10 ms·

Amazon allegedly scammed out of $370K by 22-year-old's return shipments of dirt

127 points by Vaslo 7y ago

algaeontoast 7y ago
Wow, this is brilliant.
- i_am_nomad 7y ago
  Presumably you are being sarcastic? There was no way he wasn’t going to get caught eventually.
  - algaeontoast 7y ago
    Found a member of HN who can perceive humor, +1 for you my friend ;)
- praneshp 7y ago
  Well, it _was_ brilliant, but the alleged perp got caught. Good luck now.
  - anonytrary 7y ago
    By this logic, everything is brilliant until it's not. That's not a good way to define "brilliant". Actions that eventually net undesirable consequences are stupid, not brilliant. E.g. Being a petty armed bank robber isn't brilliant until you get caught.
    - JadeNB 7y ago
      > Actions that eventually net undesirable consequences are stupid, not brilliant. I think it depends on how predictable the consequences are (it may be brilliant, or at least smart, to act in a way that offers a small possibility of an undesireable consequence in return for a large possibility of a highly desireable one), and on how long the time horizon is (it may be brilliant, or at least smart, to act in a way that offers certain undesireable consequences much later in return for certain desireable consequences for a long time before that). To overstate the objection, all actions eventually result in death, which is presumably undesireable.
      - jaclaz 7y ago
        Carlo M.Cipolla to the rescue, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla#/media/File:Cipolla-matrix.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla#/media/File:C...
      - anonytrary 7y ago
        > small possibility of an undesireable consequence in return for a large possibility of a highly desireable one Exactly, so the expectation value is net desirable. I wouldn't consider that stupid.
- p1mrx 7y ago
  Except for the part that leaves an obvious paper trail.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- mirimir 7y ago
  Yeah, well, he forgot the part about using a fake identity.
- reallydude 7y ago
  Leveraging Amazon's disinterest in its own processes, to the MAXIMUM effect, surely is brilliant social engineering. It required knowing how return products are handled and treated, which is basically "they are weighed and forgotten in a lottery/auction". The exploitation of existing policies and practices was foiled by greed. Not enough to order products to keep, he had to try to make a business of it.
hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
This is so bizarrely stupid, but it does lead to some questions: 1. What did this man think was going to happen? That Amazon would never open the boxes he returned? Certainly after 370k worth I'm surprised he didn't get flagged much earlier. 2. What normally happens to Amazon returns? The article makes it sound like they are rarely opened. That seems bizarre to me. I would have thought they'd have a system for processing returns.
- dawnerd 7y ago
  Re amazon returns: either sent back to the third party seller or tossed into return pallets. If you watch some videos of them it becomes pretty clear amazon doesn’t check. A lot of electronics swapped out.
  - OldHand2018 7y ago
    I've had multiple Amazon returns in which I dropped off the packages at a physical Amazon location, had them scanned, and received a paper receipt with the confirmation number. A few days later, look on your account and there has been no return. Try to look it up using the confirmation number and it doesn't exist. Open a customer support ticket, go back and forth a dozen times before they understand what you are trying to tell them, and all of the sudden the item is returned and you get your credit. I think Amazon has a data loss problem in their returns processing, and this guy accidentally stumbled upon a way to trigger it repeatedly. And he only got caught when someone opened a box, got mad, and went out of their way to track down who mailed it to them.
    - bestnameever 7y ago
      Where I am, I usually drop off packages at a physical Amazon Location and I have an email about monies refunded to me before I get home.
    - AnssiH 7y ago
      For me returns and refunds consistently take over a week to register after the carrier tracking number shows delivery to Amazon returns center (Amazon provides no prepaid return labels for Finland). I don't really mind, though.
carlosdp 7y ago
“The report states the success of the alleged scam by Kwarteng, who has been released on bail, enabled him to create his own company.” That’s one way to get seed funding I guess...
- 88j88 7y ago
  This was my favorite part of the article. It honestly reads like somehow what he did was a brilliant business idea, but incidentally was illegal
Jerry2 7y ago
The first article that reported this [1] has way more info on what he did with the money and how he fenced it and how he was caught (this is auto-translated so I have no idea how accurate it is since I don't speak spanish): >The scam didn't end there. So many times they repeated the scam, which were made with a huge amount of electronics. They could keep them ... or they could further stretch the deception. And that's what they did. James set up an online sales company. A kind of Wallapop to which he named Kwartech, a fusion of his surname Kwarteng and the word tech (technology in English). They founded a Limited Company that served to sell the merchandise online. They offered unused products, but without a package (which was back in Amazon full of land, a fact that they did not tell their customers) and at a very reduced price. >The Barcelona police began the investigation, which immediately passed to the Group of Technological Crimes of the Upper Balearic Headquarters. Agents arrested them both last week. They have passed to judicial disposition and have left free with a deposit of 3,000 euros. They are on the street, waiting for the final trial ... and with their Amazon accounts closed. And is that between James and Juan have hit the biggest stick that has ever been given to Amazon in Europe. [1] https://www.elespanol.com/reportajes/20190723/estafo-james-amazon-devolvia-recibia-reembolso-vendia/415709507_0.html https://www.elespanol.com/reportajes/20190723/estafo-james-a...
WheelsAtLarge 7y ago
Things must have changed lately. I returned a set of DVDs and forgot to include the cover and got dinged for over half the cost of the item almost as soon as it was received by the warehouse. I guess I got lucky since they could have charged me for the whole price. But now a guy is sending dirt and he gets full credit. Wow!
- anoncow 7y ago
  Amazon, I believe, checks for the weight of the package to ascertain if the contents are what they were supposed to be.
  - hoskdoug 7y ago
    Source
    - maimeowmeow 7y ago
      When you open the case, the nitrogen gas which was included to help avoid decomposition escapes, hence the half refund.
  - zaroth 7y ago
    A missing DVD cover discovered by a weight discrepancy? Who’s to say it was returned in the original envelope? Perhaps more likely the extremely light items weight is hidden in the variance of the return packaging weight and so those packages have to be opened?
    - AnssiH 7y ago
      A missing cover sounds like it would be visible without opening the product packaging (which would be the cover itself, no?), i.e. they can easily notice the omission by comparing the returned item against a reference image. In the OP case the product packaging was filled with dirt, which is not as easily discoverable without opening product packaging.
throwaway3627 7y ago
Retail is a dirty business.
taneq 7y ago
This is why we can’t have nice things.
- dfcmt 7y ago
  Sounds like a shitty platitude but yeah, this is why I fear Amazon will eventually reconsider their returns policy.
qwsxyh 7y ago
absolute legend tbh
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
rahulsom 7y ago
I'm curious why Amazon didn't investigate what was happening until his returns totaled $370k.
- gen3 7y ago
  I'm curious how it even totaled 370k. Returning enough items to get that high should set off alarms!
  - quickthrower2 7y ago
    Forget returning that much. Even just spending that much at Amazon to begin with should set off an alarms, e.g. is this a stolen card? money laundering?
    - gingabriska 7y ago
      No way, I've spent that much on Amazon and I buy nearly everything on Amazon. Pretty sure there are many others who shop at that level or beyond.
      - quickthrower2 7y ago
        You could buy a house with what you’ve spent on Amazon!
- gingabriska 7y ago
  Due to scale and efficiency, they simply operate via check list approach. When I had an ecom company, a line worker used to check the package content and appearance (dents/scratches) and then he would measure it on a scale and check with the package's recorded weight before it was dispatched and algorithm would flag the orders where weight varied more than some specific ratio. It was pretty rudimentary but worked at scale just fine. Now, Amazon must also be using something like this.
  - ryacko 7y ago
eco 7y ago
I just ordered a MyQ garage door hub from Amazon Warehouse (listed as missing or damaged original packaging). When I opened it up it felt a little off. The protective film on the device had obviously been removed and reattached and nothing fit very well in the designated slots in the packaging. The device itself had faint scratches and dust on it. I decided to check the model number and sure enough, it was the previous model. Someone had obviously ordered the new model (presumably because the new one gained support for Apple HomeKit) then stuffed their old one in the box and done a refund through Amazon. Amazon handled it fine and I got a replacement that was correct but now I'm pretty skeptical of how Amazon processes the returned items they place up for sale again.
- irrational 7y ago
  Similar experience with a sawhorse. It was clearly a used item when I opened it. I got a replacement no problem, how is it more cost effective to pay shipping twice than to pay someone to check it once?
  - JakeTheAndroid 7y ago
    The people that process the returns make next to nothing and run off a script of yes/no and anything weird gets escalated. A Q/A person to validate a range of products for authenticity (or at least more so than now) likely costs more per hour. They have their supply chain so efficient, it's likely very cheap for them to move physical items across the globe.
    - ldoughty 7y ago
      It would cost them $20/hr per validator (burdened). If only 5 items an hour are bad returns, that's $4 per item identified. It's likely cheaper to have you, the customer, do the valuation because you might not even realize the issues... And if you do, you might be too lazy to return it. Which further let's the value of hitting a validator.. so the employee would now be to probably find twice as many bad returns per hour for the company to break even.
  - 7y ago
morpheuskafka 7y ago
This the kind of thing you could probably get away with once or twice... I don't know why he thought he could get away with it for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
hangonhn 7y ago
I've encountered another scam regarding Amazon returns where the seller would ship from overseas. The item I ordered would be nothing like the description. So I filed for a refund and the seller was like "sure, here's the form and you can pay for shipping". As you can imagine because of the postage rates differences, it was a lot more expensive for me to send it back vs. the cost to them to ship to the US. In fact the shipping cost was almost the cost of the item. I contacted Amazon customer service and they issued me the refund without requiring me to send anything back but I wonder how many people just gave up. Amazon's customer service is a huge part of the reason I order so much through them. I feel comfortable buying things off of Amazon and has never had to "eat the cost" of shady sellers.
- Trias11 7y ago
  >> Amazon's customer service is a huge part of the reason I order so much through them. Do i have time to go through multiple cycles of "get crap / return" until i get item I ordered? That's why I check more reputable stores first such as B&H first before succumbing to AMZN hit-n-miss-n-get-refund store.
  - ryanlol 7y ago
    This comment would make much more sense if AMZNs fuckup rates were much higher.
    - hcknwscommenter 7y ago
      I don't think the point is about AMZN "fuckup rates" or "mistaken items" it's about outright fraud. I've received a fairly high percentage of just outright fake or broken stuff. Maybe I bargain hunt a bit too much . . . .
      - ryanlol 7y ago
        I’d estimate that I need to complain about approx 1% of the stuff I order from amazon. I guess YMMV, but I feel like I’d spend much more time if I shopped around for alternatives.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bArray 7y ago
My family run a business that partially operates through eBay and this kind of crap happens to them quite regularly. They get variations of: * Returning (literal) rubbish to make up the weight * Returning the parts when they break them trying to use them * Returning the old parts they are replacing with the new parts they purchased * Returning parts they didn't check before purchasing and getting a full refund (including postage), by claiming the item wasn't as described * Claiming the parcel wasn't delivered, despite the courier company having a signature showing it was (one trick they use is to make sure the parcel is delivered to a neighbour) The worst part? There is no method to fight this. Neither eBay, the delivery companies or PayPal will take responsibility for the costs, despite claiming they do. It doesn't matter what evidence you submit (pictures, videos, third part testimony, etc), the result is the same. The "funny" part is that some items they refuse to deliver without insurance (which has to be with them) and then when you go to claim, it's not possible. The delivery companies are also great to deal with: * Parcels arrive broken despite adequate packaging (for example, somebody has run over the item with a fork lift) * Parcels get lost despite purchasing tracking - you phone them up and they have zero idea where the parcel went As somebody who gets parcels delivered, occasionally the delivery companies will deliver the item with some tape showing that it's broken. Their advice is not to accept the item, which only works when you're actually in - but then if you are, they refuse to send the item back anyway. This is because the delivery drivers only get paid for delivered items, so it's the end-courier that gets screwed. Anyway, my point is that somebody like Amazon who mostly acts as a trading platform these days and facilitates this crap that sellers have to put up with - I really don't feel sorry for them.
- DanBC 7y ago
  > * Claiming the parcel wasn't delivered, despite the courier company having a signature showing it was (one trick they use is to make sure the parcel is delivered to a neighbour) Watch out for this one though, some delivery companies are just terrible at locating the real address and will send the parcel anywhere.
  - bArray 7y ago
    For sure. It seems to be particularly bad when the parcels go international and the courier companies don't communicate particularly well. Trying to keep things tracked when the parcel goes abroad is difficult (because you also have to deal with customers asking "where is my parcel now?").
RenRav 7y ago
Good on this guy. If you don't bother with or are just incapable of verifying returns, you shouldn't be selling anything. If a normal person tried running their business that way they would be ruined.
jpswade 7y ago
Reminded me of this guy who got rocks instead of a camera... https://youtu.be/DXPnOq-XJg8 https://youtu.be/DXPnOq-XJg8
mnm1 7y ago
Hilarious. The guy should be given a medal. He takes hundreds of thousands from Amazon and they don't close his account while regular people return or exchanges a few shitty, fake products and Amazon shuts then down stealing the prime fee. Now that's a scam. Amazon deserves this. It's pocket change for them, of course, but if I was the prosecutor I'd drop the charges. Why should Amazon get this projection when their customers get shafted when Amazon steals from them?

127 points by Vaslo 7y ago

algaeontoast 7y ago

Wow, this is brilliant.

i_am_nomad 7y ago
Presumably you are being sarcastic? There was no way he wasn’t going to get caught eventually.
- algaeontoast 7y ago
  Found a member of HN who can perceive humor, +1 for you my friend ;)
praneshp 7y ago
Well, it _was_ brilliant, but the alleged perp got caught. Good luck now.
- anonytrary 7y ago
  By this logic, everything is brilliant until it's not. That's not a good way to define "brilliant". Actions that eventually net undesirable consequences are stupid, not brilliant. E.g. Being a petty armed bank robber isn't brilliant until you get caught.
  - JadeNB 7y ago
    > Actions that eventually net undesirable consequences are stupid, not brilliant. I think it depends on how predictable the consequences are (it may be brilliant, or at least smart, to act in a way that offers a small possibility of an undesireable consequence in return for a large possibility of a highly desireable one), and on how long the time horizon is (it may be brilliant, or at least smart, to act in a way that offers certain undesireable consequences much later in return for certain desireable consequences for a long time before that). To overstate the objection, all actions eventually result in death, which is presumably undesireable.
    - jaclaz 7y ago
      Carlo M.Cipolla to the rescue, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla#/media/File:Cipolla-matrix.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla#/media/File:C...
    - anonytrary 7y ago
      > small possibility of an undesireable consequence in return for a large possibility of a highly desireable one Exactly, so the expectation value is net desirable. I wouldn't consider that stupid.
p1mrx 7y ago
Except for the part that leaves an obvious paper trail.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mirimir 7y ago
Yeah, well, he forgot the part about using a fake identity.
reallydude 7y ago
Leveraging Amazon's disinterest in its own processes, to the MAXIMUM effect, surely is brilliant social engineering. It required knowing how return products are handled and treated, which is basically "they are weighed and forgotten in a lottery/auction". The exploitation of existing policies and practices was foiled by greed. Not enough to order products to keep, he had to try to make a business of it.

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago

This is so bizarrely stupid, but it does lead to some questions: 1. What did this man think was going to happen? That Amazon would never open the boxes he returned? Certainly after 370k worth I'm surprised he didn't get flagged much earlier. 2. What normally happens to Amazon returns? The article makes it sound like they are rarely opened. That seems bizarre to me. I would have thought they'd have a system for processing returns.

dawnerd 7y ago
Re amazon returns: either sent back to the third party seller or tossed into return pallets. If you watch some videos of them it becomes pretty clear amazon doesn’t check. A lot of electronics swapped out.
- OldHand2018 7y ago
  I've had multiple Amazon returns in which I dropped off the packages at a physical Amazon location, had them scanned, and received a paper receipt with the confirmation number. A few days later, look on your account and there has been no return. Try to look it up using the confirmation number and it doesn't exist. Open a customer support ticket, go back and forth a dozen times before they understand what you are trying to tell them, and all of the sudden the item is returned and you get your credit. I think Amazon has a data loss problem in their returns processing, and this guy accidentally stumbled upon a way to trigger it repeatedly. And he only got caught when someone opened a box, got mad, and went out of their way to track down who mailed it to them.
  - bestnameever 7y ago
    Where I am, I usually drop off packages at a physical Amazon Location and I have an email about monies refunded to me before I get home.
  - AnssiH 7y ago
    For me returns and refunds consistently take over a week to register after the carrier tracking number shows delivery to Amazon returns center (Amazon provides no prepaid return labels for Finland). I don't really mind, though.

carlosdp 7y ago

“The report states the success of the alleged scam by Kwarteng, who has been released on bail, enabled him to create his own company.” That’s one way to get seed funding I guess...

88j88 7y ago
This was my favorite part of the article. It honestly reads like somehow what he did was a brilliant business idea, but incidentally was illegal

Jerry2 7y ago

The first article that reported this [1] has way more info on what he did with the money and how he fenced it and how he was caught (this is auto-translated so I have no idea how accurate it is since I don't speak spanish): >The scam didn't end there. So many times they repeated the scam, which were made with a huge amount of electronics. They could keep them ... or they could further stretch the deception. And that's what they did. James set up an online sales company. A kind of Wallapop to which he named Kwartech, a fusion of his surname Kwarteng and the word tech (technology in English). They founded a Limited Company that served to sell the merchandise online. They offered unused products, but without a package (which was back in Amazon full of land, a fact that they did not tell their customers) and at a very reduced price. >The Barcelona police began the investigation, which immediately passed to the Group of Technological Crimes of the Upper Balearic Headquarters. Agents arrested them both last week. They have passed to judicial disposition and have left free with a deposit of 3,000 euros. They are on the street, waiting for the final trial ... and with their Amazon accounts closed. And is that between James and Juan have hit the biggest stick that has ever been given to Amazon in Europe. [1] https://www.elespanol.com/reportajes/20190723/estafo-james-amazon-devolvia-recibia-reembolso-vendia/415709507_0.html https://www.elespanol.com/reportajes/20190723/estafo-james-a...

WheelsAtLarge 7y ago

Things must have changed lately. I returned a set of DVDs and forgot to include the cover and got dinged for over half the cost of the item almost as soon as it was received by the warehouse. I guess I got lucky since they could have charged me for the whole price. But now a guy is sending dirt and he gets full credit. Wow!

anoncow 7y ago
Amazon, I believe, checks for the weight of the package to ascertain if the contents are what they were supposed to be.
- hoskdoug 7y ago
  Source
  - maimeowmeow 7y ago
    When you open the case, the nitrogen gas which was included to help avoid decomposition escapes, hence the half refund.
- zaroth 7y ago
  A missing DVD cover discovered by a weight discrepancy? Who’s to say it was returned in the original envelope? Perhaps more likely the extremely light items weight is hidden in the variance of the return packaging weight and so those packages have to be opened?
  - AnssiH 7y ago
    A missing cover sounds like it would be visible without opening the product packaging (which would be the cover itself, no?), i.e. they can easily notice the omission by comparing the returned item against a reference image. In the OP case the product packaging was filled with dirt, which is not as easily discoverable without opening product packaging.

throwaway3627 7y ago

Retail is a dirty business.

taneq 7y ago

This is why we can’t have nice things.

dfcmt 7y ago
Sounds like a shitty platitude but yeah, this is why I fear Amazon will eventually reconsider their returns policy.

qwsxyh 7y ago

absolute legend tbh

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

rahulsom 7y ago

I'm curious why Amazon didn't investigate what was happening until his returns totaled $370k.

gen3 7y ago
I'm curious how it even totaled 370k. Returning enough items to get that high should set off alarms!
- quickthrower2 7y ago
  Forget returning that much. Even just spending that much at Amazon to begin with should set off an alarms, e.g. is this a stolen card? money laundering?
  - gingabriska 7y ago
    No way, I've spent that much on Amazon and I buy nearly everything on Amazon. Pretty sure there are many others who shop at that level or beyond.
    - quickthrower2 7y ago
      You could buy a house with what you’ve spent on Amazon!
gingabriska 7y ago
Due to scale and efficiency, they simply operate via check list approach. When I had an ecom company, a line worker used to check the package content and appearance (dents/scratches) and then he would measure it on a scale and check with the package's recorded weight before it was dispatched and algorithm would flag the orders where weight varied more than some specific ratio. It was pretty rudimentary but worked at scale just fine. Now, Amazon must also be using something like this.
- ryacko 7y ago

eco 7y ago

I just ordered a MyQ garage door hub from Amazon Warehouse (listed as missing or damaged original packaging). When I opened it up it felt a little off. The protective film on the device had obviously been removed and reattached and nothing fit very well in the designated slots in the packaging. The device itself had faint scratches and dust on it. I decided to check the model number and sure enough, it was the previous model. Someone had obviously ordered the new model (presumably because the new one gained support for Apple HomeKit) then stuffed their old one in the box and done a refund through Amazon. Amazon handled it fine and I got a replacement that was correct but now I'm pretty skeptical of how Amazon processes the returned items they place up for sale again.

irrational 7y ago
Similar experience with a sawhorse. It was clearly a used item when I opened it. I got a replacement no problem, how is it more cost effective to pay shipping twice than to pay someone to check it once?
- JakeTheAndroid 7y ago
  The people that process the returns make next to nothing and run off a script of yes/no and anything weird gets escalated. A Q/A person to validate a range of products for authenticity (or at least more so than now) likely costs more per hour. They have their supply chain so efficient, it's likely very cheap for them to move physical items across the globe.
  - ldoughty 7y ago
    It would cost them $20/hr per validator (burdened). If only 5 items an hour are bad returns, that's $4 per item identified. It's likely cheaper to have you, the customer, do the valuation because you might not even realize the issues... And if you do, you might be too lazy to return it. Which further let's the value of hitting a validator.. so the employee would now be to probably find twice as many bad returns per hour for the company to break even.
- 7y ago

morpheuskafka 7y ago

This the kind of thing you could probably get away with once or twice... I don't know why he thought he could get away with it for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

hangonhn 7y ago

I've encountered another scam regarding Amazon returns where the seller would ship from overseas. The item I ordered would be nothing like the description. So I filed for a refund and the seller was like "sure, here's the form and you can pay for shipping". As you can imagine because of the postage rates differences, it was a lot more expensive for me to send it back vs. the cost to them to ship to the US. In fact the shipping cost was almost the cost of the item. I contacted Amazon customer service and they issued me the refund without requiring me to send anything back but I wonder how many people just gave up. Amazon's customer service is a huge part of the reason I order so much through them. I feel comfortable buying things off of Amazon and has never had to "eat the cost" of shady sellers.

Trias11 7y ago
>> Amazon's customer service is a huge part of the reason I order so much through them. Do i have time to go through multiple cycles of "get crap / return" until i get item I ordered? That's why I check more reputable stores first such as B&H first before succumbing to AMZN hit-n-miss-n-get-refund store.
- ryanlol 7y ago
  This comment would make much more sense if AMZNs fuckup rates were much higher.
  - hcknwscommenter 7y ago
    I don't think the point is about AMZN "fuckup rates" or "mistaken items" it's about outright fraud. I've received a fairly high percentage of just outright fake or broken stuff. Maybe I bargain hunt a bit too much . . . .
    - ryanlol 7y ago
      I’d estimate that I need to complain about approx 1% of the stuff I order from amazon. I guess YMMV, but I feel like I’d spend much more time if I shopped around for alternatives.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

bArray 7y ago

My family run a business that partially operates through eBay and this kind of crap happens to them quite regularly. They get variations of: * Returning (literal) rubbish to make up the weight * Returning the parts when they break them trying to use them * Returning the old parts they are replacing with the new parts they purchased * Returning parts they didn't check before purchasing and getting a full refund (including postage), by claiming the item wasn't as described * Claiming the parcel wasn't delivered, despite the courier company having a signature showing it was (one trick they use is to make sure the parcel is delivered to a neighbour) The worst part? There is no method to fight this. Neither eBay, the delivery companies or PayPal will take responsibility for the costs, despite claiming they do. It doesn't matter what evidence you submit (pictures, videos, third part testimony, etc), the result is the same. The "funny" part is that some items they refuse to deliver without insurance (which has to be with them) and then when you go to claim, it's not possible. The delivery companies are also great to deal with: * Parcels arrive broken despite adequate packaging (for example, somebody has run over the item with a fork lift) * Parcels get lost despite purchasing tracking - you phone them up and they have zero idea where the parcel went As somebody who gets parcels delivered, occasionally the delivery companies will deliver the item with some tape showing that it's broken. Their advice is not to accept the item, which only works when you're actually in - but then if you are, they refuse to send the item back anyway. This is because the delivery drivers only get paid for delivered items, so it's the end-courier that gets screwed. Anyway, my point is that somebody like Amazon who mostly acts as a trading platform these days and facilitates this crap that sellers have to put up with - I really don't feel sorry for them.

DanBC 7y ago
> * Claiming the parcel wasn't delivered, despite the courier company having a signature showing it was (one trick they use is to make sure the parcel is delivered to a neighbour) Watch out for this one though, some delivery companies are just terrible at locating the real address and will send the parcel anywhere.
- bArray 7y ago
  For sure. It seems to be particularly bad when the parcels go international and the courier companies don't communicate particularly well. Trying to keep things tracked when the parcel goes abroad is difficult (because you also have to deal with customers asking "where is my parcel now?").

RenRav 7y ago

Good on this guy. If you don't bother with or are just incapable of verifying returns, you shouldn't be selling anything. If a normal person tried running their business that way they would be ruined.

jpswade 7y ago

Reminded me of this guy who got rocks instead of a camera... https://youtu.be/DXPnOq-XJg8 https://youtu.be/DXPnOq-XJg8

mnm1 7y ago

Hilarious. The guy should be given a medal. He takes hundreds of thousands from Amazon and they don't close his account while regular people return or exchanges a few shitty, fake products and Amazon shuts then down stealing the prime fee. Now that's a scam. Amazon deserves this. It's pocket change for them, of course, but if I was the prosecutor I'd drop the charges. Why should Amazon get this projection when their customers get shafted when Amazon steals from them?