Amazon Shipping Scam

Tidewater · May 16, 2018

Amazon customer says she was charged over $7K to ship toilet paper
A box of toilet paper: $7,000 in shipping
A package of paper plates: $1,000 in shipping (it was from Atlanta to Tennessee, so...).

It is not Amazon charging outrageous amounts to ship mundane items. Third party sellers are using Amazon to bilk customers.
Amazon needs to address this, or watch orders cease to roll in.

Caveat emptor.

For the record, I'm a third party seller on Amazon. Amazon charges the customer $3.99 and pockets that money and I have to pay shipping costs. Amazon also pockets $.60 of the $15.00 selling price. To recap Amazon charges the customer $18.99 for the $15 item, and sends me a check for $14.40/item (out of which I have to pay the actually shipping cost which is $2.73/item). Some devious fellow has discovered how to charge the customer outrageous shipping costs.

MattinBama · May 16, 2018

Tidewater said:
Amazon customer says she was charged over $7K to ship toilet paper
A box of toilet paper: $7,000 in shipping
A package of paper plates: $1,000 in shipping (it was from Atlanta to Tennessee, so...).

It is not Amazon charging outrageous amounts to ship mundane items. Third party sellers are using Amazon to bilk customers.
Amazon needs to address this, or watch orders cease to roll in.

Caveat emptor.

They usually do make customers happy/refunding them in these situations before but they have been slow about stopping a lot of scams in recent years.

RTR91 · May 16, 2018

The customers didn't see the shipping costs when placing the order?

Tidewater · May 16, 2018

MattinBama said:
They usually do make customers happy/refunding them in these situations before but they have been slow about stopping a lot of scams in recent years.

I think what is happening is scammers create a third-party seller account, make a "sale," quickly pocket the money, abandon the seller account before anybody knows what has hit them. Amazon has a tough time hunting that person down.

crimsonaudio · May 16, 2018

This is why I only buy when it's marked "ships from and sold by Amazon.com".

MattinBama · May 16, 2018

Tidewater said:
I think what is happening is scammers create a third-party seller account, make a "sale," quickly pocket the money, abandon the seller account before anybody knows what has hit them. Amazon has a tough time hunting that person down.

It's essentially a slightly modified version of the Chinese seller scam that has been going on for years and there are a few things Amazon could do to stop it but they have thus far refused to do it. Tracking them down would be essentially impossible but it would be very easy for Amazon to slow it down/stop it on the front end during the account creation process.

Seller creates an account, immediately lists hundreds of thousands of items from a database in popular categories with prices that are typically well below the going price for those items. They gather what sales they can and since Amazon sends out seller payments every two weeks they take that money as long as they can until enough reports of undelivered items and scamming are given that the account gets suspended. By then they may have gotten two or more payouts from Amazon. Once that account is suspended they just pop up another one. The accounts are created non-stop basically.

The amount of money that Amazon is making must be somehow outweighing all of the refunds they are having to give out and the negative experiences that people are being left with. Otherwise it doesn't make sense to me why they haven't done much to slow it down.

https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/amazon-fraud-scam-sellers.html

Polygon's account is slightly imprecise: Amazon pays its sellers roughly every 14 days, and it doesn't disburse money to sellers until they confirm that an order has been shipped. But crucially, sellers don't have to prove the item was actually received. It's not clear whether Amazon verifies the tracking numbers that sellers provide, but even if they do, a seller could pay for a shipping label and receive a valid tracking number without ever mailing a product.

...

"I see these sellers coming and going, coming and going, all day long," said Fred Ruckel. Ruckel invented a popular cat toy called the Ripple Rug, and he's dealt with problems on the e-commerce platform before. "All day long there's sellers that are 'just launched,' then gone, 'just launched,' then gone. It's incredible that... their system is not blocking people."

Ruckel suggested, "All they have to do is say that when you sign up to be a seller on the Amazon Marketplace, you have to give, let's say, a $1,000 deposit, and that deposit will stay on for six months -- or until you've shipped X amount of orders and satisfied X amount of customers, so that we know you are a real seller."

A user on the Amazon Seller Forums wrote, "It is my hope that Amazon impose a policy to limit the number of products offered by new sellers during an automatic vetting period to verify identity and banking." The user continued, "I cannot believe Amazon is not doing everything they can eliminate these sellers, it must be costing them millions. I think Amazon should be more proactively communicating with their sellers so everyone can be aware of these fraudulent practices and more sellers could assist in removing these scammers."

MattinBama · May 16, 2018

crimsonaudio said:
This is why I only buy when it's marked "ships from and sold by Amazon.com".

There are a lot of good third-party sellers on there but this is definitely the safest route to take. The Sold by Blahblahshop and Fulfilled by Amazon would also typically be safe because the item is actually physically in Amazon's warehouse.

CajunCrimson · May 16, 2018

People do things too quickly. Most of these types of scams would be avoided if people would slow down just a second and look before they click....

crimsonaudio · May 16, 2018

MattinBama said:
The Sold by Blahblahshop and Fulfilled by Amazon would also typically be safe because the item is actually physically in Amazon's warehouse.

Yah, forgot to mention it but I will buy stuff fulfilled by Amazon - much more difficult to scam that way. I literally buy hundreds of items from Amazon annually and have never been ripped of by just being careful.

MattinBama · May 16, 2018

crimsonaudio said:
Yah, forgot to mention it but I will buy stuff fulfilled by Amazon - much more difficult to scam that way. I literally buy hundreds of items from Amazon annually and have never been ripped of by just being careful.

I'm the same way even though I don't buy on there nearly as much as in year's past. I've lost the opportunity to buy a few really good deals because I spend a little extra time looking over the details and it was sold out by the time I pulled the trigger.

Crimson1967 · May 16, 2018

crimsonaudio said:
This is why I only buy when it's marked "ships from and sold by Amazon.com".

This is why I get off my butt and go to the store and buy my own toilet paper. It isn’t hard to find.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

crimsonaudio · May 16, 2018

Crimson1967 said:
This is why I get off my butt and go to the store and buy my own toilet paper. It isn’t hard to find.

Yah, I honestly cannot imagine buying stuff like that on Amazon. That's seems odd.

MattinBama · May 16, 2018

Crimson1967 said:
This is why I get off my butt and go to the store and buy my own toilet paper. It isn’t hard to find.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

But my local stores don't have my bamboo & sugarcane toilet paper.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00PNOW3OE/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_kPg.AbZSQADK6

Bazza · May 16, 2018

crimsonaudio said:
Yah, I honestly cannot imagine buying stuff like that on Amazon. That's seems odd.

Odd doesn't begin to describe the things I see and hear about every day that humans do....

Same old same old......

92tide · May 16, 2018

crimsonaudio said:
Yah, I honestly cannot imagine buying stuff like that on Amazon. That's seems odd.

the article says the lady was a building/custodial manager and was buying a lot of it. i could see doing it in those circumstances, but yeah, that's a weird item to buy.

Bodhisattva · May 16, 2018

Crimson1967 said:
This is why I get off my butt and go to the store and buy my own toilet paper. It isn’t hard to find.

When I'm on the toilet without toilet paper, I'm in no condition to go to the store. It constitutes an emergency, and I prefer the desperately needed item be brought to me.

RTR91 · May 16, 2018

92tide said:
the article says the lady was a building/custodial manager and was buying a lot of it. i could see doing it in those circumstances, but yeah, that's a weird item to buy.

Was going to point out the lady's job/reasoning, too.

Do wonder why she's purchasing it from Amazon and wouldn't already have an office supply company to use.

92tide · May 16, 2018

RTR91 said:
Was going to point out the lady's job/reasoning, too.

Do wonder why she's purchasing it from Amazon and wouldn't already have an office supply company to use.

the whole "building manager" thing may just mean she is a solo/very small operation that has the cleaning contract for a few buildings. a lot of these folks tend to buy stuff via wholesale clubs but depending on where she lives, it may be more convenient/cheaper to have it sent to her (assuming no shipping scams taking $7k from her

)

RTR91 · May 16, 2018

92tide said:
the whole "building manager" thing may just mean she is a solo/very small operation that has the cleaning contract for a few buildings. a lot of these folks tend to buy stuff via wholesale clubs but depending on where she lives, it may be more convenient/cheaper to have it sent to her (assuming no shipping scams taking $7k from her )

Good point.

Still dumbfounded at not noticing the shipping cost when making the purchase. Those with more knowledge on the scams - do the scammers do it after the purchase is made or does it show up in the order total when making the purchase?

Elefantman · May 16, 2018

Crimson1967 said:
This is why I get off my butt and go to the store and buy my own toilet paper. It isn’t hard to find.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I have to go to the store to get mine ever since Sears stopped mailing TP.

Amazon Shipping Scam

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