March 17, 2005
The Amazon saga continues...
I got a pretty generic response from Amazon to my letter. Basically, they apologized for my monetary loss (which I had none whatsoever), advised me not to transact outside of their system otherwise I wouldn't be covered by their guarantee (duh!), and they mentioned that it would be "brought to the attention of the appropriate department".
Today I went shopping for the same camera and most of the scammers were gone, but many still remained. It's easy to tell because they are well below market value for the camera and the transaction wil not successfully complete through Amazon (then customers attempt to contact the scammer through the email they use for their username--usually a Yahoo address). I wrote a succinct response to Amazon:
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Hello Ankit Gupta,
Thank you for your response. However, I did not successfully purchase the camera I described. in fact, that's the scam. When attempting to purchase the camera from EVERY SINGLE ONE of the sellers which were several hundred dollars cheaper than the average price, the transaction always failed stating that there were no more left. Naturally, when the scammers use their email address as their username, people will be hungry and email them why they couldn't complete the purchase. The scammers will use this opporutnity to convince the Amazon customer to send them through another means like Western Union.
You can alleviate this by forcing sellers to have at least ONE item they are selling in stock for it to come up on the product page (thereby allowing the transaction to successfully complete through Amazon's payment system) and not allowing sellers to use their email address at their username (probably not possible at this point).
Some of the sellers of the Canon 350D which were scams are gone today, but there are some still there. I know because I went through each and attempted to pay for the camera through the Amazon system. I was confident I wouldn't end up with 10 cameras...and I was right.
The point is, I was smart enough to do my homework and I am very web-savvy. But what about the other 95% of the population? What are you doing to protect them? And your loyal customers who have placed their trust in your system?????
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We'll see what happens....
Posted by severdia at March 17, 2005 1:28 PM
Comments
Hey,
I was about to deal with someone like that too, I'm just wondering whats the e-mail address for amazon to contact them? Thanx a lot,
Dave
Posted by: Dave Roy at March 22, 2005 9:28 AM
I was just using their contact form. Go to the Help secion (top menu) and click on "Ordering". Then click on one of the links that says "I have a question about ordering that's not listed above." You might be required to enter your login/password, which will take you to a contact form.
Posted by: Ron at March 22, 2005 1:33 PM
I've just come across a similar thing. There is no way that I'm sending any money to romania without the backing of amazon. What a con!
Posted by: Gordon Thompson at June 22, 2005 12:24 AM
This certainly "sounds" like a scam - however, I pride myself on being a very intelligent person, and have just realized that I was also a victim of this scam.
You see, as soon as the seller contacted me, and I expressed my desire to purchase his product, I received 2 consecutive emails from "Amazon.com". One from Amazon payments, and another "auto-response@Amazon.com" confirming the purchase details, with an express guarantee that my money would be refunded through Amazon if I was unhappy with the product.
I made a point of telling the seller I was uncomfortable with the request of funds through Western Union, but he stated that Amazon was unable to process to his international credit card, and he had over $4,000 in deposits from Amazon. Why would he walk away from that money over my $130? Well, when I received the confirmation from Amazon, the email said the same thing, so I fell - hook, line, and sinker. Sad part was, the emails never did come from Amazon.
I wish there was a way to stop this. I hear that these people scamming funds in Romania actually feed $$ to terrorist activities in the Middle East. Not only do I feel stupid, and upset that I lost $130, now I feel guilty for letting my money get into the hands of terrorists. UGH!
I just hope someone who thinks about taking part in a transaction like this reads these posts first.
Debbi
Posted by: Debbi at June 25, 2005 7:09 AM
