
Amazon Charges Couple More Than $1,000 to Ship Paper Plates - jscheel
https://www.newschannel5.com/news/newschannel-5-investigates/amazon-charges-couple-more-than-1000-to-ship-paper-plates
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erik_seaberg
Dear Amazon: fulfillment is what made you a household name. If you didn't get
it _from the manufacturer_ and put it in _your warehouse_ , I don't want it.
Stop feeding grey-market middlemen and con artists.

~~~
mrpigeonpants
That ship has sailed, but they could up their vendor standards from grey-
market to perhaps a soft creamy beige.

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lotyrin
Amazon really needs to clean house when it comes to these third party sellers
and third party listings, it's a mess.

I'm glad this one in this case was supposedly dismissed (though I doubt they
haven't reapplied with a new name... or even just held multiple seller
accounts to begin with.

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partiallypro
There are a lot of 3rd party shipping scams on Amazon now. In fact there are a
lot of counterfeit items on Amazon now. I think I've posted this before, but
if I am ordering a name brand item, I will not buy it from Amazon anymore.
I'll only order things that won't really matter if they aren't the real name
brand now.

Even if it is fulfilled by Amazon, even that doesn't guarantee it's not
counterfeit. I can order a pallets of counterfeit items from Alibaba and ship
them off to Amazon to fulfill (for a fee) so that I can qualify as a Prime
shipper.

I used to sell a lot of (legit) things on Amazon (a $250K/yr revenue pace) but
Amazon raised their seller fees which choked my already low margin business;
and honestly since that I feel like the amount of scams and counterfeits has
skyrocketed because now Amazon has trimmed people's margins so much with their
high fees.

Now I hear from some others I know that sell on Amazon about how they will buy
from Alibaba, negotiate a bulk rate and then sell it on Amazon. Generally they
are almost all fake, but the seller doesn't care, or pleads ignorance. Then
there's the shipping scams, which I feel are fairly new, but no less worrying
if you're a customer. It's also a bit infuriating if you were/are a seller and
people are getting away with this when you're trying to be honest.

~~~
Waterluvian
I don't see the relationship between abundance of counterfeit items and higher
fees edging out low margin sellers.

~~~
partiallypro
You can raise your margins if you merely sell counterfeit items, because your
input cost is less. Amazon raising their seller fees squeezes margins and
forces suppliers/sellers to reinflate their margin via external means. If you
squeeze out legitimate sellers, the sellers that counterfeit will be more
robust and their margins will be what the old baseline was before the seller
fee increase (at least.) I don't see how you can't see that obvious
relationship.

~~~
caf
The simpler response is: selling counterfeit items is inherently a higher-
margin business than selling the legitimate version of the same items.

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nodesocket
I am a prime customer and literally every single time I have contacted Amazon
support they have been receptive and refunded me, often times going beyond
what I requested.

I am a very skeptical of this story.

~~~
lovich
As a counter anecdote, I bought a prime item on a Monday and didn't receive it
till the following Monday. When I contacted Amazon they told me that prime
just garunteed that shipping would take 2 days, not that they would ship it in
2 days and as they had shipped it on Thursday they would do nothing for me

~~~
sologoub
If there is a guaranteed delivery date, they have to honor it.

This was a couple of years ago - I ordered replacement computer parts to get a
failed laptop up and running for a critical timeline. The parts didn’t arrive
so I had to search for them and over pay locally. Amazon issued a full refund
and told me to keep the parts since they were already in transit.

Not sure if the story would be the same if the items were not sold by Amazon
directly, but instead via the marketplace.

~~~
lovich
>If there is a guaranteed delivery date, they have to honor it.

They don't really have to do anything. I have no power to compel any action
from them and I live in the US so it's not like I can expect the government to
enforce the rules either unless Amazon starts pissing off other rich people or
starts hurting a whole lot of people a whole lot of times.

My only real recourse is to stop purchasing items from Amazon which stops
future problems but doesn't do anything to fix what already occurred.

Between actions like this and increasing prevalance of counterfeit items on
Amazon an increasing number of people in my social circle are limiting their
purchases on Amazon to commodities like toilet paper and buying anything else
where quality or timeliness matter in other stores/websites

~~~
niij
>commodities like toilet paper

Why don't you just buy this at the store in town? It's cheaper and probably
takes less time to just throw that in your cart while at the store anyway. How
much time do you save by buying that online?

~~~
lovich
No vehicle and it's bulky. My shopping is usually limited by volume. Amazon
has become a provider to me of large volume goods that dont have a failure
mode that can hurt me much or items that are cheap enough that I don't care
about them.

If a market shows up in the development near my building then I don't know if
I'd even get those commodities from Amazon anymore

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helianer
I’m pretty surprised by Amazon’s reaction to them. This is clearly a rip-off
transaction, and Amazon has always been pretty customer friendly with me.

~~~
giarc
I would take that claim with a grain of salt. The person already claims that
she didn't agree to $1000 shipping, but I think it's safe to say that there
wasn't a glitch with Amazon's payment processing, she just didn't see it.

~~~
ikeboy
It is not safe to say that. I've been tracking this glitch for months and I
estimate millions of dollars in fraudulent shipping charges have been added by
sellers exploiting this glitch.

I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't test ordered and seen the charges with
my own eyes.

Edit: go to [https://www.amazon.com/Scalpmaster-Shampoo-Brush-Purple-
Coun...](https://www.amazon.com/Scalpmaster-Shampoo-Brush-Purple-
Count/dp/B000NJG82W/?th=1). Place a 1-click order. Verify for yourself.

~~~
EpiphanyMachine
I can confirm this. It is an item for $0.01 with free shipping. Once you add
it to your cart and go to checkout it adds $10 in shipping fees.

I got a generic response from support about sellers setting their own prices.
I do not know if the "concern team" will actually look into this or get back
to me but my question is being sent to them.

I will no longer be using 1-click ordering until I know this issue is
resolved.

This seems at best a very bad bug / loophole for sellers to exploit or at
worst a deceptive scam to steal from people. I hope Amazon takes this
seriously and fixes it.

~~~
Buge
Also doing a 1 click purchase purchases it for $0.01 + $9.80 shipping, but the
$9.80 shipping never shows up on the product page, during the purchase, or on
the purchase completed page. You only see the $9.81 if you navigate to your
purchase history and see it there.

~~~
HEHENE
I experienced the same thing. Here is my chat transcript:

\---

Me: I placed a 1­Click order and was charged more than the advertised price.

Prashant: Hi, I’m Prashant, I’ll be glad to help you from here

Prashant: May I've the last four digits of the order ID?

Me: 5844 For the Scalpmaster Shampoo Brush

Prashant: I see the item is being sold and shipped by a third party seller
HEHENE who is charging

Me: The listing said “$0.01 & FREE Shipping” but I was charged $9.81

Prashant: $9.80 as shipping and handling.

Me: But the listing says “FREE Shipping” specifically

Prashant: Let me quickly check this for you.

Prashant: In this case, what best we can do is to refund the shipping and
charges once the item is delivered.

Me: Ok, because I feel like this is false advertising. I clicked the “buy with
one click” button expecting to be charged exactly what was shown (“$0.01 &
FREE Shipping) but I was not.

Me: So you’re saying I should file a complaint once it shows up?

Prashant: I certainly understand your concern.

Prashant: You just need to contact us here and we will refund the shipping
charges.

Me: Haven’t I just contacted you?

Prashant: We can refund the amount once the item is delivered.

~~~
Something1234
That sounds like a robot or a person on a very tightly controlled chat script.
Both are bad choices.

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Johnny555
I've seen some pretty insane expedited shipping fees - like $150 to get 2-3
day expedited shipping on an iPad vs free 5 - 6 day shipping, I always
wondered if anyone actually paid those fees.

I guess some people don't pay attention to the charge.

I've never seen multiple hundreds of dollars or more -- Amazon really should
have some reasonable cap.

I'd be surprised if Amazon didn't show the exorbitant shipping fee to the
person in this article, she probably wasn't paying attention and just clicked
through assuming that it was going to be the usual Prime $5.99 next day
shipping upcharge or similar.

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sgeisler
This also highlights one of the most ridiculous properties of many payment
methods/how we handle money in general. Both credit cards and bank accounts
allow others to just "pull" money from them [0]. To me this is such a silly
feature (bug): it's like letting anyone send emails in your name if you don't
regularly check your sent folder to cancel fraudulent outgoing mails.

The story described in the article would not have happened if our payment
methods were all "push"-based. E.g. if you want to protect buyer and seller, a
protocol could look like this:

1\. select items to buy

2\. send money to a trusted 3rd party (e.g. amazon)

3\. the vendor ships the items or you can claim back your money in a
predefined time frame

This could even be done without a trusted third party if the used money was
programmable [1].

[0] having grown up in Germany where cash and debit cards are the main payment
methods (and knowing much securer systems), finding out about this was quite a
shock back then

[1]
[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Multisignature](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Multisignature)

~~~
calvano915
I'm all for improving the consumer experience but I don't see how this case
would have gone differently. The likeliest scenario is the woman making the
purchase did not notice the shipping charge when adding to cart and going
through checkout. Perhaps something happened where the seller was able to
modify the free shipping to the actual charge but as someone who has used
Amazon and sold on Amazon for years, this is not likely/usual.

I've discovered deeper in the comments that using 1-click to purchase allows
for sellers to add shipping fees later that do not appear to the purchaser
unless they check their order history (It says shipping is FREE on the product
page but this is not actually the case). I've never used 1-click so this is
why I haven't experienced this problem before.

~~~
sgeisler
> but I don't see how this case would have gone differently

If you have to make a conscious decision to transfer money first before they
ship anything I guess you would notice that $1000 for some plates is a bit
much.

A good example for this is paypal (even though I don't like them as a
middleman): whenever I pay something using it I am redirected to their website
and am shown what I will pay to whom in return for what and money only leaves
my account if I confirm the transfer.

> 1-click to purchase

Well, 1-click buying is an anti-feature for me: it promotes impulsive, non-
batched and probably quite often unnecessary buying and makes the whole
process less transparent (what lead to this incident).

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13of40
Unlike eBay they don't have a highest cost+shipping option, but I just went
there and the highest priced paper plates from a third party are about $8000
for 96 plates with about $2 shipping.

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hmd_imputer
It is interesting. I would have imagined that Amazon refunded it right away,
with a free 2 months of Prime membership extension as an apology. Most of my
interactions with Amazon Customer Service has been nothing short of perfect.
Just the other day, I called to complain that an item that was marked as
"delivered" actually wasn't delivered at all. Within 3 minutes, I got a
complete refund and also a free 1-month Amazon prime extension.

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40acres
Sounds like a UI/UX problem to me.. I have prime & don't really do third party
shipping and I've had no problems of this sort.

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sudonim
Is the seller trying to trick people in to buying paper plates? Or is that
just one of the ways people launder money using Amazon?

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catchmeifyoucan
They need to send an email to:

jeff@amazon.com

~~~
Cd00d
I did that for an item where the price had gone up to gouging territory
(k-cups from 60cents/cup to well over $6/cup), and outlined my concerns:
anxiety about subscribe and save prices, reluctance to Alexa order, and
refusal of Dash buttons because I couldn't be assured of fair or stable
pricing.

Amazon's response was: "With sellers on Amazon, we do allow them to sell their
products for the price they feel is fair."

~~~
catchmeifyoucan
Amazon's response isn't too outrageous. I completely agree that it is unfair
to the consumer, but it isn't unheard of. Unless those k-cups are a monopoly
owned by Amazon, they can't really regulate prices for them. If gas prices
rise, I can't call the CEO of Exxon to bring them down. Same thing applies for
Uber Surge pricing. That's just how our economy works these days.

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hughes
> The Galloways now suggest you take a screen shot so you can prove later that
> you did not agree to any additional charges.

Does Amazon actually take action based on an easily manipulated screenshot?

~~~
rnotaro
They know that they are right.

~~~
giarc
Who is right? The couple or Amazon?

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denverkarma
I’ve had Amazon Prime since the day it came out, but I’m seriously considering
abandoning Amazon now. The ability to search and find items has deteriorated
noticeably in the last two years as a hundred similar knockoffs appear for
every search, and I feel I have to triple check the process to avoid fraud.

I don’t enjoy the experience of shopping in a marketplace that is full of
scammers and fraud.

I wish Amazon understood that.

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manigandham
Side note: what a horrible standard of news quality here. This should be about
3 sentences, not hundreds of words and a TV interview. This is why most local
news is ridiculous.

~~~
jsmthrowaway
The article is a slightly edited transcript of what aired in the TV package
and appeared in the teleprompter, which is the only strategy most local
newsrooms can afford to do. Write once, publish twice. It’s not print
journalism, it’s copy intended to hook television viewing interest, and that
style does work.

If local news quality bothers you, be more bothered that the person who did
the translation almost certainly pulls minimum wage, while the slightly more
notable person reading the same thing negotiated a significant contract. I
used to write these for $9.50/hour in 2005, for a producer pulling about $13,
while the anchor reading them and doing approximately nothing else was arguing
over $5 million in their renewal. And the gutting of local hadn’t even
_started_ yet. Now most shops can’t even afford photographers and have their
reporters shoot their own stories, probably close to minimum wage _themselves_
if they’re fresh from J school.

You think you’re going to get Peter Baker quality reporting in that scenario?
You think that newsroom is empowered to develop source relationships and
produce reporting that effects social change? They’re covering a shipping
overcharge in an investigative feature, for crying out loud. The stylistic
technique is far from why local news is ridiculous, and that’s a very shallow
assessment.

There’s a clear path to fixing local news but the market won’t permit it, on
account of it being a market, not to mention the whole battalion of news
directors terrified of change and wondering why their 1994 Eyewitness News
rundowns don’t work any more, all the while sweating about how much more the
only marketable face is going to ask for when the next book comes out. A lot
of it is self-inflicted, but a lot isn’t. But don’t worry, it’ll die. The
aforementioned anchor reminded me of this when I was reconsidering the
industry again. He now does real estate and begged me not to go back.

~~~
manigandham
I'm not sure what your point is. I know they are short on resources, which is
precisely why they shouldn't so much time and effort on a story about scammy
shipping on paper plates.

~~~
acqq
What would you do instead, in their position?

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manigandham
Write 3 sentences. Or skip it. Or put work into a real investigative story
about Amazon/online ecommerce scams.

