
Scammed by Amazon's "A-to-Z Guarantee" - ericabiz
https://medium.com/this-happened-to-me/759e4b63a925/
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gregd
Amazon sided with the buyer because you neglected to respond to Amazon's
email. That's on you...not Amazon. To make the claim that you were "Scammed by
Amazon's A-to-Z Guarantee" is a bit disingenuous to say the least.

A more apropos title may have been, "I didn't respond Amazon's first claim
email and they sided with the buyer".

I think you can only file a claim for up to 90 days past the date of delivery.

~~~
ericabiz
(OP here) Yes, I definitely made a mistake--I saw the email and naively
assumed that Amazon would deny the claim since the phone clearly was not
stolen. I made an assumption that they had access to Verizon's stolen phone
database, or that they would decline it since it had been nearly 4 months
since the phone was sold. As well, this hit my inbox right around Techstars
Demo Day, so I was in full presentation rehearsal mode and was sleep-deprived
to boot, so I wasn't closely paying attention to my email inbox.

The point I'm making with this post is that Amazon needs to push harder to
change its policies for individual sellers. It should not be acceptable for a
buyer to claim a phone as stolen nearly 4 months after purchase, and for
Amazon to accept that claim as true. Amazon has enough clout as a huge
corporation to make this happen.

~~~
gregd
And my point is that I fail to see how you go from your own mistake (not
responding to the claim) to you being scammed by Amazon. I take issue with
your post mentioning scam at all. You dropped the ball from your own end and
you came up on the short end of the stick. You weren't "scammed".

~~~
ericabiz
There are several ways Amazon could have prevented this. I wrote this post to
bring attention to ways in which buyers can scam legitimate sellers using
Amazon's "A-to-Z Guarantee."

1) Amazon can (and should!) require sellers to post the IMEI (unique
identifier) of each cell phone to Amazon as part of the sale process.

2) Amazon can then easily verify whether an IMEI has been listed as stolen
_before_ allowing the item to be posted.

3) If the buyer claims a cell phone as stolen after purchase, Amazon will have
the IMEI and can verify this with the carrier. In my case, it was definitely
not stolen.

This still leaves a gap where the buyer could purchase the phone, tell the
_carrier_ it has been stolen, and then get a refund--but the buyer in this
case would not be able to use the phone, since that Galaxy Nexus model only
works on Verizon. Carriers are working on a database (that should be live this
month according to news sources) that will enable carriers to report stolen
phones to each other, so in that case the buyer would not end up with a
workable phone.

Currently, Amazon doesn't do any of this, and their policies enable buyers to
scam legitimate sellers. I'm asking Amazon to put tighter policies in place to
prevent fraud.

~~~
gregd
It's like yelling into an echo chamber.

I see that you not only didn't make my note on Medium public, but you actually
fucking deleted it and I was no more or less critical of you there, than here.

So, since you seem to be in the business of speaking to other entrepreneurs, I
can only surmise that by "speaking" you mean, in one direction and you aren't
at all interested in "listening" if it's critical of your position...

------
dec0dedab0de
I think the idea is that Amazon would rather have actual businesses using
their service instead of people getting rid of old stuff. Dealing with returns
is the main reason why I've never attempted to sell anything on Amazon.

------
SippinLean
Not a scam.

