Bah. I've already stopped buying a ton of stuff from them, and for small cheap stuff my first stop is Ebay. I consider Ebay sellers far more reputable than Amazon ones (I know, that sounds bad, but that's how bad Amazon is). On Ebay, I can tell immediately if a seller is in China for instance. I can also easily see their feedback rating and read peoples' complaints. Amazon seems to make this stuff very hard to find. And Amazon's prices aren't all that great these days either. Finally, I got sick of being hounded to buy Amazon Prime ages ago.
Amazon has generic listings for everything so its hard to tell exactly what you're getting and from who. And since sellers share the same listing you can't apply any real filters to try to weed out the sketchy sellers other than "too cheap." Someone who isn't trying to be obvious about it would be selling at a higher price point. I don't really have a problem finding legit sellers on eBay whereas Amazon is basically a crapshoot.
I actually ordered a book from Amazon listed as "new." I got a tracking number from USPS shipped from Maryland or whatever. Book comes FedEx from India!! Yes, seller is buying fraudulent shipping to make it look like their books are shipping from the US!!! Worse, the book was in garbage condition. I mean really worn, ripped cover and all. Had to get a refund from Amazon. When I reported the seller to Amazon no action was taken that I could see, if it was up to me blatant fraud like that would be a auto-ban. I left a review warning other users of the sellers practices and the seller actually tried to convince me they weren't actually listing fraudulent tracking numbers with "we used to ship USPS but we had problems with packages getting stolen." Which makes no fucking sense at all.
Additionally, even worse (if this could get worse), I now believe that book to be a counterfeit/unauthorized printing. I didn't know that was a actually a thing until this week, but the book's quality and price-point is a huge indication. I thought the price point went down due to used books in the market and the book was just not great. I just Googled and counterfeits of this book are common and mine matches the description of the counterfeit version. :-/
I've heard horror stories about sellers who create a detailed listing for a product and a second seller comes along and changes the listing making seller 1 sell products not as described in the listing. I don't know if its true, but people claimed it happened to them.
>Amazon has generic listings for everything so its hard to tell exactly what you're getting and from who. And since sellers share the same listing you can't apply any real filters to try to weed out the sketchy sellers. I don't really have a problem finding legit sellers on eBay whereas Amazon is basically a crapshoot.
Exactly!!! The legit stuff on Ebay won't be that cheap, but it is easy to find it, and distinguish it from the scammers and the Chinese counterfeits.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing was shipped. No package. They bought shipping and paid USPS to get a tracking number but nothing was ever mailed and the tracking was never updated.
Amazon doesn't appear to care if the package status changes to "shipped" of not as long as USPS got paid?
