
Scammers Game Amazon A-Z Policy By Replacing iPhones With Clay - coryfklein
http://coryklein.com/2016/06/20/scammers-replacing-iphones-with-clay.html
======
jliptzin
This happened to me about 5 years ago on ebay when selling an iPhone. I was an
eBay member since 1999, 100% positive feedback, occasional seller (about once
a month). I sold a perfectly fine iPhone, buyer with no feedback history
complains to eBay he never received the phone despite tracking showing it was
delivered. He also leaves me negative feedback (in broken English). eBay sided
with the buyer immediately and attempted to withdraw the money out of my
paypal account which I'd fortunately already withdrawn. They demanded for over
a year that I pay them the money they claim I owe them or they'd destroy my
credit. Fuck eBay, fuck PayPal, terrible companies that should have gone out
of business long ago.

~~~
kingnothing
When World of Warcraft was released, I had the same thing happen to me. It was
a hot item and my local retailer happened to have it on the shelves, so I
bought 10 extra copies and sold the CD keys on ebay for about 3x retail
pricing. Almost half of the keys I sold were allegedly bought from Paypal
customers who "had their accounts hacked", so ebay withdrew the money from my
account and refunded it to the buyers leaving me without merchandise or money.

Seriously: Fuck eBay.

~~~
chdir
> bought 10 extra copies and sold the CD keys on ebay for about 3x retail
> pricing

> ebay withdrew the money from my account and refunded it to the buyers

Wicked karma :)

When Nexus 4 was launched, I ended up with multiple devices (automated
parallel purchases). It gave a lot of joy to sell them at cost (on craigslist)
rather than cancel my purchase or pocket the premium they could've fetched.

~~~
kingnothing
Karma? That's just good business sense. Buy low sell high.

~~~
chdir
I think of these practices as "Hoarding" & "Price Gouging" rather than
business sense. More like taking advantage of people without adding any value
to the trade.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoarding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoarding)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging)

------
soyiuz
I've had a similar thing happened to me a few years back when I sold a no
longer needed but still unopened Windows Vista DVD that I purchased directly
from MS Store (on Microsoft campus). The buyer returned the package, but the
returned merchandize was clearly counterfeit. The box was of a light material,
missing holograms, faded colors etc. The buyer's history was full of similar
purchases.

I've been careful about documenting shipments since. Overall, I am reluctant
to sell on Amazon these days because of the A-Z guarantee, which is only
sustainable for large sellers.

Fraud is a sticky problem at scale. A few bad actors poison the well for
everyone. As a buyer I appreciate Amazon's policies, but as an occasional
seller I find them completely draconian. There is very little you can do to
contest a decision against you.

~~~
ndesaulniers
The same could be said for eBay. Buyer of my MBP opened a claim against me
cause I didn't include the OS install disks (which Apple stopped shipping
years earlier). Had to bend over backwards to prevent this con artist from
keeping the laptop and money. Now I don't sell shit on eBay.

~~~
thenomad
I recently decided not to sell several expensive bits of electronics on eBay
because multiple people warned me about this sort of fraud.

Real pity because it's hard to know _where_ to sell that sort of thing these
days.

~~~
Pyxl101
What if there was an EBay like action site where you couldn't just sign up,
and rather someone had to "vouch" for you? When fraud starts happening, you
can see who vouched them in and shut down the network. If people start selling
vouches online, then you suspend both them and the person who had the bad
judgment to vouch them in originally. (maybe they can keep using the site, but
not vouch, etc.)

The site would also collect identifying information about everyone who
transacts while using it. Maybe phone number, or driver license photo. You are
not allowed to have more than one account, although you can have multiple
"personas" if you wish, each with their own ratings. (but creating multiple
personas cannot fool site anti-abuse staff, who can all obviously see the same
account behind it) Creating an account is hard. The site would employ advanced
protections against account takeover.

Whenever you buy and sell from someone, perhaps you can see the "7 degrees of
Kevin Bacon" style interpersonal connections that link you to them via
vouches. If fraud happens, it makes all of your connections look bad, and
there would be an incentive for them to shun you, if they care about retaining
their access to the site. When fraudsters get onto the platform, you can
always trace their vouches back to the "bad apple" who showed poor judgment
and began inviting the wrong certain people. Indeed, perhaps in order to
retain access to the platform overtime, you have to keep getting vouches every
once in a while.

Big sites would not use these policies since they would invoice friction on
purchases in result in lower conversion. But perhaps there is a niche
somewhere for a highly trusted online auction house.

I wonder how far a system like this could go in stamping out fraud online. It
seems like the problem with fraudsters is that they can always keep coming
back with new accounts that everyone is forced to treat with the certain
default degree of trust, and then the fraudsters exploit that. If you made it
difficult for each person in the world to have more than one account on the
service, then anyone engaging in repeat fraud would very quickly stand out as
such. (As many personas as you want, but only one account)

~~~
derekp7
This sounds like something that social network sites such as FB could get
into.

~~~
jpindar
Or nextdoor. Which reminds me, I want to get more of my neighbors to join
that.

~~~
DugFin
YMMV with Nextdoor . THe only thing I can vouch for about my neighbors on
Nextdoor is that they're all batshit insane racists.

~~~
powvans
Sounds like me might be neighbors.

Seriously boggles the mind what people are willing to say on Nextdoor.

------
ericabiz
I wrote about this back in 2013 (and made it to the front page of HN):
"Scammed By Amazon’s 'A-to-Z Guarantee'"

[https://medium.com/this-happened-to-me/scammed-by-
amazons-a-...](https://medium.com/this-happened-to-me/scammed-by-amazons-a-to-
z-guarantee-759e4b63a925)

tl;dr I sold my old cell phone on Amazon and the buyer claimed it was stolen.
Amazon refunded him in full and took the money out of my bank account.

I also sold a computer on Amazon around the same time and the buyer tried to
do the same thing. That one I caught and argued successfully for, but it was
still a pain to go back and forth.

I had another laptop I wanted to sell online, but because of these two
experiences I was really gun-shy. I ended up stuffing it in a cabinet for over
a year and eventually sold it to a friend for significantly less than I would
have sold it for online--but at least I knew I wouldn't get scammed.

I've had better luck with the Amazon trade-in program, especially since they
sometimes do incentives. I've traded in two Kindles and ended up getting a new
Paperwhite for only about $40-50 after all the incentives from both old
Kindles were in my account.

------
Someone1234
These might be buyer scammers, or sellers themselves have been scammed
upstream. This article is right you'd have to be bonkers to try and pull this
on Amazon as a seller. But he's assuming the seller knows there is no iPhone
in the sealed box.

Perhaps Amazon Sellers are attempting to buy iPhones on the grey market at a
discount, in order to resell them on Amazon at a profit. However the person
they're dealing with upstream is actually shipping them clay or similar and
plans to disappear when discovered.

Don't get me wrong, buyer scams exist, and that might be what is happening
here. But why even post a review at all? The A-Z guidelines don't require it.
He's also making the assumption that an Amazon Seller is going to open a
sealed phone, or that their channels never get fraud in them.

~~~
coryfklein
> Perhaps Amazon Sellers are attempting to buy iPhones on the grey market at a
> discount, in order to resell them on Amazon at a profit. However the person
> they're dealing with upstream is actually shipping them clay or similar and
> plans to disappear when discovered.

I hadn't considered this possibility, but it is definitely possible as well. I
see it as less likely, because the Amazon Seller that is the responsible party
would probably get flagged for fraud and their account disabled. Additionally
- the profiles of the buyers posting the reviews raises suspicion on their
part.

> But why even post a review at all? The A-Z guidelines don't require it.

Claims that aren't resolved between buyer and seller involve a customer
service individual from Amazon. If the buyer can point to pictures/reviews
they posted, it likely strengthens their case and encourages the customer
service to resolve in their favor, especially when the seller has no
alternative picture evidence.

~~~
joemi
How exactly are the profiles of the buyers posting the reviews raising
suspicions?

You realize that the "buyer profiles" you're mentioning are actually "reviewer
profiles" that only list what other reviews that buyer has posted. It does not
tell you a buyer's history (unless they post a review for an item), nor does
it tell you when they signed up. It's not uncommon for people who have been
using Amazon for years to never post any reviews, at least not until they're
disappointed by their purchase.

And I'm not so sure that pointing to a review they posted strengthens an A-z
Claim, at all. If images played a role, they'd let buyers upload an image when
filing a claim, but they don't let that happen. They just let you fill in info
about the shipment and then give you 2000 characters to explain the claim.

That said, Amazon definitely sides with the buyer most of the time. Filing a
claim makes it so that the seller is automatically guilty unless they can
prove otherwise. Auxiliary proof of wrong-doing is not necessary at all,
especially since, as you mentioned, most sellers do not have proof that they
_didn't_ ship the clay.

------
ChuckMcM
As others have pointed out, dealing with fraud at scale is really really
difficult. As a result its cost are often priced into sales (either
transaction costs or product costs).

While the privacy implications are large, it is an area where the more data
around the transaction can identify systemic fraud. (which is to say organized
group that spread their activity across a wide area to keep it below the radar
of fraud detection algorithms).

In the case of phones, the seller has a lot of power. They can record the
serial number/IMEI data from the box prior to selling it. At which point you
can track where the phone is and if its being used. The challenge has always
been taking action against the scammers. So perhaps there is a startup idea
for a private investigation group in large cities that would go get scammers
and recover merchandise. Such action would quickly reveal if the scammers were
part of a larger organization or acting independently.

~~~
thebokehwokeh2
> So perhaps there is a startup idea for a private investigation group in
> large cities that would go get scammers and recover merchandise. Such action
> would quickly reveal if the scammers were part of a larger organization or
> acting independently.

You mean the police?

~~~
ChuckMcM
I would, if the police were filling that particular niche. As most police
departments have limited funds, simple economics steers them to putting their
resources on the highest impact cases. So "Some guy defrauded me when
{buying|selling} an iPhone." is below the activation threshold for the police.

But investigating these "small time" frauds benefits from scale. And like the
company that was fixing parking tickets (normally a time consuming and costly
exercise for the ticket receiver) by apply resources across a lot of people
with parking tickets, I could imagine an equivalent "fraud fighter" business
where the "fee" was 1/2 the recovered value. So the company investigates 1000
fraudulent amazon sales in the greater New York area, lets say they can prove
half the time that it was fraud and get the appropriate fraud protection
coverage to kick in. If they keep 50% of that value, they have now a revenue
stream that is 25% of the defrauded value.

The mechanic here is that small time fraud allows millions (maybe billions) to
be siphoned out of the commercial shopping stream. That burden is generally
born by the sellers who raise prices to cover their losses. If a startup can
mitigate those losses by 50%, and the seller is willing to split the
mitigation 50/50 with the startup, then the seller has 25% less "loss due to
fraud" and the startup has 25% of revenue from defeating fraud. It takes money
out of the fraud pipeline.

When larger fraud rings are uncovered by the startup they can hand them off to
the police who are willing to go after multi-million dollar criminal
enterprises.

------
AJ007
Interesting conclusion to the article. I stopped buying Apple items off Amazon
a really long time ago because they let counterfeit chargers list as real
Apple products and did jack shit about it. To some extent this has begun
flowing in to other product categories for me as well.

"Meanwhile, the product page is flooded with fraudelent (sp) reviews,
poisoning the well and moving future customers away from Amazon and towards
trusted Apple retailers. Amazon and customers lose, but Apple possibly gets
more customers."

~~~
r00fus
Same situation with "authentic" Apple earpods (which run about 30-50% of the
Apple MSRP).

I'm surprised Amazon hasn't been sued by Apple for still allowing these to be
sold.

~~~
hh2222
Watch out for counterfit memory cards too. The jerks openly label them
Sandisk, Kingston etc., but of course they are junk. I am puzzled why Amazon
can't "follow the money" and completely shutdown these crooks.

~~~
r00fus
I would assume they're following their own money. Still not sure why the name
brands (Sandisk, Apple, etc) can't just sue Amazon for contributing to the
trademark infringements...

------
codecamper
Another thing that could be done... is that shippers could help out.

UPS, Fedex, USPS could all offer last step photo verification of packages, as
a service. A few more dollars and you get a photo of what is inside and the
handler packs the box up.

~~~
codingdave
That opens up opportunities for package handlers to start stealing stuff. For
the most part, employees of UPS, Fedex, etc are not allowed to open packages
(with international shipments being the exception, when they check for customs
compliance). Your suggestion would be a massive policy change, possibly
regulatory changes, and would open up more holes in the system.

~~~
unabst
Indeed. Not to mention that content swapping fraud is also incredibly rare.

------
bambax
This doesn't make much sense: why would supposedly fraudulent buyers bother
with leaving a (public) review with photos of the clay??

This is not only a waste of time and energy but could potentially be harmful
to them since it's usually possible to extract clues from a photograph.

Isn't it possible that the story is rather this:

\- bad buyer 1 buys a phone, takes the phone out of the case, replaces it with
clay, re-seals the box and returns it, claiming he didn't even open it

\- seller restocks the package without verifying it

\- good buyer 2 buys what they think is an iPhone and turns out to be a box
full of clay, is upset and leaves a review

~~~
cloudsloth
Edit: sorry for re-stating some of your points. I'm sort of delirious with a
head cold right now.

What's pretty interesting is that it could be both.

Sellers get's a return. Upon receiving returned item they check that packaging
is still sealed and when it is, they send it back to amazon's fulfillment
center to be sold again.

Amazon receives the item. Amazon's system (obviously) doesn't open boxes. They
at the very most check the barcode, visually inspect for sealed box, and check
weight.

 _Now the items are co-mingled with other new items_

Now a buyer can receive a box of clay when they buy from an entirely different
seller.

Co-mingled items allow for a ton of fraud. They also save Amazon a lot of
money on logistics. They make prime shipping possible. For Amazon, the
acceptable rate of fraud is very high because everyone wants to be on their
marketplace (huge sales volume) and the system they use allows them to offer
such value at such a low cost.

------
jimrandomh
There are a couple hypotheses the author hasn't considered. It's possible the
buyer stole the phone, yes, but it's also possible that it was a warehouse
company employee, a shipping company employee, or a previous buyer who made a
return.

~~~
coryfklein
It's true, there are other possibilities. I found the given explanation most
likely though: iPhones are all sold by 3rd party sellers on Amazon, so the
alternatives you suggest likely wouldn't present as several buyers reporting
on a single product that has multiple seller locations.

~~~
ikeboy
If they were fulfilled by Amazon, it could be people returning, Amazon not
opening the box and then shipping it to the next buyer.

~~~
joemi
Also Fulfillment-By-Amazon explains that review that mentions "barcode was
covered by fake barcode"... All FBA items must cover up any original barcode
with Amazon's FNSKU barcode. Either the sellers do it themselves before
shipping to Amazon, or they pay a small fee to Amazon to put the barcodes on.

~~~
ikeboy
You could use commingled inventory and then it doesn't need a label if there's
already a barcode.

------
username3
Trusted buyers. Amazon can have options for sellers to only sell to buyers
that have bought from Amazon X amount of times or X years.

~~~
incongruity
Or maybe - Prime members?

It's less likely a scammer will pay for prime - it certainly reduces the
profit margins for them.

IMHO Amazon could use this to their advantage - reduce fraud risk for sellers
when selling to Prime members and encourage a 2% discount for them or
something similar...

------
bdrool
Amazon is complete crap these days.

It's becoming more and more difficult to figure out who you are buying from,
and as a result there are outright scams sitting on Amazon's store _at this
moment_ that they continue to do nothing about:

[https://www.amazon.ca/ORIGINAL-MACBOOK-Magsafe-ADAPTER-
CHARG...](https://www.amazon.ca/ORIGINAL-MACBOOK-Magsafe-ADAPTER-
CHARGER/dp/B011J9W1H0/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1458520459&sr=8-13&keywords=macbook+pro+charger)

See that? That's the infamous "dangerous" counterfeit Apple Macbook charger
that made the rounds[1][2] a while back. Notice how it says "by Apple-
Computers"? This is a scam. It's not by Apple. It's a dangerous fire-hazard
knockoff. Yet it's tagged in a way that will no doubt mislead people into
thinking it's safe and "official". People were pointing this out months
ago[3], yet it's still there on Amazon's store, no doubt along with countless
other dangerous misleadingly-branded ripoffs.

This is fraud, pure and simple. And Amazon continues to profit from it, right
out in the open. It's disgusting.

    
    
      [1] http://www.righto.com/2016/03/counterfeit-macbook-charger-teardown.html
      [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11325150
      [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11325464

~~~
anon1234321
It's the same deplorable ethics that Youtube used to rise to where they are
today. It was probably the biggest copyright heist in history. Almost all of
their traffic was to illegally uploaded music videos and they knew it. They
put up so many procedural barriers to effective takedown that content owners
gave up and accepted YouTube's licensing terms, because you'd rather make
something than nothing.

(Of course, now that their place as a/the top video site is secured, and now
that they've strong-armed everyone into licensing to YouTube, they've stepped
up enforcement, so they can pretend to be good citizens. It's like a mobster
turning around and using some of his ill-gotten gains for charity.)

~~~
striking
Artists have historically made little money on the music itself, turning
instead to franchising and concert tickets to really bring in the big bucks.

This isn't the best article for explaining it, but it's better than nothing.
[http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/9-ways-musicians-
act...](http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/9-ways-musicians-actually-
make-money-today-20120828/perfume-19691231)

Why are songs on the radio played for free? Because copyright in music
actually hardly matters. "Real fans" end up buying piles of merchandise or
going to concerts anyway.

(Disclosure: I pay for Google Music. I don't pirate music, and don't advocate
it. But it can hardly be construed as "hurting artists.")

~~~
anon1234321
How about hurting the record companies, who front most of the capital for
artists, pay them salaries, etc.

~~~
pyre
> pay them salaries

You must not know much about how the recording industry works. The record
companies "pay" artists by giving them _lending_ them money, the payments for
which are deducted from their royalty percentage (e.g. the record company take
90% of the cost of the CD, and the artist gets 10%, then the "loan payment"
comes out of the artist's 10% royalty).

~~~
anon1234321
What you think of the terms between artists and labels is not really relevant
to the matter at hand. No one is forced to sign with a big label. If you want
someone's money, then you have to be willing to play by their rules. If the
contract terms are too one-sided, then other labels would undercut the
competition by offering better terms. This is what happens.

But again, totally irrelevant to YouTube's massive copyright heist. There's no
justification for basing your business model on copyright infringement. No
justification for having an asinine takedown system that doesn't change the
fact that the top result will be yet another illegal copy of the video you
just spent forever trying to get taken down.

~~~
effingwewt
It's incredibly obvious you have a dog in this fight and are incredibly
biased. It's well known almost every recording artist gets screwed, and that
it's easier to fight fans than their bosses. Take what you've written about
startup youtube, and applied it to TODAY'S youtube, but flipped it to be
100000% anti-consumer, you'd be on the right track. Thanks to your record
companies, I can no longer broadcast my gameplay if the game itself has coded-
in music, because my video will get flagged as stolen content. If I'm
recording a 3 hour video, and a friend walks in and his ringtone goes off and
happens to be 4 secs of a song....I now have my entire video removed for
content theft, though I've never done such a thing.

This all happened thanks to the Viacom lawsuit[1], which forced youtube to be
the most pro-recording industry, and anti-consumer popular site ever. Now, an
automated bot trolls everyone's videos for any knid of match, and if flagged
the video is automatically taken down unless you file an appeal. In other
words, guilty until proven innocent. Unless you are a record label, then it's
innocent until proven guilty.

Did you miss the Family Guy fiasco[2], where they used a 7 year old video of
Nintendo gameplay footage in the show, the bot saw it as "Fox Owned", and had
it removed for copyright infringement.

The youtube era you describe was for a few months-years. We've been dealing
with the bullshit youtube became EVER SINCE. Forgive me if the complaints of a
record company insider (in whatever capacity you may be), falls on deaf ears.

This is reminiscent of Lars Ulrich complaining about Napster and the internet
in general. Only even he admitted he was wrong about that.

[1] [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-viacom-lawsuit-
idUS...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-viacom-lawsuit-
idUSBREA2H11220140318)

[2] [https://consumerist.com/2016/05/20/fox-swipes-youtube-
clip-o...](https://consumerist.com/2016/05/20/fox-swipes-youtube-clip-of-
video-game-for-family-guy-then-demands-copyright-takedown-of-original/)

~~~
anon1234321
I actually have exactly zero skin in this game. I'm no fan of current
copyright law, with it's ridiculously long terms. I'm posting from a throwaway
because trashing Google, one of the biggest employers in the US, is a career-
limiting move.

------
aandon
My guess is sellers absorb this as a cost of doing business. As long as fraud
rates remain in low single digit percentage, it's probably not worth it for
the seller or Amazon to fight it.

It is always fun to dissect these scams. There's an interesting e-commerce
scam prevalent in India that popped up as the country embraced e-commerce
without much credit card infrastructure in place (most online orders are paid
to the delivery person in cash) [https://simility.com/delivery-
fraud](https://simility.com/delivery-fraud):

"The fraudster businesses ordered hundreds of products from the victim’s
website to be delivered on a daily basis. Meanwhile, if customers came into
their store asking for an out-of-stock product, they were told it would be in
stock later that day. Then the fraudsters paid the delivery person in cash for
the small fraction of products they had pre-sold to customers, while returning
the vast majority of unsold products without paying for them at the cost of
the e-commerce company, thus completing the delivery fraud cycle."

~~~
analog31
Indeed, fraud and shrinkage are costs of doing business for practically any
enterprise. My worst experience was being a nice guy and accepting a personal
check, which of course bounced, so I was out my cost-of-goods plus an
additional fee from the bank.

My main protection is that my cost-of-goods is about 1/5 of my selling price.
Also, it's a niche market product that would probably be hard to re-sell.
Because of my healthy mark-up, I can afford to handle practically any dispute
by offering a prompt refund.

It's tougher if you're not a retailer, but an individual selling a few items,
in which case you don't have a mark-up or the law of averages to fall back on.

------
codecamper
Amazon could set up some honey pots.. whereby they themselves send out the
product. They know its good.

If a customer tries to scam that one... then Amazon has found their scammer.

Also... I'm surprised that Amazon just hands out these sorts of refunds on big
ticket items. If I were them I'd require some sort of biometric data for the
refund.

~~~
nkozyra
But as the story relates, these people tend to set up new accounts each time.
There's little risk here involved for the scammer.

~~~
Maarten88
Can't they blacklist shipping addresses and/or credit cards? These people open
new accounts for a reason; I'd think Amazon could connect and analyze data to
discover and mark/blacklist scammers.

~~~
rtkwe
Hard to stop with pre-paid debit cards and PO boxes or mail forwarding
services. It'd be pretty easy to just open a new one PO/forwarding address and
use a different pre paid debit/VISA gift card to keep scamming.

------
laksjd
I'm going to guess this only works with sellers that aren't fulfilled by
Amazon? It's an annoyingly effective scam: How can sellers protect themselves?

~~~
tomjen3
Some shipper has to provide verified shipment as a service: you packaged will
be opened, a photo will be taken of the content and it will be packed and
sealed by the shipper.

~~~
joezydeco
And the shipper can't be an accomplice in this adventure? A collusion between
scammer and a dodgy shipper would work very well.

~~~
canuckintime
I believe the OP was implying a shipping service like USPS, FedEx, DHL etc
offering the feature. Amazon now has their own logistics delivery team too and
offering pickup with picture would be a logical next step to combat this scam.

------
profeta
given the amount of garbage amazon sells nowadays, if it didn't favoured the
buyer they would be gone by now.

Almost everything i buy that is not books i have to return once or twice until
i receive the item from a seller that is not trying to fence a couterfeit
version. This happens with $100 pro SD cards down to $15 arduinos clones
(which i think amazon still do not carry the original, but all ads show the
original in the picture)

~~~
JonathonW
Which is why I don't generally purchase from Amazon unless the item's shipped
and sold by Amazon or a third-party seller I trust (I only have a few of
those).

If I wanted to play the eBay "buy it now" roulette, I'd buy off eBay.

------
Animats
Why is Amazon even selling new iPhones from sources other than Apple? That's
eBay's job.

Looking on Amazon, I'm not seeing any iPhone 6 sellers other than Apple.

~~~
dangrossman
Neither Apple nor Amazon sell iPhones on Amazon as far as I can tell. _All_
the listings you see are third-party sellers. If you click on any of the
listings, you'll see the list of sellers in the right-hand column under the
checkout buttons.

Ex: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-
listing/B00NQGP3L6/ref=dp_ol...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-
listing/B00NQGP3L6/ref=dp_olp_all_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=all)

The "by Apple" under each listing in search results identifies the
manufacturer/brand, not who is selling the product or fulfilling the order.

------
tempestn
I doubt it would ever work in practice, but in theory this kind of thing could
be solved by having both parties deposit an additional say 20% of purchase
price to an escrow account. So buyer deposits 120% and seller deposits 20%.
Once buyer confirms receipt, 120% is sent to seller and 20% back to buyer.

If there is a problem, buyer can send the item back to the seller, and once
seller confirms (re-)receipt, they each get back their original contributions.
However, if buyer claims the item wasn't received and seller claims to have
sent it, the money remains in escrow. So the side that's lying doesn't
benefit. They actually lose 20%. And therefore there's no rational reason to
attempt this scam.

However, in the real world there are several problems. The person being
"scammed" would be out 120% of the value (whether they're the buyer or the
seller), which wouldn't fly with most people, even if the scam is
theoretically unlikely. It would also require significantly greater trust of
Amazon. Something like this might work with hyper-rational actors using
something like a bitcoin multi-sig address, but not for Amazon.

Which means I'm back to not seeing any perfect solution to this kind of
problem.

~~~
neolefty
How about X-raying expensive items before shipping?

------
swanson
Question: how _should_ a seller document and defend that they indeed shipped
an iPhone (not clay)?

~~~
Rzah
Amazon is handling the warehousing and shipping for a lot of this stuff, they
could xray the shipping box as it goes out, in the event of a dispute, it
would be pretty easy to check the scan to see if they shipped electronics or
clay.

~~~
phamilton
Sure, but then this just turns into "Bought iPhone 6s, received box with
iPhone 3s."

------
pyrophane
This sort of thing is why I pretty much only sell things like this locally,
in-person, and transact in cash. Buyer gets the chance to check out the item,
verify the serial number, and so on. I get the guarantee that if they walk out
happy it is a done deal.

No one has been able to improve upon this online. Sure, it can be more
convenient to sell online, and for people who sell at volume the cost of fraud
may be worth it, but for individuals who occasionally sell desirable items
that are likely targets of fraud, selling online is too fraught with risk.

------
jseliger
Interestingly, too, I noticed in 2013 that Amazon's general marketplace is
rife for abuse: [https://jakeseliger.com/2013/02/16/is-amazon-coms-
marketplac...](https://jakeseliger.com/2013/02/16/is-amazon-coms-marketplace-
encouraging-buyers-to-scam-sellers-by-filing-a-refund-claim/). I assume that
Amazon tracks the number of returns a particular account engages, but still, I
wouldn't sell anything of real value on the site.

------
nabaraz
I remember this being big on ebay days. How can retailers like Amazon/Ebay
verify neither sellers nor buyers are not getting scammed? I cant think of any
solution except intercept all packages and make sure the actual product is
there.

~~~
AJ007
One of my friends still sells on eBay and has buyers pulling scams regularly.
He lists stuff on message boards and other sources first, and uses eBay as a
last resort. Personally I haven't been a seller on eBay in close to a decade.

This isn't a solved problem but its certainly solvable because scammers should
be pulling the trick repeatedly.

------
Paul-ish
Do these buyers use the same shipping address multiple times? That seems like
a good way to track them. Alternatively, if they use something like a PO box,
you could disallow new accounts from shipping their first few things to a PO
box.

------
banku_brougham
somebody is going to get a ? in email soon

------
jedberg
When I worked at eBay, we constantly debated whether the policies should be
pro seller or pro buyer. You can't be both in a two sided market.

Throughout my time there, we switched back and forth, but ultimately decided
happy sellers brought in more revenue that happy buyers (but maybe that
changed again).

Apparently Amazon has decided to be pro buyer right now, which fits with their
general model of making happy customers.

~~~
gregmac
Why isn't it based more on a trust system? Amazon records a ton of information
about people..

Buyers with a history of claims should generally not be trusted when opening a
new claim, and likewise, sellers with a history of claims should not be
trusted.

New buyers and new sellers (no history) require some more scrutiny, but the
default should probably be to be skeptical as well.

When new, how hard is it to link an IP address (or some other fingerprint) as
likely to be from other accounts? Eg: new buyer/seller opens dispute, has no
history, but IP is linked to a no-longer active account that has a trail of
disputes... that's pretty fishy. I'd probably say that accounts from shared
addresses (internet cafes, coffee shops, etc) are probably also treated a
suspicious by default... an unfortunate side effect if nothing else.

~~~
mywittyname
You're right, it seems like there are a few cheap and easy fraud solutions.
You can probably trust the older account that makes regular purchases on
Amazon. I bet you can trust a long-time Amazon Prime member even more. Heck,
maybe "seller insurance" can be a feature of Prime.

Fraud is exactly the reason just let old electronics sit in my closet. I'd
rather let them rot than risk having to pay to give them to somebody else.

~~~
jedberg
> You're right, it seems like there are a few cheap and easy fraud solutions

You'll just have to take my word for it that eBay and Amazon, companies that
have been dealing with fraud since 1995, have implemented all of the cheap and
easy solutions. :)

------
capote
Partially related: Is anyone else bothered by the volume of negative reviews
on Amazon that simply target an individual seller rather than the product? All
instances of any product are covered by the same set of reviews, regardless
who the seller was, so reviews like this are totally unfair in dragging the
product's rating down.

Why doesn't Amazon have a policy against this?

------
Scirra_Tom
I wonder if the postal services could create an additional service which
calculates a heat map of the weight distribution for the package. You could
then very accurately I imagine determine if there is actually an iPhone in
there, and if someone shows a photo of clay it will be obvious they are
scamming if the weight distribution passed as an iPhone distribution during
transit.

~~~
soyiuz
One could then return broken iPhones. There needs to be stronger verification.

~~~
mikehollinger
Yep. This also wouldn't protect against the "it was damaged in transit" scam
either. Depending on how much time you had, I could see someone swapping just
enough of a working handset onto a broken handset to "prove" it is was broken,
then returning it.

------
ortusdux
I wonder if using Amazon's fulfillment service would help prevent against
this. It is possible to get merchandise directly delivered to a fulfillment
center from the vendor? It would be pretty easy for a seller to battle a fraud
claim if they can show that they never got within 500 miles of the product.

~~~
mikeash
While that certainly sounds like an effective way to prove that the seller
isn't at fault, I have to wonder just what purpose they actually serve in such
a scenario.

------
brador
The only solution is a verifying third party. Postal service could offer this
for a fee to make some easy money.

~~~
soyiuz
I would use this service. However, see my comment above. How would the Postal
Service verify counterfeit merchandise, for example?

~~~
VLM
Gray market would be a ... gray area.

This took some work to find, but I found it:

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HT4BF4U](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HT4BF4U)

Its a control theory textbook for $44 from a 3rd party. Which is a pretty good
deal because the "real" book sitting on my desk is somewhat more expensive.

[https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Control-Systems-13th-
Richard/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Control-Systems-13th-
Richard/dp/0134407628)

In very tiny letters the cover of the cheap version reads "Circulation of this
edition outside the Indian Subcontinent is Unauthorized"

Something I find hilarious is the grey market edition is full of reviews that
boil down to "this textbook sux and I hate my prof" but the genuine edition
has one review by one guy who probably doesn't exist because if you click thru
his reviews all look like stereotypical three word filler material.

------
rietta
Gosh. It's almost worth it to never resell anything. Just throw old
electronics away even though that's bad for the environment and squanders
value both for the owner of no longer needed gear and the potential new user
of it. The world would be so much nicer if everyone were honest dealing.

~~~
x3sphere
Well I've sold a lot on Amazon and eBay with success, probably like $40K worth
of computer equipment over the last 10 years. Never been scammed or had any
complaints. Guess I've been lucky.

------
silveira
It is also possible that the buyer is a seller of iPhones and is trying to get
rid of competition.

------
hackerweb
But a lot of the negative reviews for the linked seller seem to be about a
locked or blacklisted phone, or one with the wrong amount of storage. Those
customers would presumably have to send back their phones, so what's the
buyer-side fraud there?

~~~
yuubi
Buy phone, claim it's locked/blacklisted, return locked/blacklisted phone, get
refund, profit?

------
vblord
I can't believe that this works at all. I imagine that between an established
seller and a brand new buyer, Amazon would be on the side of the seller. In
the cases where the buyer wins, who pays the cost of the device (the seller or
Amazon)?

~~~
makomk
This would allow sellers to carry out selective scamming: send buyers with
longstanding accounts genuine iPhones, send new buyers boxes with clay and
pocket the cash. Not so common on mainstream sites because it's hard to get
away with currently, but apparently used to be rife on darknet marketplaces.

~~~
ensignavenger
Do sellers know the buyers history with Amazon?

~~~
ikeboy
No. If you have a database of old buyers you can see who's bought from you in
the past, but otherwise you only have a name and address.

------
WalterBright
You'd think with all the datamining Amazon does, this would be a worthwhile
problem to solve with it. After all, it is good for Amazon if people can trust
their transactions there.

------
sharms
This isn't an Amazon only problem, same with Ebay etc. I would love to hear
how people can sell items online safely (for the time being I only use
Craigslist for this exact reason)

~~~
MrMullen
I sell my wife's and my old iPhones and Android every couple of years and what
I do is take pictures of the serial number and send it to the buyer after they
have paid for the device. Sends a message that I have documentation on what
the device is and I can report it stolen if they try pull a scam on me. It
also helps the buyer because they can check to see if the phone is reported
stolen before even taking possession of the device.

------
w8rbt
There are too many counterfeits and schemes like this on Amazon. Finding a
reliable seller that has a legitimate product and a good reputation has become
almost impossible.

------
lordnacho
Maybe I'm being naive, but won't there be a record of the address the item was
delivered to? And credit card details? How do you avoid that?

~~~
lost_name
You can get service from a 're-shipper' to mask your address and use gift
cards or other prepaid cards to hide the credit card info.

------
n-gauge
So is the clay endorsed with the fingerprints of the scammer?

------
balls187
Looking at the reviews, many have only left a single review.

