnothing 10y ago
When World of Warcraft was released, I had the same thing happen to me. It was a hot item and my local retailer happened to have it on the shelves, so I bought 10 extra copies and sold the CD keys on ebay for about 3x retail pricing. Almost half of the keys I sold were allegedly bought from Paypal customers who "had their accounts hacked", so ebay withdrew the money from my account and refunded it to the buyers leaving me without merchandise or money. Seriously: Fuck eBay.
- aaron695 10y ago
  This is very common for digital items. Because you need no postal address. It's a easy way to turn stolen credit cards to money (or stolen Paypal accounts) Someone tried the same arbitraging bitcoins on ebay and got burned. Not totally sure this is eBays fault. I'd guess the actually were bought with stolen assets.

pyrophane 10y ago

This sort of thing is why I pretty much only sell things like this locally, in-person, and transact in cash. Buyer gets the chance to check out the item, verify the serial number, and so on. I get the guarantee that if they walk out happy it is a done deal. No one has been able to improve upon this online. Sure, it can be more convenient to sell online, and for people who sell at volume the cost of fraud may be worth it, but for individuals who occasionally sell desirable items that are likely targets of fraud, selling online is too fraught with risk.

bambax 10y ago

This doesn't make much sense: why would supposedly fraudulent buyers bother with leaving a (public) review with photos of the clay?? This is not only a waste of time and energy but could potentially be harmful to them since it's usually possible to extract clues from a photograph. Isn't it possible that the story is rather this: - bad buyer 1 buys a phone, takes the phone out of the case, replaces it with clay, re-seals the box and returns it, claiming he didn't even open it - seller restocks the package without verifying it - good buyer 2 buys what they think is an iPhone and turns out to be a box full of clay, is upset and leaves a review

cloudsloth 10y ago
Edit: sorry for re-stating some of your points. I'm sort of delirious with a head cold right now. What's pretty interesting is that it could be both. Sellers get's a return. Upon receiving returned item they check that packaging is still sealed and when it is, they send it back to amazon's fulfillment center to be sold again. Amazon receives the item. Amazon's system (obviously) doesn't open boxes. They at the very most check the barcode, visually inspect for sealed box, and check weight. Now the items are co-mingled with other new items Now a buyer can receive a box of clay when they buy from an entirely different seller. Co-mingled items allow for a ton of fraud. They also save Amazon a lot of money on logistics. They make prime shipping possible. For Amazon, the acceptable rate of fraud is very high because everyone wants to be on their marketplace (huge sales volume) and the system they use allows them to offer such value at such a low cost.

Paul-ish 10y ago

Do these buyers use the same shipping address multiple times? That seems like a good way to track them. Alternatively, if they use something like a PO box, you could disallow new accounts from shipping their first few things to a PO box.

WalterBright 10y ago

You'd think with all the datamining Amazon does, this would be a worthwhile problem to solve with it. After all, it is good for Amazon if people can trust their transactions there.

capote 10y ago

Partially related: Is anyone else bothered by the volume of negative reviews on Amazon that simply target an individual seller rather than the product? All instances of any product are covered by the same set of reviews, regardless who the seller was, so reviews like this are totally unfair in dragging the product's rating down. Why doesn't Amazon have a policy against this?

tempestn 10y ago

I doubt it would ever work in practice, but in theory this kind of thing could be solved by having both parties deposit an additional say 20% of purchase price to an escrow account. So buyer deposits 120% and seller deposits 20%. Once buyer confirms receipt, 120% is sent to seller and 20% back to buyer. If there is a problem, buyer can send the item back to the seller, and once seller confirms (re-)receipt, they each get back their original contributions. However, if buyer claims the item wasn't received and seller claims to have sent it, the money remains in escrow. So the side that's lying doesn't benefit. They actually lose 20%. And therefore there's no rational reason to attempt this scam. However, in the real world there are several problems. The person being "scammed" would be out 120% of the value (whether they're the buyer or the seller), which wouldn't fly with most people, even if the scam is theoretically unlikely. It would also require significantly greater trust of Amazon. Something like this might work with hyper-rational actors using something like a bitcoin multi-sig address, but not for Amazon. Which means I'm back to not seeing any perfect solution to this kind of problem.

neolefty 10y ago
How about X-raying expensive items before shipping?
rosege 10y ago
how about the item has to get opened in front of a third party such as the post office and confirmed that its ok