4 ms·

It is a scam. It's a sophisticated scam. I thought I was buying an item. I was giving the seller a free options contract, valued at a few hundred dollars. http

It is a scam. It's a sophisticated scam. I thought I was buying an item. I was giving the seller a free options contract, valued at a few hundred dollars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valuation_of_options https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valuation_of_options Price jumped up by a $150, and I never got my item. I needed the item and not receiving it resulted in a couple hundred bucks of damages. If price had gone down a hundred bucks, I would have overpaid by that much. The seller, by the way, did charge my card. It was marked as shipped. The seller issued a refund on the day it was supposed to arrive, claiming it was "lost in trucking." Many other buyers had their orders "lost in trucking" too from reviews of that and other sellers. My opinion is that Amazon should have made the seller fulfill the orders. At the time I ordered, several items were available at the same price. At the time I was to receive the order, price had gone up $150. It's not like the seller couldn't have fulfilled it; they would have just taken a loss to do so. I'll mention this isn't the only time I got scammed on Amazon this year; just the most clever scam.

albntomat0 6y ago
Out of curiosity, what was the item that has such price swings?
- gibba999 6y ago
  Chest freezer. A lot of items had these swings though: face masks were the most obvious, but virtually all emergency supplies went through major up-and-down spikes. Dry shelf-stable food, some medicines, toilet paper, etc. All of a sudden, the whole world wanted to stock up. That made it really hard to buy those items if you have a non-emergency use for them.
  - albntomat0 6y ago
    Ahh I hadn't thought of COVID related price changes. Thanks for the response!
teraflop 6y ago
Never mind third-party sellers, I've had Amazon themselves pull this on me with a book I pre-ordered directly from them. On the day my order was supposed to be delivered, it mysteriously became "unavailable", only to reappear a couple of weeks later at a higher price.
bdowling 6y ago
> It's not like the seller couldn't have fulfilled it; they would have just taken a loss to do so. Contract law exists to enforce contracts that one party doesn't want to complete because they regret entering into the deal once they have more information, or the costs change, etc. You could try to sue the vendor in small claims court to recover your damages, including the costs of the suit. The vendor is counting on you and other parties not actually doing that.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  The problem is that the vendor is technically Amazon; they are the one who provide the technical, financial and logistical services as well as profit from it (if the scam went in the seller's favor). The seller itself is likely abroad. We have a regulatory problem here where you think you deal with a local company abiding by local laws, you get charged by a local company that's supposed to be abiding by local laws (Amazon charges customers and they pays out the sellers later), but when things go wrong they can suddenly pull the "we are a platform" get-out-of-jail-free card. This should not be possible.

albntomat0 6y ago

Out of curiosity, what was the item that has such price swings?

gibba999 6y ago
Chest freezer. A lot of items had these swings though: face masks were the most obvious, but virtually all emergency supplies went through major up-and-down spikes. Dry shelf-stable food, some medicines, toilet paper, etc. All of a sudden, the whole world wanted to stock up. That made it really hard to buy those items if you have a non-emergency use for them.
- albntomat0 6y ago
  Ahh I hadn't thought of COVID related price changes. Thanks for the response!

teraflop 6y ago

Never mind third-party sellers, I've had Amazon themselves pull this on me with a book I pre-ordered directly from them. On the day my order was supposed to be delivered, it mysteriously became "unavailable", only to reappear a couple of weeks later at a higher price.

bdowling 6y ago

> It's not like the seller couldn't have fulfilled it; they would have just taken a loss to do so. Contract law exists to enforce contracts that one party doesn't want to complete because they regret entering into the deal once they have more information, or the costs change, etc. You could try to sue the vendor in small claims court to recover your damages, including the costs of the suit. The vendor is counting on you and other parties not actually doing that.

Nextgrid 6y ago
The problem is that the vendor is technically Amazon; they are the one who provide the technical, financial and logistical services as well as profit from it (if the scam went in the seller's favor). The seller itself is likely abroad. We have a regulatory problem here where you think you deal with a local company abiding by local laws, you get charged by a local company that's supposed to be abiding by local laws (Amazon charges customers and they pays out the sellers later), but when things go wrong they can suddenly pull the "we are a platform" get-out-of-jail-free card. This should not be possible.