by gsoh2011
Wed Dec 05, 2012 11:31 am
You are protected when buying goods through Amazon, so long as you add the items to your Amazon basket, and check out the basket and pay via Amazon.
When buying goods from Amazon, you may also see listed details of other resellers for that item, offering either new or used goods.
Some of these Amazon resellers are operating a scam. Note the word "some". The vast majority of resellers are genuine, but there are a few who are operated by a team of scammers.
You can spot a suspicious reseller as follows :
1/ Their entry will ask that you contact the reseller direct before placing an order.
2/ The goods on offer will be at a price far below market price - in other words, it will be too good to be true.
However, asking potential buyers to make direct contact before placing an order violates Amazon's terms and conditions.
The fraudulent reseller is unable to put their email address in text form, as Amazon's software will catch it and prevent it. Therefore the scammer puts the contact email address into an image file. The email address will be a throwaway address, eg, gmail, yahoo, hotmail, msn.
If you see a reseller publishing a throwaway email address inside an image, you are advised to not contact that email address.
If, however, you decide to ignore Amazon's advice and contact that address shown in the resellers image, you will receive back an email asking you to send your delivery address and product details to yet another throwaway address.
Once you have done this you will receive an email pretending to be from Amazon. The fake Amazon email will contain words like :
"The seller requests to be paid via Western Union® Money Transfer."
The fake Amazon email will come from an internet domain that is nothing to do with Amazon, hosted on servers not owned by Amazon.
Such fake emails often contain the clause :
"The funds will not be released under any circumstances! We will hold the payment until you will send us your confirmation that you have received, inspected and you agree to keep the item. When we will have your confirmation we will transfer the funds to the seller. If the item it is not what was described you will ship it back to the seller and we will refund your money 100%."
This is a 100% lie. Neither Western Union or Amazon offer such a service.
If you do make payment through Western Union, your money is gone. You will receive nothing.
Amazon will not refund you as you did not buy through Amazon.
Often a fruadulent Amazon reseller has a status of "just launched" and no feedback, but there are some that have lots of positive feedback.
However, what the scammer has done is set himself up as an Amazon reseller of cheap trinkets, and then his scammer friends make small purchases of these cheap items (using stolen credit card details) and leave positive feedback. Once this is all in place, the fraudster then drops the cheap items from his site, and replaces them with big ticket items, top-end cameras, ipads, laptops, etc. A potential victim sees all the positive feedback and is lulled into a false sense of security. The feedback never says "thanks for the laptop", or "camera received many thanks". The feedback never mentions what was purchased, because what was purchased was cheap trash. It would be suspicious if a reseller of cheap trash suddenly becomes a seller of items that cost thousands. (This feedback-building technique is also used on ebay.)
The golden rule here is : pay for the goods through Amazon's check out process only, not through any other method.
When buying goods from Amazon, you may also see listed details of other resellers for that item, offering either new or used goods.
Some of these Amazon resellers are operating a scam. Note the word "some". The vast majority of resellers are genuine, but there are a few who are operated by a team of scammers.
You can spot a suspicious reseller as follows :
1/ Their entry will ask that you contact the reseller direct before placing an order.
2/ The goods on offer will be at a price far below market price - in other words, it will be too good to be true.
However, asking potential buyers to make direct contact before placing an order violates Amazon's terms and conditions.
The fraudulent reseller is unable to put their email address in text form, as Amazon's software will catch it and prevent it. Therefore the scammer puts the contact email address into an image file. The email address will be a throwaway address, eg, gmail, yahoo, hotmail, msn.
If you see a reseller publishing a throwaway email address inside an image, you are advised to not contact that email address.
If, however, you decide to ignore Amazon's advice and contact that address shown in the resellers image, you will receive back an email asking you to send your delivery address and product details to yet another throwaway address.
Once you have done this you will receive an email pretending to be from Amazon. The fake Amazon email will contain words like :
"The seller requests to be paid via Western Union® Money Transfer."
The fake Amazon email will come from an internet domain that is nothing to do with Amazon, hosted on servers not owned by Amazon.
Such fake emails often contain the clause :
"The funds will not be released under any circumstances! We will hold the payment until you will send us your confirmation that you have received, inspected and you agree to keep the item. When we will have your confirmation we will transfer the funds to the seller. If the item it is not what was described you will ship it back to the seller and we will refund your money 100%."
This is a 100% lie. Neither Western Union or Amazon offer such a service.
If you do make payment through Western Union, your money is gone. You will receive nothing.
Amazon will not refund you as you did not buy through Amazon.
Often a fruadulent Amazon reseller has a status of "just launched" and no feedback, but there are some that have lots of positive feedback.
However, what the scammer has done is set himself up as an Amazon reseller of cheap trinkets, and then his scammer friends make small purchases of these cheap items (using stolen credit card details) and leave positive feedback. Once this is all in place, the fraudster then drops the cheap items from his site, and replaces them with big ticket items, top-end cameras, ipads, laptops, etc. A potential victim sees all the positive feedback and is lulled into a false sense of security. The feedback never says "thanks for the laptop", or "camera received many thanks". The feedback never mentions what was purchased, because what was purchased was cheap trash. It would be suspicious if a reseller of cheap trash suddenly becomes a seller of items that cost thousands. (This feedback-building technique is also used on ebay.)
The golden rule here is : pay for the goods through Amazon's check out process only, not through any other method.