Two days ago, I became an unwitting victim of Amazon's lack of policing their 3rd party marketplace ecosystem. I hope I can get this in front of a few more eyeballs to save people from the experience I am now in. Here's how it went down.
Thursday, AMD dropped the Radeon RX 9070 and Radeon RX 9070 XT GPU. I won't bore you with the details, but I hoped to get one, by Friday I still hadn't and started shopping for a GPU from last generation. I setup a price alert on a few models and went to sleep. I woke at 3am to an alert (I forgot to silence my phone) that one of the models was on sale at a 27% discount from a 3rd party seller, and I groggily added to my cart. However, when added to my cart, the price jumped to 15% over MSRP. I removed and went back to the product page, refreshed, and saw the same discounted price. I copied the link and opened it in another mobile browser and the discounted price was there. I added it back to my cart and the price again increased by $150.
I contacted support, and they told me to make the purchase at the inflated price, and when it arrived, I would be given a discount retroactively by Amazon. I did so, put my phone on DnD and went back to sleep.
When I woke up, I checked my phone and saw I had two emails from Amazon. One was a price alert on another GPU, at the same deep discount from another seller. I clicked the link and saw the same price for the same GPU. This time, I was more awake, so I clicked the link to go to the "Gigabyte Store" and saw the same listing there. This one must be real, then right? I added it to my cart and the price remained discounted. I clicked the seller name and saw they had several positive reviews about fast shipping, great prices, etc.
Here's what happened next. I purchased the second GPU at the correct price and went to cancel the previous order. However, when I opened the orders page, I saw that it was already marked as shipped. Strange, I thought. It's only been five hours. So I couldn't cancel the order, but Amazon CS assured me earlier that I would receive the discount, so I shrugged and decided maybe I would sell the extra one, or give it to my son.
So I purchased the second GPU. Then I checked the second email. As I read, my face got hot, and my arms and hands began to tingle. Here is the email:
Hello,
We are writing in relation to your Amazon.com order #REDACTED.
We wanted to inform you that the seller of your order is no longer active on Amazon.com.
If you are expecting an order and you do not receive it within 3 days of the estimated delivery date, or if you have any other issue with your order, please report the problem. Our team will determine if you are eligible for a refund.
To report an issue, please follow these steps:
1. Go to “Your Orders”
2. Locate your order in the list and click “Problem with order”.
3. Select your problem from the list.
4. Select “Request refund”.
You may also reach out to us at the following link:
https://www.amazon.com/hz/contact-us
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Sincerely,
Customer Service
Amazon.com
Uh-oh. Wait. Amazon has seller accounts that can just ...disappear? And the only recourse is to wait to see if they ship the item to you? Here is where some of you may think, "this sounds familiar." I hadn't seen that before, and I trusted the Amazon system, foolishly.
I find the seller profile linked on my order page for the first GPU. The seller feedback (that I had never even seen before, as I guess I have always used Amazon fulfillment up until now) was five reviews. One 5-stars, and the remaining four were 1-star, all with SCAM in the text.
I think to myself, 'it's a good thing I bought that other GPU... that had the same ...price. SHIT."
I go to my second GPU order and click the seller profile. The previous glowing reviews are still there, but so is a new one with the current date that reads:
I have been waiting since the first part of December. If I didn’t need them I wouldn’t have ordered them. I had to order from a different company and get them within a week.
It's now Tuesday. Both items have "shipped" but with no tracking number, claiming:
Strange. I've always had tracking for USPS packages in the past. Oh, and my shipping date? Changed from March 12 to April 30.
All this is typical for this type of scam, it seems. I was oblivious to it until it happened to me. Here are the signs:
- Steeply discounted price on a popular item
- 3rd party seller with relatively low review count
- Fulfillment completely outside of Amazon
- Order is marked as shipped extremely fast
- Shipping will not include tracking number
- Seller closes their Amazon account
Obviously, if you get past #3, you've already been scammed.
Now, after a day of research into this scam, I can also share the following that helps clear up how and why this works like this.
Sellers don't get paid immediately. They have a regular payout interval, usually a week or two weeks. So they need to keep the customer waiting long enough to collect their funds before Amazon can step in. But, lucky for them, Amazon never steps in. As I discovered, their SOP is to have the customer wait until the delivery date (which was four days, then suddenly fifty+ days) before any attempt to make the customer whole is offered. This delay works in favor of the scammers, since they have time to collect their money before Amazon bothers to consider there is any fraudulent activity.
All this info in my belt, I called Amazon CS last night and asked for a walk-through of the two purchases, the seller accounts, and the policy. The CS agent viewed the seller profiles and confirmed they seemed scammy, and that they were both no longer active, but still eligible for payout. They could not confirm that any products had ever been truly offered, let alone received. At the end of the call it was clear that Amazon CS hands are tied. They have policies, and they won't budge. I won't even be eligible for a refund until after May 3, which is just under two months from my order date.
I didn't do anything wrong. I was supposed to be protected by Amazon, and I wasn't. They aren't supposed to be like eBay, where you have to carefully research every seller, because the platform invites fraud. This is the biggest e-tailer in the world (or is that Ali Express?), who positions itself as the most customer-focused company in the world. Unfortunately, they are either not interested in countering this fraud, or they are too slow-moving to keep up with the fraudsters. Or maybe I'm not the customer. Maybe the seller is. Or maybe it's the advertisers. But not me, anymore.
What I will do differently in the future:
- Stay off of Amazon.
They are in the business of making money, and even Chinese scammers make the company money. They may have to refund me my $1,000, but not for almost two months, and they got my payment into their bank account immediately. When they pay the scammer (and they will), they get to keep a percentage (30% now? More? I forget).
Obviously, I have noticed that many products on the marketplace there seem scammy, but I wasn't prepared to see one hosted on the GPU manufacturer's official store front. Oh, and the CS agent also told me that there is no way to assure that I can even get the product I purchased from another seller. That is to say, I asked if instead of a refund, I could have them just get me the GPU I ordered at MSRP (or even better, the price that scammed me, twice), and they said no.
I'm okay. I used my credit card, and I'm protected from fraud if it comes to that. To those who wouldn't have that option and can't be without $1,000 for two months, I would recommend you stay away from any marketplaces that allow 3rd party sellers on, as there is too much incentive to scam like this. There is ZERO risk to the scammer. Newegg (owned by Amazon) also allows 3rd party sellers , and if you look, you can find feedback there about the same scam.
Good luck out there.