28 ms·

Amazon Warehouse scam: 16TB HDD swapped for 8TB, returned for full refund

387 points by ilamont 6y ago

vincenzow 6y ago
I recently bought a Nintendo Switch from Amazon (not a third party seller) only to open the box and find the switch itself missing. Baffled at how this slipped through.
- AnssiH 6y ago
  I guess the box looked unopened so the returns worker didn't look inside.
- nvahalik 6y ago
  Obviously, you stole the switch and are trying to game the system. /s
hknapp 6y ago
Probably more expensive to train some warehouse workers to analyze returns to the extent of plugging it into a computer and seeing the size than to just deal with this happening some time.
- elliekelly 6y ago
  I’m kind of surprised they’ll even take open-box returns of hard drives that aren’t defective. How do you know the drive is safe to use? It seems to me kind of like underwear: once you buy it, you keep it and in the unlikely event you need to return the item it goes right in the trash.
  - noja 6y ago
    Because the dirty secret is that "new" does not mean you are the first customer to open the item.
    - RandomBacon 6y ago
      When you return an item to Amazon, one of the reasons you can select in the dropdown menu is "received used item" (or something similar).
      - bentcorner 6y ago
        It's disappointing that this scam is so pervasive they added UI to handle it.
    - elliekelly 6y ago
      And for most items that’s not too big of a deal. A returned textbook or toaster can be re-sold after it’s been opened without much fear that it’s been tampered with but I’m not sure the same can be said for a hard drive. Or maybe it’s more like a bottle of medicine. Even if it’s exceedingly unlikely that it’s been tampered with I’m not going to risk it if the manufacturer’s seal is broken. It’s just not worth it.
      - QuercusMax 6y ago
        Textbooks are actually a bad example, now that an awful lot of them have one-time codes linked to online materials (homework, etc.). Sure, the contents of the book may not be "used up", but that doesn't mean it's necessarily "good-as-new".
- sokoloff 6y ago
  I bought an alternator for my wife's car. While replacing it, I discovered this: https://imgur.com/a/E53NxjE https://imgur.com/a/E53NxjE Prior customer bought, discovered the holes were machined incorrectly (part would not bolt up), clearly marked the part, returned it, and Amazon put it back on the shelf to send to the next buyer. With the car half torn apart, Amazon offered they could get me a replacement item in 8 calendar days. Yeah, that's not going to work, so I took it over to a milling machine and had it milled out to fit (first photo shows immediately after milling, second and third photo are before, third photo has the new part doweled to the old part to align one of the holes and show how far off the second hole is). Just like this case, Amazon A2Z was willing to accept the return and ship another one, but the real customer failure was during the previous return, not when I had the complaint. There's a customer satisfaction angle that "Earth's most customer centric company" should probably be considering here.
  - jschwartzi 6y ago
    Amazon hasn’t actually been a customer-centric company since they got big enough to run their own in-house delivery service.
  - WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
    If a customer has to physically punch a new hole in a product, I consider that a full refund without return :)
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      That’s what I’d have expected from 2010 Amazon. It’s not what I was offered by 2020 Amazon.
  - jld 6y ago
    I have had luck having Amazon credit me back part of the purchase price when I need to repair what they sent me. Their chat agents have refunded me 20-30% of purchase price for keeping defective items like yours.
    - 6y ago
- topspin 6y ago
  Here is my most recent Amazon returns story. I bought a $1200 commercial generator through Amazon. Delivered by truck about in about 10 days. It had several problems. Took it to the local authorized service center myself. They struggled with it for about a month. Ultimately they had me call the manufacturer for a replacement. I tried but the manufacturer sent me to Amazon for a refund. I did so and Amazon refunded the full purchase price immediately. The service center didn't care; they still had a defective generator on their hands and kept working on it with the manufacturer on my behalf despite the fact that I had gotten a full refund, which I made clear to them. Ultimately the manufacturer decided they wanted the unit returned for analysis by their engineers and drop shipped a replacement to me knowing perfectly well that I'd already received a refund. The replacement works perfectly. I got a $1200 commercial generator for 'free.' I'd have rather just had the working product in the first place, and I still feel like I've cheated somehow despite the fact that I was entirely above board with everyone.
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    The problem is that cases where you get lucky like this are in the minority. In the majority of cases, the inconvenience caused by a defective/counterfeit/missing product thwarts whatever compensation they give you after the fact.
sixhobbits 6y ago
The reply from Amazon's support Twitter is the indication of a far larger problem in most business. Namely, it's easier to deal with the consequences of "mistakes" than it is to not make them. e.g. - the "fines" Google and Facebook keep getting for breaking privacy and other laws which are laughably small. - customer support teams not dealing with serious customer issues until they get attention (viral tweet, front page HN etc) - monopolies in most forms: e.g. the big-tech anti-poaching agreements Generally I'm all for "it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission" but that assumes that you are acting in good faith but still sometimes screw up. It seems like "screwing up" has become a good way to ensure short-term profits and as everyone is obsessed with KPIs and OKRs at a 1-week to 3-month time frame, the incentives are all wrong. And "mission statements" and "cultural values" are too synthetic to come close to fixing this.
- aboringusername 6y ago
  I honestly don't think any country in the world actually cares about monopolies or the abuses by these companies. Apple no longer has to pay a fine the EU gave them. The same will likely happen to the 2 billion+ fines they gave Google. So far, no amount of fines, or laws, has actually changed anything as far as Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google or Microsoft are concerned. They're still in dominant positions, where AI or computer made decisions can devastate the "little guys" like being wiped off Google (or the play store removing your app), or the horror stories of businesses on Amazon. Truth is, they're too big, and at this point, can't be stopped. Laws won't work, fines won't work. They haven't so far, and I doubt they will in the future.
  - AnssiH 6y ago
    > So far, no amount of fines, or laws, has actually changed anything as far as Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google or Microsoft are concerned. That seems like hyperbole. E.g. all the three big EU-Google anti-trust cases (Shopping, AdSense, Android) resulted in Google changing their practices on the issues in question. (Shopping, Android: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google, AdSense: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_19_1770 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_19_...)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
seancoleman 6y ago
This reminds me of how a friend (as a teenager in the 90s) would buy expensive video cards from Best Buy and CompUSA only to swap them out with cheap cards off eBay, re-shrink wrap the box and return for a hefty profit. I thought it was a clever, profitable hack at 16 years old but now I’m ashamed I didn’t just call this what it was: theft.
- gruez 6y ago
  >now I’m ashamed I didn’t just call this what it was: theft. Isn't it technically fraud?
  - stronglikedan 6y ago
    It's technically both - theft by defrauding.
  - paulryanrogers 6y ago
    Possibly both theft and fraud
  - DanBC 6y ago
    Theft: dishonestly appropriating something, with the intent of permanently depriving the owner. He dishonestly took the item. He had no intent of giving it back.
- inetknght 6y ago
  My father was a victim to that type of fraud.
- fortran77 6y ago
  You could write a check to Best Buy (have it delivered via an attorney to protect your identity) and make good on your theft. It's too late for CompUSA--you already put them out of business.
  - stronglikedan 6y ago
    > your theft > you already It was their friend, not them.
gempir 6y ago
It's cheaper to just accept returns instead of checking every product for complete function. And I think it's acceptable considering how easy returns are with Amazon.
- somehnguy 6y ago
  I don't think its acceptable at all. An easy return doesn't fix having to wait an additional at least a few days before you actually get what you paid for. That is just basically accepting that Amazon is completely unreliable for anything even remotely time sensitive, despite what made them huge in the first place - extremely fast delivery.
pwg 6y ago
Why the surprise here. This "scam" (or theft) is as old as stores taking "no questions asked" returns. I knew someone who did this a time or two back in the mid-90's to Circuit City and/or CompUSA. I warned them that this could be traced back to them if the stores became interested enough to do so, that did not deter them much.
- nvahalik 6y ago
  Yeah, back in the days when tech didn't move so fast, it wasn't uncommon for some of the circle I moved in to go grab a 160G drive from Best Buy and swap out a 20/40G drive that had died and claim it didn't work out of the box. Free upgrade! Same scam, different day.
- diehunde 6y ago
  I wonder what the consequences can be for doing this. Just pay full price or also face legal actions.
  - sukilot 6y ago
    It depends on how much the local DA wants to nail you. It's definitely criminal behavior, some kind of theft or fraud
arm85 6y ago
A similar thing has happened to me in the past. Brought a phone dock from amazon, and when it arrived, it didn't fit my phone, looking at the serial number on the dock itself, it was for the previous model of phone but the packaging was for the latest. So someone had decided to upgrade for free.
akerro 6y ago
There is a post about it every week on /r/datahoarder
disiplus 6y ago
why would they swap in a 8 tb one thah still has value and not a idk 500g one and profit more ?
- pwinnski 6y ago
  I have a NAS that holds four drives. If I upgrade 8TB drives for 16TB drives, I would have no further use for the 8TB drives. I also don't have half-TB drives lying around.
  - disiplus 6y ago
    sure, but if you are a scammer then selling the 8T for at least 100$ and picking one for basically free would net you more profit. maybe it was somebody that did not think he does something wrong because "amazon is big and will eat the cost"
    - netsharc 6y ago
      Huh, honestly it'd be "cleverer" to find a broken drive (that the OS wouln't even detect) and swap it into the enclosure. Then the thief can say it was defective, or the next buyer would, and there would be less of a chance of an investigation/change of policy.
    - pwinnski 6y ago
      Agreed, a dedicated scammer probably has many options. I suspect this was just some person upgrading a drive, probably not a dedicate scammer.
mattlondon 6y ago
I recall seeing youtube videos about people who purchased pallets of returned items from Amazon. Kind of an "unboxing" video for a huge stack of returned items. Yes I was bored. They had a few similar scenarios where people had clearly purchased expensive computer components like motherboards etc and then returned the box with some worthless motherboard in there instead of the expensive one. You can imagine some poor Amazon warehouse worker receiving the package, opening it up and seeing the motherboard "yup - looks like some computer gubbins. approved." and off it goes. The video people seemed to react like this was quite a common occurrence. So this makes me wonder, if amazon are bundling-up returned items into pallets and selling them in bulk, how did clearly returned items get sold back to an end user? Frankly I am amazed the scammer went to the effort of putting in a 8TB device and connecting it, rather than either returning it empty or with some random old IDE drive in it as a decoy.
- AnssiH 6y ago
  > So this makes me wonder, if amazon are bundling-up returned items into pallets and selling them in bulk, how did clearly returned items get sold back to an end user? If the item is (looks) unopened and pristine, Amazon will usually sell it again as new. Some switcharoos are caught, some are not.
  - adrr 6y ago
    They could catch it multiples ways. Simple precise weight measurement would catch basic scammers. They could X-ray the package and use cv to determine if the contents have been modified or not.
    - qppo 6y ago
      Why automate? Pay someone to open the box and check.
      - skylanh 6y ago
        Cost of multiple shifts at multiple locations + cost of implementing verification process + cost of security and oversight + cost of extra inventory loss due to employee theft vs Cost of negative image (deferred via simple returns) + cost of inventory loss duo to fraud + cost of inventory loss due to employees It's simpler to simply eat the cost of abuse.
zimbatm 6y ago
Pro tip: don't bother with Amazon France, order from the UK. For some reason, all the non-consumables that I ordered in France were re-furbished items sold as new. In contrast, the UK has always been stellar. Once Brexit hits, I will stop using Amazon altogether.
- Asuchug4 6y ago
  Does it matter at all? Won't the item be shipped from closest amazon warehouse regardless of site used?
  - teh_klev 6y ago
    Due to Brexit this is changing: https://tamebay.com/2020/07/amazon-fba-brexit-bombshell-efn-and-pan-european-fba-ends-for-uk.html https://tamebay.com/2020/07/amazon-fba-brexit-bombshell-efn-... Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23888510 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23888510
- alibert 6y ago
  Anecdotal but my current experience is the opposite. Just some weeks ago, I bought a dumb phone (new and sold by Amazon FR) on the Amazon FR website and it was sent by a fulfillment center in UK. The phone I received was opened, missing earbuds and was the Middle East version with the wrong keypad.
bredren 6y ago
This happened to me buying a Yamaha MG06 Compact Stereo Mixer from Amazon Warehouse. The one I received had clear indications that it had been in use for a long time, dust grime and wear—-it was gross. In this case it appeared the person returned the same model for a new one. It was a good trick that Amazon resolved without feedback on my pointing this out when I returned it. I bought it brand new after that. Previous to this, I had ordered something else from amazon warehouse, again a “like new” item for a steep discount and it was as described. A great deal.
Log1x 6y ago
I semi-recently bought a Samsung 970 EVO from Amazon, except new (and not from a third-party seller). Instead I received a security blanket: https://i.imgur.com/DTPdhAn.jpg https://i.imgur.com/DTPdhAn.jpg The SSD box was seemingly factory sealed. I also bought a Dyson fan recently and what came was an obviously used, yellow stained, disgustingly old model of a Dyson fan. I hopped on Live Chat, they apologized, initiated a return - few weeks later I get a semi-threatening email from Amazon telling me that the Dyson fan I sent back "wasn't sent back in its original condition" - I hopped on Live Chat and made sure everything was ok with my account (it was) - but still, ..wtf. this is a problem.
- AnssiH 6y ago
  My guess: The chat agent selected an incorrect reason for the return, causing Amazon to expect the actual item back. Whenever possible, I always initiate the return myself to avoid customer service messing things up (there is a specific return reason "received incorrect item" in the dropdown).
- paulcole 6y ago
  Similarly I had to get a refund on a 10-pack of items when I only received a 5-pack. Months later I get an email saying I didn't return all 10 that I had ordered. No shit, that was the problem!
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    I once ordered a rail of Atmel Microcontrollers from Digikey. Got four 74HC00's. Called them, sent them back. And then Digikey sent the $28 bill to collections. I complained and they politely told me to fuck off.
- stygiansonic 6y ago
  There are scammers who will buy the item, open the shrink wrap and remove the item before rewrapping it to make it look like they never opened it. This becomes more difficult if there are security seals. See: https://lawyerrant.wordpress.com/favorite-scams/the-empty-box-return/ https://lawyerrant.wordpress.com/favorite-scams/the-empty-bo...
eugenekolo 6y ago
Welcome to Amazon shopping for the past 5 or so years. Everything is fakes, used goods marked as new, and low quality goods with 4.7+ stars from fake reviews. The convenience is so nice, yet about 50% of the time I'm disappointed with any purchase made on Amazon.com. But, those stock profits :heart_eyes_emoji:.
zaroth 6y ago
“Amazon Warehouse“, for those not familiar with it, is an option you can select specifically to buy an item that was previously returned. Amazon has done a cosmetic inspection of the item and gives it a ranking on how it appears which you see when you are buying it. There are certain types of items where you can save a huge amount of money and get great deals using Amazon Warehouse. Hard drives are obviously not one of them due to the assumption that everything is returned for a reason. An example of a type of item that I’ve always had good luck with is pots and pans. The interesting thing about this is assume that the tracking is in place to identify who returned the original item. What would you do? Maybe the actual scam (I don’t mean in this specific case) is buying perfectly good Amazon Warehouse items but, knowing that they had been previously returned, claiming the item was swapped out after swapping it out yourself. So Amazon can’t really know who to blame from a single incident. But certainly I would expect accounts would accumulate warning flags and at some point be banned.
- vinhboy 6y ago
  I feel like this needs to be the top comment. Buying warehouse items is risky, that's why it's cheaper. Also, you can just return it if you don't like. I don't think this deserves the scrutiny it's getting here.
  - amiantos 6y ago
    Outrage drives clicks... link has been up for 5 hours and is on the front page of HN, while other links with (probably) more worthwhile content stagnate and die. It's just how the internet works.
  - paradoja 6y ago
    I'd think that it's cheaper not because it's risky (specially since Amazon says it inspects the item), but because it's second hand. Trying to pass the risk to the user is probably not what most people would expect.
  - skinnymuch 6y ago
    You can return things if you don’t like them. A quick search shows the excuses you can give that not only allow you to return them, but get free return shipping too.
dhosek 6y ago
This is a consequence of amazon being too big to care. They aren't doing the most basic check to verify that what's in the box is what the outside of the box claims it is. Some years ago, I bought two identical routers from Best Buy and then decided I didn't need the second so I went to return it. I put it in the wrong box. Best Buy refused the return because the serial number on the router didn't match the serial number on the box. The whole concept of Amazon is fundamentally flawed. I've gotten too much counterfeit stuff and junk to ever trust them again.
- libertine 6y ago
  Oh and it's even easier when they make the seller pay for their fuck ups and for fraud - it's peanuts for Amazon :)
- sukilot 6y ago
  It's a consequence of consumers being so voraciously consumerist that they buy things they don't need so it doesn't matter if they get what they ordered.
5bolts 6y ago
have a former friend that would do a brick and mortar version of this... even went so far as to buy a shrink wrap machine. buy an external drive, take it home and remove the drive.. fill case with rocks or wood or something to add mass.. put it back in the box, shrink wrap it and have his wife return it.. doing a slight upgrade to the next size up. repeat a couple of times.. then get full refund. he'd even end up with his own crap filled drives once in a while..
- acwan93 6y ago
  Reminds me of how someone went to Target to buy an iPod for her daughter, found it full of rocks and exchanged it after getting her refund rejected, only for a replacement iPod from another Target to also be filled with rocks. https://www.engadget.com/2007-10-09-birthday-girl-gets-two-rock-filled-ipod-boxes.html https://www.engadget.com/2007-10-09-birthday-girl-gets-two-r...
raincom 6y ago
That's why Fry's Electronics--a bay area retailer--scans the serial numbers of hard drives, DIMM memory and other electronic stuff. During the return process, Fry's employees check the serial number of the returned item against what's there in the receipt. This strategy was born precisely because of the scam that Amazon is seeing now.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  But here an internal component was swapped. The serial number on the product was unchanged. I've never seen a receipt list any serial number, let alone serial numbers of multiple internal components.
  - raincom 6y ago
    At least Fry's electronics used to TEST memory sticks, motherboards, CPUs in front of customers during the return process. I knew cases where customers tried to return CPUs with bent pins, and their returns were denied. IIRC, Fry's did not test hard disks, except to match the serial numbers. So, now this scam requires testing of hard drives of their capacity during the return process. And this is a cat-and-mouse game.
    - dawnerd 6y ago
      I feel like the testing was more of a way to 1. try to avoid the return by proving it worked and 2. put it right back out on the shelf for sell. Actually picked up some good deals in the good days of Frys from returns. It's a shame they're nothing more than an as seen on tv store these days.
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        There's basically no way to stop a consumer returning something, no matter what state they got it in or what state it's in now. Any discussion about how it was when it was sold is their word against yours. Ultimately they can just charge-back. Short of taking them to court, what are you going to do about that? It's important for consumer rights though.
jasonv 6y ago
I have a new Lenovo laptop, purchased on Amazon directly from Lenovo, arriving on Tuesday. I intend to unbox the laptop and record it on my GoPro. Seems silly, but...
- FalconSensei 6y ago
  After this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23941572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23941572) I always record. I had no problem to return and didn't need to prove that it arrived cracked but... better safe than sorry
  - somehnguy 6y ago
    I learned my lesson with TVs on Amazon a few years ago too. There were a couple reviews noting cracked screens, thought it was probably just rare bad luck. Bought the TV, it arrived cracked. Had Amazon schedule a UPS pickup for return and bought the TV locally. Poor packaging for TVs on Amazon just seems to be normal.
- JoshTriplett 6y ago
  If you're going to buy a Lenovo laptop from Lenovo, why not buy it directly from Lenovo? You'll get free shipping either way. Shipping speed, or something else?
  - kingnothing 6y ago
    5% cash back by using an Amazon store card is one reason.
    - jasonv 6y ago
      This, yes.
- Zancarius 6y ago
  I don't see why anyone would think that's silly[1]. TBH, I'm tempted to record all of my unboxings at this point, at least for more valuable items... ...especially after reading some of the experiences here. [1] Okay, so someone could argue it was staged, but there's a point in time where you can't "prove" something any further without disproportionate costs to your time or finances.
Zelphyr 6y ago
I had this exact thing happen with the purchase of a Nest Protect from Amazon. Nest packaging complete with "Inspected" sticker on the box and a First Alert detector inside. I no longer shop at Amazon.
tsyd 6y ago
It happened to me when I bought a new motherboard from Amazon (shipped and sold by Amazon, not Amazon Warehouse nor fulfilled by Amazon). I opened the motherboard box and inside was a 10-year old motherboard. I knew this was a possibility when buying from Amazon Warehouse but didn't expect it when buying new directly from Amazon.
- FalconSensei 6y ago
  A year ago I bought a TV (same as you: directly from Amazon). It came with the screen cracked. I asked for a new one... The replacement came cracked. On the reviews, I saw a couple people mentioning that the screen came cracked. They wanted me to send them back by Canada Post, but I said no way I would do that, as I don't drive, and I would not carry 2 55" TVs on the streets. They ended up paying for purolator to pick them up at my place. I asked for a refund and bought on Best Buy. No problems!
- DavidPeiffer 6y ago
  The way Amazon runs things is completely inexcusable. If you can't order directly from Amazon and get a non-fraudulent product, then the whole platform is basically going to a flea market, having all the vendors turn their backs, shuffling product amongst the vendors, and sending normal citizens through to buy what they want. Any traceability and trust the end consumer would have is gone. Amazon may be able to trace a particular product to a vendor, but that's of no help to a consumer wanting a consistent supply of goods. Amazon also doesn't show if a vendor chooses to opt out of comingled inventory, which would go a long way towards helping end consumer trust.
aimor 6y ago
I once bought a lawnmower where someone had swapped it out with a lower-end model. That was from Lowe's. I'd like to know what action companies take against this type of theft, it seems trivial to identify the culprit but maybe difficult to prove anything and probably expensive.
- grishka 6y ago
  Oh so that's why where I'm from most stores require an ID to return something.
- remus 6y ago
  Unless there's some sort of large scale, organised fraud occurring, or it is so hugely prevalent as to be affecting the bottom line then I'd be very surprised if any action was taken. If you think about the amount of time and effort involved (legal counsel is expensive) then it's not worth it.
laurentdc 6y ago
I've ordered three Xbox Play and Charge kits from Amazon, two were blatantly counterfeit (came in a plastic bag, scratched and with no markings, I don't believe it's "OEM"), the other was genuine but with batteries manufactured four years before and pretty much DOA (probably used and sent back by someone?) I had to order from Microsoft directly to get an acceptable product.
netsharc 6y ago
Gavin Free of the Slow-Mo Guys talked on a podcast how he got 2 cans of Dr. Pepper instead of a dremel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-LRgWpyMEI&t=29s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-LRgWpyMEI&t=29s I wonder what else could "black hats" do with this "exploit". Buy laptops, install malware, return them? The higher-end the laptop, the higher the chances are the next buyer will be rich, and that seems like an interesting way to access someone's bank account.
mNovak 6y ago
I think what a lot of people are missing in the comments when they say "I bought <product> from <brand> not a third party..." is that for new products the 'seller name' you're buying from does not correspond to which box you get off the shelf. It's called co-mingled inventory--Amazon doesn't track which box you (as seller) sent them, they just throw it on the shelf with all the other "new" same product boxes. Obvious fraud is at least somewhat Amazon's problem since it gets returned, but the huge problem for the name-brand vendors is all the support requests / bad reviews they get when people get counterfeit crap, thinking they bought from <brand> directly.
- viggity 6y ago
  IIRC, if you're a seller, you have to pay extra to not have your goods co-mingled with the "same" product from other companies. It would appear that seagate didn't do that.
  - bdowling 6y ago
    > if you're a seller, you have to pay extra to not have your goods co-mingled It would be great if Amazon passed that information on to the purchaser. It might even justify paying a higher price to buy from a non-comingled vendor because it would indicate increased accountability.
- LeoPanthera 6y ago
  While true, this does not apply in this case, "Warehouse" (=re-sold returned goods) inventory is not comingled.
js2 6y ago
I recently purchased a open box Apple Pencil from BestBuy. When I got it, it didn’t work. I realized the pencil s/n didn’t match the box and looked up the manufacture date. It was several years old and the battery must’ve been shot. Someone had bought a new pencil and used the box to return their old pencil and BestBuy must not have checked. BestBuy gave me a new one, no hassle. But then crazily enough, the brand new Apple Pencil didn’t work either. Bad luck! They were out of stock at that point so they just gave me a refund. Anyway, I know this is a risk with open box. A friend just purchased a brand new Garmin Fenix via Amazon. When she opened the Garmin box, nothing was inside! Amazon refunded her. She purchased it from REI instead.
killion 6y ago
I’ve had this happen to me multiple times with Apple keyboards and mice for the office. They are listed as brand new and sold by Amazon. But they are clearly used when you open the box.
gibba999 6y ago
I shopped on Amazon for many years. I never had problems until around the time of COVID19. It seems to be a cesspool of scammers and conartists now. Amazon doesn't do much of anything about it either. I'm out a couple hundred bucks. I'm kind of annoyed. I need a reliable place to order stuff. Aliexpress and eBay seem ahead of Amazon now. That's bad. My favorite scam: Futures. Sellers will sell low-availability things at (slightly) inflated prices and long ship times. If prices go down, you get the product. If prices go up, they refund you. It's too complex for Amazon minimum wage drones to understand why this is a scam, so you can't do anything about it. Amazon wouldn't refund my Prime, which renewed around the time of COVID19, and which hasn't really worked. That's turning into a scam too.
- JKCalhoun 6y ago
  > Aliexpress and eBay seem ahead of Amazon now. Wow, that is bad.
- tehlike 6y ago
  File a dispute with your bank.
  - kube-system 6y ago
    If you do that, you'll never have to worry about getting scammed at Amazon again, since they'll probably close your account.
    - tehlike 6y ago
      "Amazon wouldn't refund my Prime" -> I assumed this was to close account :) And i believe they wouldn't close the account.
      - kube-system 6y ago
        Why would you assume that? A prime subscription is not a requirement for an Amazon account. It seems to me they were saying that they didn't want to pay for expedited shipping if Amazon couldn't provide expedited shipping. And it is fairly common for online retailers to ban accounts that do charge-backs. Amazon will ban people for having too many returns.
yalogin 6y ago
I don't know how best buy our other brick and mortar stores deal with this kind of scams. Unless they actually hook it up and check for that kind of scam its tough. In that sense its not a uniquely Amazon issue. At Amazon's scale though it gets exaggerated and also because of that scale they can ignore it and keep replacing items for their customers. The process to check each and every item for scams might be too costly. Its a fascinating study nonetheless and it will be great to get some real insight from people working on these issues.
- sn_master 6y ago
  You can just drive back and hand it to them and get a new one or a refund in just an hour or so. Not so easy with Amazon.
linkmotif 6y ago
If you're going to swap the drive, why not swap in a 4tb, or a 2tb, or a 500mb?
dnissley 6y ago
Just had something similar happen to myself a couple months ago -- bought some good condition used Galaxy Buds Plus (released 2020) sold by Amazon, received Galaxy Buds (Non-Plus, released 2019) inside Galaxy Buds Plus packaging. I had zero problem returning the item and getting a full refund, but I do wonder if the person who did this got away with it.
bcrosby95 6y ago
I just plain don't buy electronics on Amazon. I've rarely had it go well. It's usually something - anywhere from something like this, to paying full price for something that was obviously previously opened.
- t0mbstone 6y ago
  I don't understand who all these people are who are having bad experiences with Amazon. I only ever buy products that have the Prime label and have plenty of verified positive reviews. Stuff always arrives very quickly (often the next day), and I have literally never had a fake product mailed to me when I do this. One time I bought a used product from Amazon and it was a little beat up but it still worked. Another time I bought something that was clearly manufactured and sold from China, and sure enough it sucked, but I just returned it and it was no big deal.
  - sneak 6y ago
    > I have literally never had a fake product mailed to me when I do this. It's possible you're not buying commonly-faked items, or possibly it happened and you just didn't notice. Lots of fakes are of similar reliability for the first 20-50% of normal lifespan.
Havoc 6y ago
I've had this happen with a graphics card. Bought a 2070. Got a 2060 in scruffy packaging. To add insult to injury I sent it back and doesn't seem to have arrived yet and/or covid ate it. 5 fuckin months later it's still: >Your refund will be processed when we receive your item.
- bentcorner 6y ago
  Curiously enough I encountered the inverse problem the other day. I received a refund for an item sitting on my desk. I purchased it, received it, and did not request any refund at all. I called Amazon about it and they said to let the refund go through and they sent me an email I could reply to when I was ready to be re-charged. Extremely odd, and I was worried there was some scam I was missing. Amazon rep said the returns department made a mistake somehow. I imagine there's probably someone that returned the same item I bought and they're still waiting for their refund. :-/
lobo_tuerto 6y ago
In Mexico most of the times you'll get a previously opened and returned package. Which in turn would usually return myself and ask for a new package (happened with an AIO cooler unit which even had the thermal paste applied on it... Or the items won't work as expected which has happened to me with laptops and tablets. The only good thing is there is no problem returning the used / bad stuff. But you lose time and the discount price.
Waterluvian 6y ago
I need to buy 15 16GB SD cards for a high school robotics team for Raspberry Pis that are guaranteed to be shutdown improperly and bumped around a lot. I balked at Amazon. I just don’t know how to trust their stuff anymore. Left having no idea where to get a sensible price.
- Mindless2112 6y ago
  Depending on what brand you want, they're as cheap as $5 on B&H: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?q=sd%20card&filters=fct_capacity_568%3A16gb https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?q=sd%20card&filters=fc...
  - Waterluvian 6y ago
    Wow $5. That’s by far the best I’ve found for a brand name I recognize. Purchased. Thank you from me and the students. Even worth it with the import duty fees to Canada.
- yobert 6y ago
  Newegg! Usually it's pretty close to competitive with Amazon for electronics.
  - Waterluvian 6y ago
    I have no idea why newegg didn’t cross my mind. I guess because I’m not buying desktop computer parts. Thank you.
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
This was a big reason that I stopped buying stuff from best Buy. I would buy some peripheral or appliance, get home, open the box, and see a dirty, stained, clearly broken device. They were always very good about refunding, but they treated my wasted time as if it were nothing. This has not [yet] happened to me with Amazon, for new devices, but it did happen once with a used "New condition" peripheral (what arrived was broken, dirty, and packed with toilet paper and rolled up newspapers). The third-party vendor jerked me around so much, I had to use Amazon's A-Z guarantee. I tend to use Costco for home appliances, these days, and my expensive kit from manufacturers.
redm 6y ago
This is why retailers are starting to get drivers licenses to complete a return; its much harder to scam if you cant do it anonymously.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  I doubt this will do much. They would still need to actually investigate the issues which they already don't do. Online banks nowadays do ID verification with passports, etc and yet very basic fraud committed intentionally by the account holder is still happening because the truth is even though the information to identify the perpetrator is there nobody can be bothered enough to act on it.
sn_master 6y ago
Got a Motorola phone, same-day shipping from the US, and actually got it just few hours later. Phone screen broke. Contacted Motorola for support, they said the phone IMEI is from India and can't be serviced in the US under warranty, I have to ship it to India if I want it fixed by them :/
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- manquer 6y ago
  I am surprised at this , for a long time the reverse use to happen . Also it is usually not coz the IMEI, it is because each model has sub geo variants depending on the spectrum they are allowed to use in those regions etc. Cross region variants other region decline to service . It is not just Moto, Apple does the same .
  - sn_master 6y ago
    I think the Indian one was cheaper, so they probably bought a big batch then sold it in the US for more expensive US prices. Indian model also had dual-SIM, which US phones generally don't have.
_nickwhite 6y ago
This reminds me of the time I bought a high-end GTX video card at Best Buy... only to find a bottle of shampoo inside. These types of return scams happen all the time.
davestephens 6y ago
A close friend has a very similar thing recently, except it was/should have been a new Ryzen 3700x, not a warehouse deal. If you've bought one you'll know it comes in a box with a big cooler on top, and the proc is at the bottom in a bit of plastic packing. He got the big cooler but no Ryzen. Contacted Amazon, got another Ryzen and cooler sent out. I think this is incredibly common...
neuralRiot 6y ago
The real scam is from Amazon, selling store return items as brand new.
kirillzubovsky 6y ago
I am glad to have read this thread. A few of the issues mentioned in comments have happened to me in the last year, but I just wrote it off as one-off scamming, did not realize it's systemic and sophisticated.
all_blue_chucks 6y ago
What does this have to do with Amazon? Return scams have been around for as long as returns.
TD-Linux 6y ago
Someone did this scam even at a local Best Buy. When I returned it, they unpack it and scan the barcode on the case, but of course not on the actual HDD. (the person doing the scam didn't even do a good job, and broke some of the plastic clips in the process)
Rudism 6y ago
Way back when I was in high school, it became a fad among the tech-geeks to have our TI-85 graphing calculators modded with a "turbo" switch that would let you run some games like Wolfenstein and Tetris at better speeds. It involved cutting a hole in the back plastic casing inside the battery compartment to make room for the switch, and then soldering a few connections on the board underneath. There was one kid who was doing it for everyone at $20 a pop, but he made no guarantees about not accidentally bricking the calculator in the process. I was a little apprehensive about having him do it since TI calculators were (and still are) ridiculously expensive, and asked him what his success rate was. He told me it didn't really matter because even if he accidentally screwed up, all you had to do was go buy a new TI-85 from Future Shop (which was like a Canadian version of Best Buy before they were actually bought by Best Buy), put the broken calculator in the box, and then return it the next day for a full refund. He would then mod the new one for no additional charge. My turbo switch was installed fine so I didn't have to pull the scam, but I knew a few kids who did.
lubujackson 6y ago
I bought a new kid's book from Amazon. A child had written their name inside the cover.
Orphis 6y ago
A long time ago, I bought Half-Life 1 in a regular store. I tried to play with a friend online but it said my CD-key was already being used. Turned out my friend had bought the game, came without a CD-key printed on the box, so the store opened a random box and gave him that CD-key. I bought that exact same box. In the end, my friend sent a picture of the box to Valve and got a fresh CD-key, and we could finally play together.
unexaminedlife 6y ago
I learned many years ago that auto theft is almost 100% committed by a very tiny fraction of the overall population. Probably same phenomenon here. Small # of people doing this. I'm hopeful Amazon does not go easy on these people. The numbers are likely in their favor even if they decided to take every single one of those cases to court.
kveykva 6y ago
I had assumed this was common knowledge that this occurred. We used to experience returns like this all of the time that Amazon would accept up-front before acceptance by our warehouse. >$200 chargers returned in original boxes containing $10 chargers. There have been other stories of iphone boxes full of playdough or just anything that would weight roughly the same. I wouldn't be surprised if there are other 3rd party fulfillment providers that rather than dealing with having had this pushed on them by Amazon, they just put that return back on the shelf and they get shipped out to other customers.
- aimor 6y ago
  What did you do when you get such a return, and what would Amazon do?
jonplackett 6y ago
Curious what countries this is happening in? I’m in the Uk and never had these problems despite being a fairly prolific Amazon user.
- tiernano 6y ago
  I buy a lot of stuff from amazon and only on 1 occasion did something like this happen. Bought a 16Gb DDR4 SODIMM, mind you from the warehouse deals (half price!) and a 4Gb module arrived. Opened a case with Amazon and they sent me a second one, but this time the correct size...
rotterdamdev 6y ago
Stop buying from amazon.
projproj 6y ago
What are your favorite alternatives to Amazon? E.g., I go to monoprice for cables. Are there other niche options that you like for different products where you can expect quality?
Schnitz 6y ago
This is standard practice at Amazon and it's very annoying. Even defective items just get sent out until someone doesn't return them and items that were clearly used get sold again as new without even being cleaned.
cft 6y ago
Amazon has become very difficult. I end up using ebay more and more: sellers there are small businesses and they bear more responsibility. It feels more decentralized. Longer shipping, but cheaper and more reliable.
- sneak 6y ago
  WAY cheaper! I used to default to Amazon for everything. So many things that Amazon charges $10-15 for (with free shipping, of course) can be had for $5 with $0-$3 shipping on eBay. I've saved tons over the last couple years.
timsneath 6y ago
Even in the best case where you get something that is superficially what you ordered, you have a sneaking feeling that you're getting something counterfeit: https://twitter.com/timsneath/status/1286821682968051712 https://twitter.com/timsneath/status/1286821682968051712 It's frustrating when you have to treat every transaction as if you're buying from a flea market.
dilandau 6y ago
Another outrage dump where prime members and AWS customers vent their spleen on the teat that nourishes their lives. It's a frail rebellion. A piece of performance art. Experimental theatre
makecheck 6y ago
Reminds me of scrolls with the “king’s seal”...we might need to start demanding more than fancy shrink-wrap to ensure that something is actually in factory packaging. I think an interesting way to do it would be to have slightly stronger plastic wrap that can be “dented” in several places similar to a UPC pattern, that in turn can be scanned by a phone for authenticity. (This could be done both by warehouses prior to agreeing to stock something, and by consumers to verify what they get.) Scammers might eventually figure it out but at least they’d need to recreate a complex dent pattern after shrink-wrapping, and they would need to be able to do it for each unique company they’re claiming to be.
bravoetch 6y ago
This is not a scam unique to Amazon. It happens everywhere, and has for decades at least. A more insidious version attacks eBay sellers. The buyer will send an item back broken and ask for a refund, meanwhile keeping the good verse;n you sent them. Take serial numbers, secretly hide marks and photograph them before sending anything.
- etats 6y ago
  But do you do with that serial number mismatch and 'missing secret marks' evidence? A seller could easily fudge that "proof" and eBay/Amazon aren't big on taking sellers at their word. There's no fool-proof way to collect evidence of return fraud and there isn't much you can do once you have that evidence.
GorsyGentle 6y ago
Bought an Intel CPU, got an "Intel" box that was full of Chinese playing cards. Amazon rep insisted it was "just a mistake", my ass. It's fraud. https://imgur.com/a/P05mh4j https://imgur.com/a/P05mh4j edit: Intel product, Sold by Amazon. None of that third-party stuff warehouse stuff here.
jsgo 6y ago
Had a similar issue with Best Buy: ordered a 10TB HDD (quite a few) and inside was a 250GB HDD. To be fair, they were champs and replaced it with another unit, but unfortunately there are people who do this and then they don’t validate it. The HDD was also an absurdly old one too.
mike503 6y ago
Isn’t that what was called pulling a “scamazon” on Shameless? I haven’t had this happen with Amazon (but I know they’d make it right) I did just have it happen with an order from a sketchy web front obviously shipping out of China. I knew it was risky but I used PayPal, which I’ve used in the past and used their buyer guarantee. This time the dispute is lagging (maybe COVID-related staffing issues) but I see many reports on their forums of it happening and claims being closed without resolution, requiring a ton of extra work to escalate and find someone who can help, etc. I was supposed to receive $65 of cleaning products, but wound up with a cheap small pair of socks (lightweight and easy to ship. Even the customs declaration says “socks” on it) However according to USPS the package was delivered. So a quick review looks like they fulfilled their obligation. I’m hoping I get a chance to send in pictures showing what I got obviously not matching the order (which conveniently wasn’t line itemed in PayPal, so hopefully they will accept my email showing the actual items...)
rju 6y ago
"But certainly I would expect accounts would accumulate warning flags and at some point be banned."
jasnk 6y ago
Sounds about right. I have had overall VERY GOOD Amazon Warehouse experiences, but I have also had TWO VERY TERRIBLE Amazon Warehouse experiences with two separate products that could have been avoided if items were actually "Inspected"... Hue Outdoor Motion Sensors (May 2019) -- Several sensors in my first order had obvious water damage outside packaging and MOLD inside packaging. Just looking at packages during "Inspection" would have prevented this. Requested replacements. Received MORE water damage and MOLD. Repeat several times until finally received NON-MOLD items or for refund. GE Smart Light Switch, Smart Fan Switch (Feb 2020) -- Ordered several of each, kept receiving wrong model (e.g. ZigBee instead of ZWave Plus, or ZWave instead of ZWave plus) as if prior customer gave up on large project and randomly threw products back into whatever boxes. Comparing product number on item to product number on box during "Inspection" would have prevented this! Kept requesting replacements, kept receiving wrong items. Finally returned items for a refund. Amazon CS did finally issue full refund, but had trouble unraveling the mess on their end because so many items were in play.
ents 6y ago
I bought a 240hz monitor from AWH and there was a 144hz one in the box. Sad times to set that all up and see that someone got a free upgrade.
benguild 6y ago
Yeah the return fraud is also a problem for third-party Amazon sellers. Buyers can essentially destroy the item and return it claiming warehouse damage, and then Amazon won’t always take responsibility even if it was sent to FBA near perfect or new.

387 points by ilamont 6y ago

I recently bought a Nintendo Switch from Amazon (not a third party seller) only to open the box and find the switch itself missing. Baffled at how this slipped through.

AnssiH 6y ago
I guess the box looked unopened so the returns worker didn't look inside.
nvahalik 6y ago
Obviously, you stole the switch and are trying to game the system. /s

hknapp 6y ago

Probably more expensive to train some warehouse workers to analyze returns to the extent of plugging it into a computer and seeing the size than to just deal with this happening some time.

elliekelly 6y ago
I’m kind of surprised they’ll even take open-box returns of hard drives that aren’t defective. How do you know the drive is safe to use? It seems to me kind of like underwear: once you buy it, you keep it and in the unlikely event you need to return the item it goes right in the trash.
- noja 6y ago
  Because the dirty secret is that "new" does not mean you are the first customer to open the item.
  - RandomBacon 6y ago
    When you return an item to Amazon, one of the reasons you can select in the dropdown menu is "received used item" (or something similar).
    - bentcorner 6y ago
      It's disappointing that this scam is so pervasive they added UI to handle it.
  - elliekelly 6y ago
    And for most items that’s not too big of a deal. A returned textbook or toaster can be re-sold after it’s been opened without much fear that it’s been tampered with but I’m not sure the same can be said for a hard drive. Or maybe it’s more like a bottle of medicine. Even if it’s exceedingly unlikely that it’s been tampered with I’m not going to risk it if the manufacturer’s seal is broken. It’s just not worth it.
    - QuercusMax 6y ago
      Textbooks are actually a bad example, now that an awful lot of them have one-time codes linked to online materials (homework, etc.). Sure, the contents of the book may not be "used up", but that doesn't mean it's necessarily "good-as-new".
sokoloff 6y ago
I bought an alternator for my wife's car. While replacing it, I discovered this: https://imgur.com/a/E53NxjE https://imgur.com/a/E53NxjE Prior customer bought, discovered the holes were machined incorrectly (part would not bolt up), clearly marked the part, returned it, and Amazon put it back on the shelf to send to the next buyer. With the car half torn apart, Amazon offered they could get me a replacement item in 8 calendar days. Yeah, that's not going to work, so I took it over to a milling machine and had it milled out to fit (first photo shows immediately after milling, second and third photo are before, third photo has the new part doweled to the old part to align one of the holes and show how far off the second hole is). Just like this case, Amazon A2Z was willing to accept the return and ship another one, but the real customer failure was during the previous return, not when I had the complaint. There's a customer satisfaction angle that "Earth's most customer centric company" should probably be considering here.
- jschwartzi 6y ago
  Amazon hasn’t actually been a customer-centric company since they got big enough to run their own in-house delivery service.
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
  If a customer has to physically punch a new hole in a product, I consider that a full refund without return :)
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    That’s what I’d have expected from 2010 Amazon. It’s not what I was offered by 2020 Amazon.
- jld 6y ago
  I have had luck having Amazon credit me back part of the purchase price when I need to repair what they sent me. Their chat agents have refunded me 20-30% of purchase price for keeping defective items like yours.
  - 6y ago
topspin 6y ago
Here is my most recent Amazon returns story. I bought a $1200 commercial generator through Amazon. Delivered by truck about in about 10 days. It had several problems. Took it to the local authorized service center myself. They struggled with it for about a month. Ultimately they had me call the manufacturer for a replacement. I tried but the manufacturer sent me to Amazon for a refund. I did so and Amazon refunded the full purchase price immediately. The service center didn't care; they still had a defective generator on their hands and kept working on it with the manufacturer on my behalf despite the fact that I had gotten a full refund, which I made clear to them. Ultimately the manufacturer decided they wanted the unit returned for analysis by their engineers and drop shipped a replacement to me knowing perfectly well that I'd already received a refund. The replacement works perfectly. I got a $1200 commercial generator for 'free.' I'd have rather just had the working product in the first place, and I still feel like I've cheated somehow despite the fact that I was entirely above board with everyone.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  The problem is that cases where you get lucky like this are in the minority. In the majority of cases, the inconvenience caused by a defective/counterfeit/missing product thwarts whatever compensation they give you after the fact.

sixhobbits 6y ago

The reply from Amazon's support Twitter is the indication of a far larger problem in most business. Namely, it's easier to deal with the consequences of "mistakes" than it is to not make them. e.g. - the "fines" Google and Facebook keep getting for breaking privacy and other laws which are laughably small. - customer support teams not dealing with serious customer issues until they get attention (viral tweet, front page HN etc) - monopolies in most forms: e.g. the big-tech anti-poaching agreements Generally I'm all for "it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission" but that assumes that you are acting in good faith but still sometimes screw up. It seems like "screwing up" has become a good way to ensure short-term profits and as everyone is obsessed with KPIs and OKRs at a 1-week to 3-month time frame, the incentives are all wrong. And "mission statements" and "cultural values" are too synthetic to come close to fixing this.

aboringusername 6y ago
I honestly don't think any country in the world actually cares about monopolies or the abuses by these companies. Apple no longer has to pay a fine the EU gave them. The same will likely happen to the 2 billion+ fines they gave Google. So far, no amount of fines, or laws, has actually changed anything as far as Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google or Microsoft are concerned. They're still in dominant positions, where AI or computer made decisions can devastate the "little guys" like being wiped off Google (or the play store removing your app), or the horror stories of businesses on Amazon. Truth is, they're too big, and at this point, can't be stopped. Laws won't work, fines won't work. They haven't so far, and I doubt they will in the future.
- AnssiH 6y ago
  > So far, no amount of fines, or laws, has actually changed anything as far as Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google or Microsoft are concerned. That seems like hyperbole. E.g. all the three big EU-Google anti-trust cases (Shopping, AdSense, Android) resulted in Google changing their practices on the issues in question. (Shopping, Android: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google, AdSense: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_19_1770 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_19_...)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

seancoleman 6y ago

This reminds me of how a friend (as a teenager in the 90s) would buy expensive video cards from Best Buy and CompUSA only to swap them out with cheap cards off eBay, re-shrink wrap the box and return for a hefty profit. I thought it was a clever, profitable hack at 16 years old but now I’m ashamed I didn’t just call this what it was: theft.

gruez 6y ago
>now I’m ashamed I didn’t just call this what it was: theft. Isn't it technically fraud?
- stronglikedan 6y ago
  It's technically both - theft by defrauding.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  Possibly both theft and fraud
- DanBC 6y ago
  Theft: dishonestly appropriating something, with the intent of permanently depriving the owner. He dishonestly took the item. He had no intent of giving it back.
inetknght 6y ago
My father was a victim to that type of fraud.
fortran77 6y ago
You could write a check to Best Buy (have it delivered via an attorney to protect your identity) and make good on your theft. It's too late for CompUSA--you already put them out of business.
- stronglikedan 6y ago
  > your theft > you already It was their friend, not them.

gempir 6y ago

It's cheaper to just accept returns instead of checking every product for complete function. And I think it's acceptable considering how easy returns are with Amazon.

somehnguy 6y ago
I don't think its acceptable at all. An easy return doesn't fix having to wait an additional at least a few days before you actually get what you paid for. That is just basically accepting that Amazon is completely unreliable for anything even remotely time sensitive, despite what made them huge in the first place - extremely fast delivery.

pwg 6y ago

Why the surprise here. This "scam" (or theft) is as old as stores taking "no questions asked" returns. I knew someone who did this a time or two back in the mid-90's to Circuit City and/or CompUSA. I warned them that this could be traced back to them if the stores became interested enough to do so, that did not deter them much.

nvahalik 6y ago
Yeah, back in the days when tech didn't move so fast, it wasn't uncommon for some of the circle I moved in to go grab a 160G drive from Best Buy and swap out a 20/40G drive that had died and claim it didn't work out of the box. Free upgrade! Same scam, different day.
diehunde 6y ago
I wonder what the consequences can be for doing this. Just pay full price or also face legal actions.
- sukilot 6y ago
  It depends on how much the local DA wants to nail you. It's definitely criminal behavior, some kind of theft or fraud

arm85 6y ago

A similar thing has happened to me in the past. Brought a phone dock from amazon, and when it arrived, it didn't fit my phone, looking at the serial number on the dock itself, it was for the previous model of phone but the packaging was for the latest. So someone had decided to upgrade for free.

akerro 6y ago

There is a post about it every week on /r/datahoarder

disiplus 6y ago

why would they swap in a 8 tb one thah still has value and not a idk 500g one and profit more ?

pwinnski 6y ago
I have a NAS that holds four drives. If I upgrade 8TB drives for 16TB drives, I would have no further use for the 8TB drives. I also don't have half-TB drives lying around.
- disiplus 6y ago
  sure, but if you are a scammer then selling the 8T for at least 100$ and picking one for basically free would net you more profit. maybe it was somebody that did not think he does something wrong because "amazon is big and will eat the cost"
  - netsharc 6y ago
    Huh, honestly it'd be "cleverer" to find a broken drive (that the OS wouln't even detect) and swap it into the enclosure. Then the thief can say it was defective, or the next buyer would, and there would be less of a chance of an investigation/change of policy.
  - pwinnski 6y ago
    Agreed, a dedicated scammer probably has many options. I suspect this was just some person upgrading a drive, probably not a dedicate scammer.

mattlondon 6y ago

I recall seeing youtube videos about people who purchased pallets of returned items from Amazon. Kind of an "unboxing" video for a huge stack of returned items. Yes I was bored. They had a few similar scenarios where people had clearly purchased expensive computer components like motherboards etc and then returned the box with some worthless motherboard in there instead of the expensive one. You can imagine some poor Amazon warehouse worker receiving the package, opening it up and seeing the motherboard "yup - looks like some computer gubbins. approved." and off it goes. The video people seemed to react like this was quite a common occurrence. So this makes me wonder, if amazon are bundling-up returned items into pallets and selling them in bulk, how did clearly returned items get sold back to an end user? Frankly I am amazed the scammer went to the effort of putting in a 8TB device and connecting it, rather than either returning it empty or with some random old IDE drive in it as a decoy.

AnssiH 6y ago
> So this makes me wonder, if amazon are bundling-up returned items into pallets and selling them in bulk, how did clearly returned items get sold back to an end user? If the item is (looks) unopened and pristine, Amazon will usually sell it again as new. Some switcharoos are caught, some are not.
- adrr 6y ago
  They could catch it multiples ways. Simple precise weight measurement would catch basic scammers. They could X-ray the package and use cv to determine if the contents have been modified or not.
  - qppo 6y ago
    Why automate? Pay someone to open the box and check.
    - skylanh 6y ago
      Cost of multiple shifts at multiple locations + cost of implementing verification process + cost of security and oversight + cost of extra inventory loss due to employee theft vs Cost of negative image (deferred via simple returns) + cost of inventory loss duo to fraud + cost of inventory loss due to employees It's simpler to simply eat the cost of abuse.

zimbatm 6y ago

Pro tip: don't bother with Amazon France, order from the UK. For some reason, all the non-consumables that I ordered in France were re-furbished items sold as new. In contrast, the UK has always been stellar. Once Brexit hits, I will stop using Amazon altogether.

Asuchug4 6y ago
Does it matter at all? Won't the item be shipped from closest amazon warehouse regardless of site used?
- teh_klev 6y ago
  Due to Brexit this is changing: https://tamebay.com/2020/07/amazon-fba-brexit-bombshell-efn-and-pan-european-fba-ends-for-uk.html https://tamebay.com/2020/07/amazon-fba-brexit-bombshell-efn-... Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23888510 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23888510
alibert 6y ago
Anecdotal but my current experience is the opposite. Just some weeks ago, I bought a dumb phone (new and sold by Amazon FR) on the Amazon FR website and it was sent by a fulfillment center in UK. The phone I received was opened, missing earbuds and was the Middle East version with the wrong keypad.

bredren 6y ago

This happened to me buying a Yamaha MG06 Compact Stereo Mixer from Amazon Warehouse. The one I received had clear indications that it had been in use for a long time, dust grime and wear—-it was gross. In this case it appeared the person returned the same model for a new one. It was a good trick that Amazon resolved without feedback on my pointing this out when I returned it. I bought it brand new after that. Previous to this, I had ordered something else from amazon warehouse, again a “like new” item for a steep discount and it was as described. A great deal.

Log1x 6y ago

I semi-recently bought a Samsung 970 EVO from Amazon, except new (and not from a third-party seller). Instead I received a security blanket: https://i.imgur.com/DTPdhAn.jpg https://i.imgur.com/DTPdhAn.jpg The SSD box was seemingly factory sealed. I also bought a Dyson fan recently and what came was an obviously used, yellow stained, disgustingly old model of a Dyson fan. I hopped on Live Chat, they apologized, initiated a return - few weeks later I get a semi-threatening email from Amazon telling me that the Dyson fan I sent back "wasn't sent back in its original condition" - I hopped on Live Chat and made sure everything was ok with my account (it was) - but still, ..wtf. this is a problem.

AnssiH 6y ago
My guess: The chat agent selected an incorrect reason for the return, causing Amazon to expect the actual item back. Whenever possible, I always initiate the return myself to avoid customer service messing things up (there is a specific return reason "received incorrect item" in the dropdown).
paulcole 6y ago
Similarly I had to get a refund on a 10-pack of items when I only received a 5-pack. Months later I get an email saying I didn't return all 10 that I had ordered. No shit, that was the problem!
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  I once ordered a rail of Atmel Microcontrollers from Digikey. Got four 74HC00's. Called them, sent them back. And then Digikey sent the $28 bill to collections. I complained and they politely told me to fuck off.
stygiansonic 6y ago
There are scammers who will buy the item, open the shrink wrap and remove the item before rewrapping it to make it look like they never opened it. This becomes more difficult if there are security seals. See: https://lawyerrant.wordpress.com/favorite-scams/the-empty-box-return/ https://lawyerrant.wordpress.com/favorite-scams/the-empty-bo...

eugenekolo 6y ago

Welcome to Amazon shopping for the past 5 or so years. Everything is fakes, used goods marked as new, and low quality goods with 4.7+ stars from fake reviews. The convenience is so nice, yet about 50% of the time I'm disappointed with any purchase made on Amazon.com. But, those stock profits :heart_eyes_emoji:.

zaroth 6y ago

“Amazon Warehouse“, for those not familiar with it, is an option you can select specifically to buy an item that was previously returned. Amazon has done a cosmetic inspection of the item and gives it a ranking on how it appears which you see when you are buying it. There are certain types of items where you can save a huge amount of money and get great deals using Amazon Warehouse. Hard drives are obviously not one of them due to the assumption that everything is returned for a reason. An example of a type of item that I’ve always had good luck with is pots and pans. The interesting thing about this is assume that the tracking is in place to identify who returned the original item. What would you do? Maybe the actual scam (I don’t mean in this specific case) is buying perfectly good Amazon Warehouse items but, knowing that they had been previously returned, claiming the item was swapped out after swapping it out yourself. So Amazon can’t really know who to blame from a single incident. But certainly I would expect accounts would accumulate warning flags and at some point be banned.

vinhboy 6y ago
I feel like this needs to be the top comment. Buying warehouse items is risky, that's why it's cheaper. Also, you can just return it if you don't like. I don't think this deserves the scrutiny it's getting here.
- amiantos 6y ago
  Outrage drives clicks... link has been up for 5 hours and is on the front page of HN, while other links with (probably) more worthwhile content stagnate and die. It's just how the internet works.
- paradoja 6y ago
  I'd think that it's cheaper not because it's risky (specially since Amazon says it inspects the item), but because it's second hand. Trying to pass the risk to the user is probably not what most people would expect.
- skinnymuch 6y ago
  You can return things if you don’t like them. A quick search shows the excuses you can give that not only allow you to return them, but get free return shipping too.

dhosek 6y ago

This is a consequence of amazon being too big to care. They aren't doing the most basic check to verify that what's in the box is what the outside of the box claims it is. Some years ago, I bought two identical routers from Best Buy and then decided I didn't need the second so I went to return it. I put it in the wrong box. Best Buy refused the return because the serial number on the router didn't match the serial number on the box. The whole concept of Amazon is fundamentally flawed. I've gotten too much counterfeit stuff and junk to ever trust them again.

libertine 6y ago
Oh and it's even easier when they make the seller pay for their fuck ups and for fraud - it's peanuts for Amazon :)
sukilot 6y ago
It's a consequence of consumers being so voraciously consumerist that they buy things they don't need so it doesn't matter if they get what they ordered.

5bolts 6y ago

have a former friend that would do a brick and mortar version of this... even went so far as to buy a shrink wrap machine. buy an external drive, take it home and remove the drive.. fill case with rocks or wood or something to add mass.. put it back in the box, shrink wrap it and have his wife return it.. doing a slight upgrade to the next size up. repeat a couple of times.. then get full refund. he'd even end up with his own crap filled drives once in a while..

acwan93 6y ago
Reminds me of how someone went to Target to buy an iPod for her daughter, found it full of rocks and exchanged it after getting her refund rejected, only for a replacement iPod from another Target to also be filled with rocks. https://www.engadget.com/2007-10-09-birthday-girl-gets-two-rock-filled-ipod-boxes.html https://www.engadget.com/2007-10-09-birthday-girl-gets-two-r...

raincom 6y ago

That's why Fry's Electronics--a bay area retailer--scans the serial numbers of hard drives, DIMM memory and other electronic stuff. During the return process, Fry's employees check the serial number of the returned item against what's there in the receipt. This strategy was born precisely because of the scam that Amazon is seeing now.

chrisseaton 6y ago
But here an internal component was swapped. The serial number on the product was unchanged. I've never seen a receipt list any serial number, let alone serial numbers of multiple internal components.
- raincom 6y ago
  At least Fry's electronics used to TEST memory sticks, motherboards, CPUs in front of customers during the return process. I knew cases where customers tried to return CPUs with bent pins, and their returns were denied. IIRC, Fry's did not test hard disks, except to match the serial numbers. So, now this scam requires testing of hard drives of their capacity during the return process. And this is a cat-and-mouse game.
  - dawnerd 6y ago
    I feel like the testing was more of a way to 1. try to avoid the return by proving it worked and 2. put it right back out on the shelf for sell. Actually picked up some good deals in the good days of Frys from returns. It's a shame they're nothing more than an as seen on tv store these days.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      There's basically no way to stop a consumer returning something, no matter what state they got it in or what state it's in now. Any discussion about how it was when it was sold is their word against yours. Ultimately they can just charge-back. Short of taking them to court, what are you going to do about that? It's important for consumer rights though.

jasonv 6y ago

I have a new Lenovo laptop, purchased on Amazon directly from Lenovo, arriving on Tuesday. I intend to unbox the laptop and record it on my GoPro. Seems silly, but...

FalconSensei 6y ago
After this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23941572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23941572) I always record. I had no problem to return and didn't need to prove that it arrived cracked but... better safe than sorry
- somehnguy 6y ago
  I learned my lesson with TVs on Amazon a few years ago too. There were a couple reviews noting cracked screens, thought it was probably just rare bad luck. Bought the TV, it arrived cracked. Had Amazon schedule a UPS pickup for return and bought the TV locally. Poor packaging for TVs on Amazon just seems to be normal.
JoshTriplett 6y ago
If you're going to buy a Lenovo laptop from Lenovo, why not buy it directly from Lenovo? You'll get free shipping either way. Shipping speed, or something else?
- kingnothing 6y ago
  5% cash back by using an Amazon store card is one reason.
  - jasonv 6y ago
    This, yes.
Zancarius 6y ago
I don't see why anyone would think that's silly[1]. TBH, I'm tempted to record all of my unboxings at this point, at least for more valuable items... ...especially after reading some of the experiences here. [1] Okay, so someone could argue it was staged, but there's a point in time where you can't "prove" something any further without disproportionate costs to your time or finances.

Zelphyr 6y ago

I had this exact thing happen with the purchase of a Nest Protect from Amazon. Nest packaging complete with "Inspected" sticker on the box and a First Alert detector inside. I no longer shop at Amazon.

tsyd 6y ago

It happened to me when I bought a new motherboard from Amazon (shipped and sold by Amazon, not Amazon Warehouse nor fulfilled by Amazon). I opened the motherboard box and inside was a 10-year old motherboard. I knew this was a possibility when buying from Amazon Warehouse but didn't expect it when buying new directly from Amazon.

FalconSensei 6y ago
A year ago I bought a TV (same as you: directly from Amazon). It came with the screen cracked. I asked for a new one... The replacement came cracked. On the reviews, I saw a couple people mentioning that the screen came cracked. They wanted me to send them back by Canada Post, but I said no way I would do that, as I don't drive, and I would not carry 2 55" TVs on the streets. They ended up paying for purolator to pick them up at my place. I asked for a refund and bought on Best Buy. No problems!
DavidPeiffer 6y ago
The way Amazon runs things is completely inexcusable. If you can't order directly from Amazon and get a non-fraudulent product, then the whole platform is basically going to a flea market, having all the vendors turn their backs, shuffling product amongst the vendors, and sending normal citizens through to buy what they want. Any traceability and trust the end consumer would have is gone. Amazon may be able to trace a particular product to a vendor, but that's of no help to a consumer wanting a consistent supply of goods. Amazon also doesn't show if a vendor chooses to opt out of comingled inventory, which would go a long way towards helping end consumer trust.

aimor 6y ago

I once bought a lawnmower where someone had swapped it out with a lower-end model. That was from Lowe's. I'd like to know what action companies take against this type of theft, it seems trivial to identify the culprit but maybe difficult to prove anything and probably expensive.

grishka 6y ago
Oh so that's why where I'm from most stores require an ID to return something.
remus 6y ago
Unless there's some sort of large scale, organised fraud occurring, or it is so hugely prevalent as to be affecting the bottom line then I'd be very surprised if any action was taken. If you think about the amount of time and effort involved (legal counsel is expensive) then it's not worth it.

laurentdc 6y ago

I've ordered three Xbox Play and Charge kits from Amazon, two were blatantly counterfeit (came in a plastic bag, scratched and with no markings, I don't believe it's "OEM"), the other was genuine but with batteries manufactured four years before and pretty much DOA (probably used and sent back by someone?) I had to order from Microsoft directly to get an acceptable product.

netsharc 6y ago

Gavin Free of the Slow-Mo Guys talked on a podcast how he got 2 cans of Dr. Pepper instead of a dremel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-LRgWpyMEI&t=29s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-LRgWpyMEI&t=29s I wonder what else could "black hats" do with this "exploit". Buy laptops, install malware, return them? The higher-end the laptop, the higher the chances are the next buyer will be rich, and that seems like an interesting way to access someone's bank account.

mNovak 6y ago

I think what a lot of people are missing in the comments when they say "I bought <product> from <brand> not a third party..." is that for new products the 'seller name' you're buying from does not correspond to which box you get off the shelf. It's called co-mingled inventory--Amazon doesn't track which box you (as seller) sent them, they just throw it on the shelf with all the other "new" same product boxes. Obvious fraud is at least somewhat Amazon's problem since it gets returned, but the huge problem for the name-brand vendors is all the support requests / bad reviews they get when people get counterfeit crap, thinking they bought from <brand> directly.

viggity 6y ago
IIRC, if you're a seller, you have to pay extra to not have your goods co-mingled with the "same" product from other companies. It would appear that seagate didn't do that.
- bdowling 6y ago
  > if you're a seller, you have to pay extra to not have your goods co-mingled It would be great if Amazon passed that information on to the purchaser. It might even justify paying a higher price to buy from a non-comingled vendor because it would indicate increased accountability.
LeoPanthera 6y ago
While true, this does not apply in this case, "Warehouse" (=re-sold returned goods) inventory is not comingled.

js2 6y ago

I recently purchased a open box Apple Pencil from BestBuy. When I got it, it didn’t work. I realized the pencil s/n didn’t match the box and looked up the manufacture date. It was several years old and the battery must’ve been shot. Someone had bought a new pencil and used the box to return their old pencil and BestBuy must not have checked. BestBuy gave me a new one, no hassle. But then crazily enough, the brand new Apple Pencil didn’t work either. Bad luck! They were out of stock at that point so they just gave me a refund. Anyway, I know this is a risk with open box. A friend just purchased a brand new Garmin Fenix via Amazon. When she opened the Garmin box, nothing was inside! Amazon refunded her. She purchased it from REI instead.

killion 6y ago

I’ve had this happen to me multiple times with Apple keyboards and mice for the office. They are listed as brand new and sold by Amazon. But they are clearly used when you open the box.

gibba999 6y ago

I shopped on Amazon for many years. I never had problems until around the time of COVID19. It seems to be a cesspool of scammers and conartists now. Amazon doesn't do much of anything about it either. I'm out a couple hundred bucks. I'm kind of annoyed. I need a reliable place to order stuff. Aliexpress and eBay seem ahead of Amazon now. That's bad. My favorite scam: Futures. Sellers will sell low-availability things at (slightly) inflated prices and long ship times. If prices go down, you get the product. If prices go up, they refund you. It's too complex for Amazon minimum wage drones to understand why this is a scam, so you can't do anything about it. Amazon wouldn't refund my Prime, which renewed around the time of COVID19, and which hasn't really worked. That's turning into a scam too.

JKCalhoun 6y ago
> Aliexpress and eBay seem ahead of Amazon now. Wow, that is bad.
tehlike 6y ago
File a dispute with your bank.
- kube-system 6y ago
  If you do that, you'll never have to worry about getting scammed at Amazon again, since they'll probably close your account.
  - tehlike 6y ago
    "Amazon wouldn't refund my Prime" -> I assumed this was to close account :) And i believe they wouldn't close the account.
    - kube-system 6y ago
      Why would you assume that? A prime subscription is not a requirement for an Amazon account. It seems to me they were saying that they didn't want to pay for expedited shipping if Amazon couldn't provide expedited shipping. And it is fairly common for online retailers to ban accounts that do charge-backs. Amazon will ban people for having too many returns.

yalogin 6y ago

I don't know how best buy our other brick and mortar stores deal with this kind of scams. Unless they actually hook it up and check for that kind of scam its tough. In that sense its not a uniquely Amazon issue. At Amazon's scale though it gets exaggerated and also because of that scale they can ignore it and keep replacing items for their customers. The process to check each and every item for scams might be too costly. Its a fascinating study nonetheless and it will be great to get some real insight from people working on these issues.

sn_master 6y ago
You can just drive back and hand it to them and get a new one or a refund in just an hour or so. Not so easy with Amazon.

linkmotif 6y ago

If you're going to swap the drive, why not swap in a 4tb, or a 2tb, or a 500mb?

dnissley 6y ago

Just had something similar happen to myself a couple months ago -- bought some good condition used Galaxy Buds Plus (released 2020) sold by Amazon, received Galaxy Buds (Non-Plus, released 2019) inside Galaxy Buds Plus packaging. I had zero problem returning the item and getting a full refund, but I do wonder if the person who did this got away with it.

bcrosby95 6y ago

I just plain don't buy electronics on Amazon. I've rarely had it go well. It's usually something - anywhere from something like this, to paying full price for something that was obviously previously opened.

t0mbstone 6y ago
I don't understand who all these people are who are having bad experiences with Amazon. I only ever buy products that have the Prime label and have plenty of verified positive reviews. Stuff always arrives very quickly (often the next day), and I have literally never had a fake product mailed to me when I do this. One time I bought a used product from Amazon and it was a little beat up but it still worked. Another time I bought something that was clearly manufactured and sold from China, and sure enough it sucked, but I just returned it and it was no big deal.
- sneak 6y ago
  > I have literally never had a fake product mailed to me when I do this. It's possible you're not buying commonly-faked items, or possibly it happened and you just didn't notice. Lots of fakes are of similar reliability for the first 20-50% of normal lifespan.

Havoc 6y ago

I've had this happen with a graphics card. Bought a 2070. Got a 2060 in scruffy packaging. To add insult to injury I sent it back and doesn't seem to have arrived yet and/or covid ate it. 5 fuckin months later it's still: >Your refund will be processed when we receive your item.

bentcorner 6y ago
Curiously enough I encountered the inverse problem the other day. I received a refund for an item sitting on my desk. I purchased it, received it, and did not request any refund at all. I called Amazon about it and they said to let the refund go through and they sent me an email I could reply to when I was ready to be re-charged. Extremely odd, and I was worried there was some scam I was missing. Amazon rep said the returns department made a mistake somehow. I imagine there's probably someone that returned the same item I bought and they're still waiting for their refund. :-/

lobo_tuerto 6y ago

In Mexico most of the times you'll get a previously opened and returned package. Which in turn would usually return myself and ask for a new package (happened with an AIO cooler unit which even had the thermal paste applied on it... Or the items won't work as expected which has happened to me with laptops and tablets. The only good thing is there is no problem returning the used / bad stuff. But you lose time and the discount price.

Waterluvian 6y ago

I need to buy 15 16GB SD cards for a high school robotics team for Raspberry Pis that are guaranteed to be shutdown improperly and bumped around a lot. I balked at Amazon. I just don’t know how to trust their stuff anymore. Left having no idea where to get a sensible price.

Mindless2112 6y ago
Depending on what brand you want, they're as cheap as $5 on B&H: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?q=sd%20card&filters=fct_capacity_568%3A16gb https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?q=sd%20card&filters=fc...
- Waterluvian 6y ago
  Wow $5. That’s by far the best I’ve found for a brand name I recognize. Purchased. Thank you from me and the students. Even worth it with the import duty fees to Canada.
yobert 6y ago
Newegg! Usually it's pretty close to competitive with Amazon for electronics.
- Waterluvian 6y ago
  I have no idea why newegg didn’t cross my mind. I guess because I’m not buying desktop computer parts. Thank you.

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

This was a big reason that I stopped buying stuff from best Buy. I would buy some peripheral or appliance, get home, open the box, and see a dirty, stained, clearly broken device. They were always very good about refunding, but they treated my wasted time as if it were nothing. This has not [yet] happened to me with Amazon, for new devices, but it did happen once with a used "New condition" peripheral (what arrived was broken, dirty, and packed with toilet paper and rolled up newspapers). The third-party vendor jerked me around so much, I had to use Amazon's A-Z guarantee. I tend to use Costco for home appliances, these days, and my expensive kit from manufacturers.

redm 6y ago

This is why retailers are starting to get drivers licenses to complete a return; its much harder to scam if you cant do it anonymously.

Nextgrid 6y ago
I doubt this will do much. They would still need to actually investigate the issues which they already don't do. Online banks nowadays do ID verification with passports, etc and yet very basic fraud committed intentionally by the account holder is still happening because the truth is even though the information to identify the perpetrator is there nobody can be bothered enough to act on it.

sn_master 6y ago

Got a Motorola phone, same-day shipping from the US, and actually got it just few hours later. Phone screen broke. Contacted Motorola for support, they said the phone IMEI is from India and can't be serviced in the US under warranty, I have to ship it to India if I want it fixed by them :/

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
manquer 6y ago
I am surprised at this , for a long time the reverse use to happen . Also it is usually not coz the IMEI, it is because each model has sub geo variants depending on the spectrum they are allowed to use in those regions etc. Cross region variants other region decline to service . It is not just Moto, Apple does the same .
- sn_master 6y ago
  I think the Indian one was cheaper, so they probably bought a big batch then sold it in the US for more expensive US prices. Indian model also had dual-SIM, which US phones generally don't have.

_nickwhite 6y ago

This reminds me of the time I bought a high-end GTX video card at Best Buy... only to find a bottle of shampoo inside. These types of return scams happen all the time.

davestephens 6y ago

A close friend has a very similar thing recently, except it was/should have been a new Ryzen 3700x, not a warehouse deal. If you've bought one you'll know it comes in a box with a big cooler on top, and the proc is at the bottom in a bit of plastic packing. He got the big cooler but no Ryzen. Contacted Amazon, got another Ryzen and cooler sent out. I think this is incredibly common...

neuralRiot 6y ago

The real scam is from Amazon, selling store return items as brand new.

kirillzubovsky 6y ago

I am glad to have read this thread. A few of the issues mentioned in comments have happened to me in the last year, but I just wrote it off as one-off scamming, did not realize it's systemic and sophisticated.

all_blue_chucks 6y ago

What does this have to do with Amazon? Return scams have been around for as long as returns.

TD-Linux 6y ago

Someone did this scam even at a local Best Buy. When I returned it, they unpack it and scan the barcode on the case, but of course not on the actual HDD. (the person doing the scam didn't even do a good job, and broke some of the plastic clips in the process)

Rudism 6y ago

Way back when I was in high school, it became a fad among the tech-geeks to have our TI-85 graphing calculators modded with a "turbo" switch that would let you run some games like Wolfenstein and Tetris at better speeds. It involved cutting a hole in the back plastic casing inside the battery compartment to make room for the switch, and then soldering a few connections on the board underneath. There was one kid who was doing it for everyone at $20 a pop, but he made no guarantees about not accidentally bricking the calculator in the process. I was a little apprehensive about having him do it since TI calculators were (and still are) ridiculously expensive, and asked him what his success rate was. He told me it didn't really matter because even if he accidentally screwed up, all you had to do was go buy a new TI-85 from Future Shop (which was like a Canadian version of Best Buy before they were actually bought by Best Buy), put the broken calculator in the box, and then return it the next day for a full refund. He would then mod the new one for no additional charge. My turbo switch was installed fine so I didn't have to pull the scam, but I knew a few kids who did.

lubujackson 6y ago

I bought a new kid's book from Amazon. A child had written their name inside the cover.

Orphis 6y ago

A long time ago, I bought Half-Life 1 in a regular store. I tried to play with a friend online but it said my CD-key was already being used. Turned out my friend had bought the game, came without a CD-key printed on the box, so the store opened a random box and gave him that CD-key. I bought that exact same box. In the end, my friend sent a picture of the box to Valve and got a fresh CD-key, and we could finally play together.

unexaminedlife 6y ago

I learned many years ago that auto theft is almost 100% committed by a very tiny fraction of the overall population. Probably same phenomenon here. Small # of people doing this. I'm hopeful Amazon does not go easy on these people. The numbers are likely in their favor even if they decided to take every single one of those cases to court.

kveykva 6y ago

I had assumed this was common knowledge that this occurred. We used to experience returns like this all of the time that Amazon would accept up-front before acceptance by our warehouse. >$200 chargers returned in original boxes containing $10 chargers. There have been other stories of iphone boxes full of playdough or just anything that would weight roughly the same. I wouldn't be surprised if there are other 3rd party fulfillment providers that rather than dealing with having had this pushed on them by Amazon, they just put that return back on the shelf and they get shipped out to other customers.

aimor 6y ago
What did you do when you get such a return, and what would Amazon do?

jonplackett 6y ago

Curious what countries this is happening in? I’m in the Uk and never had these problems despite being a fairly prolific Amazon user.

tiernano 6y ago
I buy a lot of stuff from amazon and only on 1 occasion did something like this happen. Bought a 16Gb DDR4 SODIMM, mind you from the warehouse deals (half price!) and a 4Gb module arrived. Opened a case with Amazon and they sent me a second one, but this time the correct size...

rotterdamdev 6y ago

Stop buying from amazon.

projproj 6y ago

What are your favorite alternatives to Amazon? E.g., I go to monoprice for cables. Are there other niche options that you like for different products where you can expect quality?

Schnitz 6y ago

This is standard practice at Amazon and it's very annoying. Even defective items just get sent out until someone doesn't return them and items that were clearly used get sold again as new without even being cleaned.

cft 6y ago

Amazon has become very difficult. I end up using ebay more and more: sellers there are small businesses and they bear more responsibility. It feels more decentralized. Longer shipping, but cheaper and more reliable.

sneak 6y ago
WAY cheaper! I used to default to Amazon for everything. So many things that Amazon charges $10-15 for (with free shipping, of course) can be had for $5 with $0-$3 shipping on eBay. I've saved tons over the last couple years.

timsneath 6y ago

Even in the best case where you get something that is superficially what you ordered, you have a sneaking feeling that you're getting something counterfeit: https://twitter.com/timsneath/status/1286821682968051712 https://twitter.com/timsneath/status/1286821682968051712 It's frustrating when you have to treat every transaction as if you're buying from a flea market.

dilandau 6y ago

Another outrage dump where prime members and AWS customers vent their spleen on the teat that nourishes their lives. It's a frail rebellion. A piece of performance art. Experimental theatre

makecheck 6y ago

Reminds me of scrolls with the “king’s seal”...we might need to start demanding more than fancy shrink-wrap to ensure that something is actually in factory packaging. I think an interesting way to do it would be to have slightly stronger plastic wrap that can be “dented” in several places similar to a UPC pattern, that in turn can be scanned by a phone for authenticity. (This could be done both by warehouses prior to agreeing to stock something, and by consumers to verify what they get.) Scammers might eventually figure it out but at least they’d need to recreate a complex dent pattern after shrink-wrapping, and they would need to be able to do it for each unique company they’re claiming to be.

bravoetch 6y ago

This is not a scam unique to Amazon. It happens everywhere, and has for decades at least. A more insidious version attacks eBay sellers. The buyer will send an item back broken and ask for a refund, meanwhile keeping the good verse;n you sent them. Take serial numbers, secretly hide marks and photograph them before sending anything.

etats 6y ago
But do you do with that serial number mismatch and 'missing secret marks' evidence? A seller could easily fudge that "proof" and eBay/Amazon aren't big on taking sellers at their word. There's no fool-proof way to collect evidence of return fraud and there isn't much you can do once you have that evidence.

GorsyGentle 6y ago

Bought an Intel CPU, got an "Intel" box that was full of Chinese playing cards. Amazon rep insisted it was "just a mistake", my ass. It's fraud. https://imgur.com/a/P05mh4j https://imgur.com/a/P05mh4j edit: Intel product, Sold by Amazon. None of that third-party stuff warehouse stuff here.

jsgo 6y ago

Had a similar issue with Best Buy: ordered a 10TB HDD (quite a few) and inside was a 250GB HDD. To be fair, they were champs and replaced it with another unit, but unfortunately there are people who do this and then they don’t validate it. The HDD was also an absurdly old one too.

mike503 6y ago

Isn’t that what was called pulling a “scamazon” on Shameless? I haven’t had this happen with Amazon (but I know they’d make it right) I did just have it happen with an order from a sketchy web front obviously shipping out of China. I knew it was risky but I used PayPal, which I’ve used in the past and used their buyer guarantee. This time the dispute is lagging (maybe COVID-related staffing issues) but I see many reports on their forums of it happening and claims being closed without resolution, requiring a ton of extra work to escalate and find someone who can help, etc. I was supposed to receive $65 of cleaning products, but wound up with a cheap small pair of socks (lightweight and easy to ship. Even the customs declaration says “socks” on it) However according to USPS the package was delivered. So a quick review looks like they fulfilled their obligation. I’m hoping I get a chance to send in pictures showing what I got obviously not matching the order (which conveniently wasn’t line itemed in PayPal, so hopefully they will accept my email showing the actual items...)

rju 6y ago

"But certainly I would expect accounts would accumulate warning flags and at some point be banned."

jasnk 6y ago

Sounds about right. I have had overall VERY GOOD Amazon Warehouse experiences, but I have also had TWO VERY TERRIBLE Amazon Warehouse experiences with two separate products that could have been avoided if items were actually "Inspected"... Hue Outdoor Motion Sensors (May 2019) -- Several sensors in my first order had obvious water damage outside packaging and MOLD inside packaging. Just looking at packages during "Inspection" would have prevented this. Requested replacements. Received MORE water damage and MOLD. Repeat several times until finally received NON-MOLD items or for refund. GE Smart Light Switch, Smart Fan Switch (Feb 2020) -- Ordered several of each, kept receiving wrong model (e.g. ZigBee instead of ZWave Plus, or ZWave instead of ZWave plus) as if prior customer gave up on large project and randomly threw products back into whatever boxes. Comparing product number on item to product number on box during "Inspection" would have prevented this! Kept requesting replacements, kept receiving wrong items. Finally returned items for a refund. Amazon CS did finally issue full refund, but had trouble unraveling the mess on their end because so many items were in play.

ents 6y ago

I bought a 240hz monitor from AWH and there was a 144hz one in the box. Sad times to set that all up and see that someone got a free upgrade.

benguild 6y ago

Yeah the return fraud is also a problem for third-party Amazon sellers. Buyers can essentially destroy the item and return it claiming warehouse damage, and then Amazon won’t always take responsibility even if it was sent to FBA near perfect or new.