Dealing w/ Online Fraudulent Sellers?
Nicholas French asks: "I have recently made a couple of online purchases, one was an Ancient Bronze Amlash ring from
The Antiquities Company which cost me *cough* 'a lot of money' and was backed up by a 'guarantee of authenticity'. The other was a second hand Book Crowds
& Power, via the Amazon
Marketplace, which I have not even received regardless of the numerous emails sent to both the seller and Amazon. I have since taken delivery of the ring and had its metal composition tested...turns out it is actually brass, and not exactly Ancient either! When I approached the seller via email, quoting my money back 'guarantee of authenticity' I was told politely to take a hike. I am considering speaking to Trading standards but am not really sure where to start, so have added myself to the growing numbers of reported Fraud victims on Fraud.Org. Have any other Slashdot readers managed to retrieve their hard earned cash from these Fraudsters, or had any similar problems with large online's such as
Amazon?"
reasonable rates (generally percentage off the money required to get back)
discounts for regular customers
free educational seminar on bad nature of fraud conducted by instructors in leather jackets with baseball bats
boosting scammer's local economy by increasing his medical bills
Mention them on slashdot and hope that they get slashdotted. If they have a crappy ISP then that should bring down the website for a while. While this won't get you your money back, you'll have the satisfaction of causing them headaches, and that's worth something, isn't it?
- doug
what did you think would happen, lusting after the ancient Ring?
eBay right now has around 30 One Ring, 100% authentic. Nah, I'm not going to be the one that actually believes that all of these are the unique One Ring that turns you invisible. They'll make $5.95 ($11.95 "buy it now") vanish, however! I've even seen eBay entries for "One Ring" that "really works".
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
As much as I hate to admit it I purchased an imaginary girlfriend from imaginarygirlfriends.com. They charged my credit card about $45.00 and then I never heard from them. I started sending them emails but they never bothered to reply to my emails. Eventually, after about two weeks, I contacted the company who handles their credit card transactions and I filed a complaint with them. Still nothing happened. I again mailed the company that handles their credit transactions, this time an angry email accusing imaginarygirlfriends.com of being a scam and stealing my money. Within a few hours I got an email back from them saying the issue was resolved and that I would be getting a refund and an apology from imaginarygirlfriends.com.
It is not bad enough that I am so low and pathetic that I would think of using a service like imaginarygirlfriends.com but then they go and just take my money and make me look like a bigger loser. Of course in the end I did get my money back but only after weeks had passed and many unanswered emails had been sent.