
Amazon sellers say that the company is losing millions to scammers - exolymph
https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/amazon-fraud-scam-sellers.html
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johnsocs
Over the last year or two I have noticed that a bit more care and scrutiny
needs to be put in to a seller and product review before I make my one click
purchase. Overall I do think they would get more out of me as a consumer if
the market place was a bit more locked down. In some ways it's starting to
look like ebay or aliexpress

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bnolsen
I only got hit by that recently. A few of items in my "Save for later" list
dropped price one day early this month. I purchased them on a whim one day
without thinking too hard...one item was successfully shipped to a totally
different state. Another 2 were listed with 3-4 day shipping estimates but
were given chinese tracking numbers many days after they were supposed to
arrive with no status updates or seller communication. One just got an update
2 weeks after initial delivery date...the one amazon put a pay hold on. I'm
guessing best case its a wrong/counterfeit item. The other 2 have alreay been
refunded by amazon.

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SomeStupidPoint
Bezos can say whatever he wants about eternal 'Day 1', FBA and FMA are 'Day 2'
features to the core: they're fragile, anti-customer features that only serve
Amazon's logistical needs at the expense of customers. If anything, Amazon
falls victim to data-as-proxy (which he also decries) in thinking these
features are good. The Bezos letter to shareholders is a good illustration of
what Amazon _should_ be doing, not what they are, and why they're currently
struggling as a business.

When Amazon puts their operations and money where their mouth is, I might
believe them.

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garethsprice
I purchased a newly released book the other day that was from a seller and
listed way below market rate, order was cancelled and refunded within a couple
of hours. Noted the user had 2-3 of pieces of feedback from years ago, but
appeared to have thousands of new books listed at crazy low prices that also
presumably did not exist. Any idea what the scam is there?

Amazon Marketplace is a cesspool, definitely affects my confidence in the
brand. I try and order items directly from Amazon now, but have heard that
even those supply chains can contain a lot of co-mingled counterfeits.

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exolymph
In that case it was maybe canceled and refunded because Amazon caught the
scammer?

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garethsprice
Nope they're still up, with 628 pages(!) of products that appear to be marked
as "Currently Unavailable". Some sort of arbitrage or marketing bot? There's a
lot of weirdness going on with Amazon Marketplace sellers, that's for sure.

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dqv
I always wonder if things like this are caused by corporate espionage. Walmart
comes to mind as someone who would benefit from the "reverse PR" against
Amazon. Apparently Walmart has been in China since 1996. I wonder if they
could influence a distributor to poison an Amazon supply chain.

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cyber
I wouldn't be surprised to if this was largely accounted for in supply side
contamination issues. It appears that Amazon treats all SKUs identically,
sourcing the closest one to fulfill and order, regardless of how that SKU
arrived at Amazon.

A concrete example: No Starch Press customers are receiving counterfeit books
when ordered from No Starch Press' Amazon store.

Even if this scam is caught, it's still cost Amazon money in dealing with the
issue. (And cost legitimate vendors no end of frustration with legitimate
customers receiving fake books.)

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exolymph
I actually wrote about No Starch's ordeal as well :)
[https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/amazon-counterfeits-no-
starch...](https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/amazon-counterfeits-no-starch.html)

FBA commingling is a whole ball of wax on its own.

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tyingq
_" Amazon has zero tolerance for fraud"_...from sellers.

Buyers, feel free to unbox your purchase, and return a potato for a full
refund, provided the product was sold by one of our 3rd party merchants.

