New twists on an old scam

Wildcat

¡Que siga la fiesta!
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I just read this on PetaPixel a few moments ago:

https://petapixel.com/2017/11/18/story-scammer-facebook-conned-many-others/

It is a story about someone being scammed. While the type of scam is not new, it does demonstrate some of the details on how they get away with the scam, including how the USPS tracking numbers are generated. Interesting read. I typically ignore comments, but in this case there are a couple of comments about other scam techniques out there.

As always, buyer and seller beware. Stay safe out there!
 
Wow. Ya, I bet this is happening way more than people realize.

Buyers and sellers beware - how to say that in Latin?

I hate buying online, Amazon is my preferred. I have another thread about epray, I have terrible luck there - partially due to me not being aware of all the "details" - you can't just take for granted what the seller is saying is true.
 
I must be lucky in that I have had good buying experiences online, even at eBay. But I am also a fussy shopper and sometimes miss out on potential deals since I always want to investigate things further.

But I will say, the last place I would use for buying and selling would be f***book.
 
That's a crazy story and amazing how much damage just one person could do.
I've never bought or sold anything on FB but if I did I'd likely just keep it local. Too much to go wrong there.
At least on eBay there is a half way decent amount of protection both ways.
 
Thanks for posting. Comments section is especially informative. Looks like I will never shop or use a credit card at store B.B. ever. The place seems to be filled with employee scam artists.
 
Speaking of gaming the system...

https://smile.amazon.com/Christmas-...sgiving-Decoration/product-reviews/B075CJFQTF

In the past two years I have looked at similar projectors. Ratings have always been between three or four stars. This one is very fishy (as are other projectors)--how often do you see five-star products on Amazon? Just about all of the recent reviews are five stars, all of the dates are recent, and most are written in rather generic terms (reading more like a list of features vs. how it actually performs re: brightness and clarity of the images). This is not the only one--the others in the first page of results are also five stars. Of course, none of the brands are recognizable names we'd see at the big box stores.

Didn't realize these "scam" reviews were so rampant until now.
 
The end result will be reviews that have no value. Too bad.

But that then leads to going to the forums, and it is pretty easy to tell when someone is promoting a product on the forums.
 
I noticed that most of those projector reviews are a “verified purchase” on Amazon. So how exactly do they verify the purchase?

Is it one of those things that you can select from a drop down menu...

Or something where they send you an email after you have bought/received the item and ask you to leave a review.

I have always received emails asking me to review a product I bought from Amazon or Parts Express. You have to have actually bought the product to leave a review.

Is there a way they can scam the system and make it look like a verified purchase when there was no purchase?
 
From what I've read in a couple of other articles over the past year (and I wish I had bookmarked them!), some of the sellers will actually give away the product for a review, or give away a gift card or something in order for a person to write that review...in effect, paying for that person's Amazon purchase. I think Amazon put a stop to giveaways in exchange for reviews, but that will not stop companies or individuals from doing it beyond what Amazon can detect. (It might be possible a seller could refund a buyer for a positive review, but that leaves a clear paper trail on Amazon.)

Amazon Vine was a program where Amazon would give reviewers products in exchange for honest reviews. The difference there is that of the Vine reviews I had read, they were not always positive, and the reviewers received the products through Amazon, not the manufacturer or a third-party seller. You had to reach certain criteria to be considered for the Vine program, so not any average consumer could write reviews. I am not certain if the Vine program is still running at Amazon.
 
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