Fraudulent offers on Amazon.com

Dammit. I've been looking for a particular piece of merchandise lately, and happened to check on Amazon.com for it. I've bought stuff from them over the years and never really had any problems to speak of. They went from being a book seller to basically a one stop shop for just about everything under the sun, it appear. Well it appears they may have over extended themselves.

They have a link for a product that indicates you can buy new and used items from other merchants selling through their site. Well, the prices I saw for the item I was looking at were offered by several sellers at substantially lower prices then list price. Yeah, I know, if it is too good to be true, it probably is not true, but still, I felt that amazon.com was standing behind these sellers and must be doing some sort of minimum credibility and authenticity check. So I ordered the product from one of those sellers. Within 24 hours, I got a notice that my order was just cancelled. No other explanation. So I tried to order it again through a different seller at a similar price. Again, 24 hours later, the order was cancelled. Yet those sellers still remain there, offering the item at the same price.

Emails asking for an explanation from amazon.com are being ignored. So what the heck? What is the point of having those sellers there?

I've had this same sort of crap when trying to buy camera gear through some of the places in New York. Low prices offered that you could never really get the item at. Orders placed would just be cancelled with no explanation. And of course I have gotten the occasional kick in the teeth on Ebay as well. Is the whole danged internet being taken over by scams and fraud?

It just gripes my butt to waste my time on scams like this. Big time. I find myself wishing more and more that there was a Board of Inquiry where I could nail all of these jokers and try to put an end to this crap. Honestly, I am sorely tempted to do something like that myself as I already have the domain name BoardOfInquiry.com. But certainly that would drive me even further insane then I already am just with the BOI on this site. But damn it gripes me...........

Grrrrrrrrrrrr...

The agreement with Amazon states that you either have to ship withing 24 hours or refund the purchase. That is the end of their filtering process.

I don't think it's scams per se as inventory control problems. Many below wholesale priced places don't carry the inventory or carry as little as possible. This keeps the costs down (warehousing, cash flow, propterty rental etc) and they just order the product as it's ordered online. The problem arises when the distributor they are using also runs out of the item. One thing I've noticed is that on a lot of items their sales run in spurts. For example at our store we'll sell 9 - 60 gallon tanks in 2 days. And then not sell one for a week and half. This is not a situation unique to just us or just this industry. Also with more items being made in China if the importer is incorrect with projected demands then it is a long delay to get more.

I'm sure in some cases you are correct, but in this instance I think Amazon is just screwed up. What I was looking at was a widescreen HDTV. My 20 year old TV is about ready for the Smithsonian at this point. The prices being offered for the new unit by the sellers was WAY less then suggested retail. Yeah, I know I was dreaming thinking they were legit, but what the heck. Miracles do happen every once in a while. And I thought that with Amazon's name behind them, heck, what's to lose?

I think Amazon's linking of sellers is just messed up. I just checked that same product and those earlier sellers are gone, but now a new one is up there with an even lower price. The odd thing is that the comments section indicates the seller is offering a digital camera, and NOT a widescreen TV at all. So no telling what it was that those other sellers were actually offering. They were probably as puzzled by my order as I was about this whole situation. Still, Amazon has made no effort at all to reply to my emails about what the heck is going on. But more then likely, if I am seeing this problem, probably THOUSANDS of other people are as well for different products, and they are probably buried in emails right now.

As to the photography shop situation, I believe they are just come-ons. Hoping to get you on the phone and have a high pressure sales person suck you into paying regular going prices for stuff by requiring you to pay extra for materials that should normally come standard with the camera anyway.

I have had a bunch of good experiences with Amazon.com, and feared they were allowing external sellers to play the same games on their site. But I now believe they have a programming staff deficiency to deal with.

http://www.ripoffreport.com/

I've found that this is a decent site to post bad transactions with other types of vendors and run pre-purchase searches on.

When I read the agreement with Amazon, it seemed to be a way for Amazon to monetize their traffic base without stocking products. The only thing they seemed concerned with was no backorders (meaning a refund), that your pricing was the lowest and that they got their cut. I know the launch date deadline was delayed a few times as well. I don't think it was the best thought out plan in my opinion.

Also try www.resellerratings.com ... that site is responsible for saving me from Digital Liquidators, Broadway Photo, and all the other NY-based bait-and-switch photo equipment operations...

Originally Posted by ms_terese

http://www.ripoffreport.com/

I've found that this is a decent site to post bad transactions with other types of vendors and run pre-purchase searches on.

The guy that owns that site lives here in Mesa and he is absolutely off his rocker. Take what you read there with a grain of salt, especially if it is posted by the owner or the "administration."

1-800-201-7575

Amazon.com's Customer Service Number (yes it works, no I didn't find it on the site).

Just thought I would share so everyone else can talk to a real live person too.

~Katie McElhaney