Cheap 3rd party Items
Folks, welcome back to Fraud Fridays! Today on the docket: Cheap 3rd party items on Amazon! We all love our future’s dystopian, business daddy! From their warehouse to your door, you can generally rely on their hardy couriers to deliver your goods safe, or at least sound. Most of the time, you find the item(s) you want from their website, make the order, and wait for that greyish blue van to come by. Sometimes, they never come. You sit on your phone or PC, constantly refreshing the page, the ever-present hope that the knock will come at any second. “Running Late.” With each passing tick, the worry growing. You’ve now refreshed so many times that you’ve memorized all four hotkeys to refresh. Where is your package? Simply put, it will never come.
It is never fun when the item you paid for falls short, or worse, never arrives. I have unfortunately run into this scam many times, largely due to the amount of out-of-country purchases I make. It is important to note that this scam is not Amazon exclusive. Variations of this scam can be found on any website that host sales. So, what’s the scam? It broadly boils down to three categories that we will be covering today.
The first scenario: The seller marks the items as shipped and sends a fake tracking number or a real tracking number on an undeliverable package. Amazon releases the funds to the seller upon shipment, and the seller disappears. From here, you experience the run around briefly covered above. You will have to take steps to contact Amazon, and Amazon ultimately refunds your money.
The second: The seller immediately cancels the order and instructs you to re-order the item directly from their website, usually with the guarantee that the order is still protected by Amazon. As soon as the order is placed again, the seller takes your money and runs. In your fury, you remember them claiming that the order is still protected by Amazon. Upon contacting Amazon, they inform you that they do not offer protection on items sold outside of Amazon and cannot help you. In this scenario, you end up eating the full cost of the scam.
The third: The seller immediately cancels the order and instructs you to instead send payment via an unused Amazon gift card by sending the code on the back via email. Once the seller uses the code, the money on the card is gone and cannot be refunded. This is a mix of two scams now. They are now running a gift card scam alongside the 3rd party item scam. In this event, you are once again liable for the cost of the scam.
In two of three scenarios, the cost falls to the victim to eat. The scammers run off with all the money they can snag before Amazon shuts their account off with everyone but the scammer footing the bill. So, how do we avoid this? Even on websites like Amazon, you should still research your seller. Take a look at the sellers’ Amazon Storefront before following through with your purchase. Scammers will often be brand new sellers who offer a wide range of items at unbelievable prices. Their names are often gibberish or a variation on FIRSTNAME.LASTNAME. Unfortunately, it is also possible for reputable Amazon sellers’ to be hacked by the scammer, so it is always good to remember that IF IT SEEMS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, IT IS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE!
As always, please remember to remain vigilant as you tread through the fraud infested web. Thank you very much for stopping by and have a fantastic Friday!