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Amazon's Third-Party Sellers Hit By Hackers (foxbusiness.com)
Hackers are targeting the growing population of third-party sellers on Amazon.com using stolen credentials to post fake deals and steal cash. From a report: In recent weeks, attackers have changed the bank-deposit information on Amazon accounts of active sellers to steal tens of thousands of dollars from each (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternative source), according to several sellers and advisers. Attackers also have hacked into the Amazon accounts of sellers who haven't used them recently to post nonexistent merchandise for sale at steep discounts in an attempt to pocket the cash, those people say. The fraud stems largely from email and password credentials stolen from previously hacked accounts and then sold on what's dubbed the "dark web," a network of anonymous internet servers where hackers communicate and trade illicit information. Such hacks previously have favored sites such as PayPal and eBay, but Amazon recently has become a target of choice, according to cybersecurity experts.
I'll almost always go with Amazon if the item is available from them. However, being from Canada, I find that quite often going through third party Amazon sellers and eBay is really the only way of finding quite a few products online. Americans don't realize how much better their e-commerce selection is than what we get in Canada.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Meh... No need to restrict yourself only to Prime, just avoid deals that seem too good to be true. I buy from 3rd-party sellers all the time and I've only had one issue in the past 18 years, for which Amazon quickly facilitated a resolution (I kept the falsely advertised product and Amazon forced a full refund).
The next closest thing I've had to an actual problem was with a power cable I ordered, wherein someone else had ordered what the 3rd-party seller had left in stock at the same time I ordered my single cable. The seller wrote me within an hour of placing the order to let me know they did not have the item (and why) and gave me the option of cancelling the order or waiting until they got more in stock. I opted to wait and, a few days later, heard from them that their supplier was also out of stock. The order has since been cancelled; I was never charged, so no refund was necessary.
It's actually really easy to not get scammed when you buy 3rd-party on Amazon.
Like... REALLY easy.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
In the case of a 3rd party merchant on Amazon, they would never see your card # if it was paid through the Amazon portal. The same goes for if you pay for an eBay purchase through PayPal, all the merchant sees is a deposit and a transaction #. They never get their hands on your card # once.
They explicitly offered to (and suggested I let them) cancel the order, actually. The order only remained open because I still needed the cable at that time, but my need was not urgent. The second time around, I actually no longer needed the cable (I replaced the equipment it was for as it ended up failing for an unrelated reason) but was planning to keep the order so I'd have a spare for another piece of equipment which uses the same cable. Since I no longer have a specific need for the cable, I allowed them to cancel it the second time they offered.
You do have to carry out your own due diligence when ordering 3rd-party on Amazon, but it's really not difficult to avoid the scams.
Meanwhile, I ordered $700+ RAM, Prime, and was sent obviously opened (the outer seal stickers had clearly been peeled and re-stuck, and the tape on the inner packaging was cut) RAM. Not only that, but the product ID stickers had been swapped with other, cheaper, similar looking RAM; the speed, capacity, and serial numbers did not match what I ordered, nor did they match the stickers or packaging (which *did* match what I ordered).
Again, that was Prime, fulfilled by Amazon. In fact, it's not the first time I've had that happen; they did the same with a ViewSonic 4k display, of which I had ordered two.
But, and I can't stress this enough, Amazon was also quick to fix the issue. They always are, which is why I really don't care if they fuck up once in a while, or if a 3rd-party seller does try to scam me.
I buy about 2/3 of my non-grocery items (and about 1/3 of my grocery items, for that matter) on Amazon, yet I have >90% of my product- or service-related issues with brick and mortar stores. Amazon (including 3rd-party sales) has a long way to fall before I'll consider the few issues I've had with them over the past 18 year to be a problem worth complaining about.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I've been getting this since late last year. Items advertised as "used for display in my shop, like new" and an email address they tell you to contact first. For kicks I tried it and they sent me an Amazon payment link, which obviously I reported.
With price alerts (I use CamelCamelCamel) they set the price so that it exactly hits your limit. They try to obfuscate it using the shipping, e.g. 252.00 for the item and 48.00 shipping.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
My guess is they have some model that says being "proactive" reduces scams by $x but has a side effect of reduced $y legitimate sales, too, along with the risk of some big negative publicity when a legitimate seller has his account cancelled or something.
I don't know, but I suspect a major growth sector for Amazon is basically competing with the flea market over at Ebay and not creating a bunch of ill will against that type of seller means something to them.
IMHO, Amazon should have fewer flea market sellers and the crappy intermingling of substandard SKUs, but apparently Amazon doesn't think so.
I do give them credit, though, I've sold one thing through Amazon (spare, unused and unopened 512GB SSD) and it was a pretty slick process.