We don’t get many of these fraudulent, switcheroo returns. We received today a return (Amazon, FBM, refunded at first scan) on a book that is very obviously not the book we sent. It has a piece of the front cover missing at the top and a sticker on the back from a previous seller (sticker says warehouse deals at the bottom) that shows the book was sold in acceptable condition, and it has a vendor code. However, I’m not sure how much that sticker means except to support our SAFE-T Claim. We do have photos of the book we sent, which was in near perfect condition. The photos also were included with the listing. I’m sure this POS has resold our book as new.
So, booksellers and others, what steps would you take next? We intend to file a SAFE-T Claim, of course. It should be easy to prove it’s a different book.
I’m also itching to report this guy to Bad Buyer List, but I’ll probably wait until the case is settled. I have his full name and name of his so-called business, and he has an Instagram account showing off al the merch he sells. With very basic Googling, I even have his home address, names of his parents and several telephone numbers. I know it would be a mistake to call these people, but isn’t it amazing the information one can obtain about a stranger with just a few clicks? That’s why I’ve scrubbed my name from any of those people-finder sites. This book went to a commercial address, a small warehouse in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey. The buyer is an obvious flipper and/or drop shipper. We have sent one previous order to this guy without issue. Of course we will never ship to him again.
I believe we are obligated to contact the buyer and ask if he wants his book back. I’d like to call him every nasty name I can think of, but at this point cooler heads must prevail.
This is so stupid and flagrant! He returned a XXXXXX-up book to a third-party seller. I guess he thinks he can just screw us over, and maybe he can, since Amazon makes it so easy.
Wish I had a crew of enforcers to pay him a personal visit.
You might have been if you wanted to withhold restocking fees, but not for a SAFE-T claim. The “buyer” has already been refunded.
I don’t sell books, so I apologize if my advice is bad because I don’t know something book specific.
Besides reporting the buyer for fraud, a SAFE-T claim is really your only option. The buyer already has their money back. Amazon might reverse the refund if they feel like it, but that has nothing to do with you. The most common outcome for SAFE-T claims on fraud returns like this is a successful, but partial, reimbursement.
It sounds like you already know how to file a successful SAFE-T claim, so I’ll leave it here.
To whom should we report this buyer for fraud? Amazon? The Ridgefield Park, NJ, police? I ask that in all seriousness, not in jest. I see posts about sellers reporting things to the police, but does anybody ever actually do that?
Has anyone recently reported another Amazon seller to Amazon, except through a SAFE-T Claim? If so, how?
My standard template response for the NSFE –
I don’t have a solution for Amazon allowing theft and fraud BUT if this was shipped using the USPS please report the issue to the Postal Inspectors as mail fraud. If not, report it to the carrier.
ALSO the Government has a site IC3 (Amazon will remove the link if I put it here but it’s part of the FBI for an easy search) where you can report the use of the internet for theft if it was UPS, FedEx or whatever. It is generally used to report on websites but it can be used to report buyers as well if you happen to encounter one of the Amazon scam crowd.
Yes, some do, because having a copy of such a report is not only a handy tool in the kit, it’s often enough a local- or other-government-required prerequisite for filing suit in situations like this.
As such, we ourselves do not hesitate - regardless of carrier employed, website Offering, or whether or not we intend to bring action legally, and/or through Amazon’s Case Log methodology itself - to use our USPS Account in raising complaints every time scenarios like the Switcheroo* situation you’ve presented here appear.
I strongly support our friend @dwat0870’s recommendations - but over the years (decades before we first dipped a toe in eCommerce back in the early 1980s) we’ve also experienced a satisfactory degree of success by making such reports the 3rd step (after the first two: gathering ALL of the available evidence, no matter how tangential it might seem on the first-blush take, and analyzing that to garner insight on how to proceed) in our own workflow processes designed to combat the ever-rising tide of scamminess which Amazon’s Customer-centric approach(es) have so unfortunately served to exacerbate even farther than what we used to see back in the days before the World Wide Web captured fancy.
*
“Switcheroo” remains the ‘Proper Amazonese’ terminology in its internal-team nomenclature - that spelling has long appeared in (and likewise disappeared from) certain SHC (“Seller Help Content”) pages - for what you’re describing; there would appear to be an increasingly-accumulating body of evidence to suggest that spelling variations like “Switcharoo” might well be bollixing the gate-keeping Amabots further than before as a result of Amazon’s warm embrace of AI technology.
It was shipped via USPS. I’m quite sure the police in my city would laugh in my face if I spoke to them about it, but I can file a police report online. I can see if I can do so in Ridgefield Park, NJ.
Didn’t there used to be a link somewhere in Seller Central to report a bad seller? I know in the past the general advice has been not to do so in case Amazon decides to examine the account of the seller making the report.
I strongly recommend complaining to Amazon. In this instance, you are the customer, so their policy of seller-guilty-until-proven-innocent will work in your favor.
I think that the alleged general advice to not report has been greatly exaggerated because the stories of Amazon malfeasance are so salacious.
What is not repeated is the number of times that reporting has worked. It is effective, unremarkable, and therefore boring.
I’ve always worried that I could get in trouble with Amazon for making phone calls. I don’t know if it is expressly prohibited in the Seller Agreement or the Seller Central help pages, but it’s always been generally a no-no. Plus there is the advantage of having all communications with the buyer on the record through buyer-seller messaging.
Many years ago, I did call two or three buyers, and it was cringy, because in all three cases there was some problem with the order. I can remember two instances when it solved the problem, but a third involved a scamming book flipper in Arkansas who was a real POS and left me negative feedback. He had tried to claim I sent him an incorrect version of the book, which I did not. He obviously decided he could not flip the book for as much as he had hoped, plus he had ordered a number of different copies from different sellers. Although I got the neg, he did not return my book.
These slimy, cheating book flippers give us honest booksellers such a bad reputation. Their business model is usually to sell used textbooks as new. They are con artists who don’t even like books and don’t care about cheating an unsuspecting student or parent. Amazon knows exactly who they are, too – all you have to do is read their feedback comments from people who ordered a new book and got an obviously used one.
I’m not the customer. I’m the seller (FBM). A terribly beat-up book was returned to me instead of the near-perfect book I sent to the buyer, who I know is a flipper.
Exactly how do I report this abuse to Amazon, other than filing a SAFE-T Claim?
So we won the SAFE-T Claim and have now been refunded the entire cost of the book. However, we were not refunded the return shipping cost. We have appealed and will continue to do so if necessary. We did not contact the buyer at any time, FYI.
The book that was returned is seriously damaged and not sellable; it belongs in the trash. I would not even attempt to sell it in acceptable condition, though apparently, judging from the sticker on the back, Amazon Warehouse Deals did just that at some point in the past.
This little slimebag (he’s in his 20s) is a real piece of work. The damaged book was returned heat-sealed in plastic similar to Saran Wrap. We found a job listing for his so-called company (which is run out of a dingy, tiny warehouse) for someone to run the shrink wrap machine. He’s obviously embraced a practice I’ve seen in the past: shrink-wrapping used books to make them appear new. It must be part of the standard advice on how to make money on Amazon by cheating buyers and living as a societal leech.
I will be filing reports with IC3, the Postal Inspection Service and a couple of police departments. Still considering phone calls to his parents.
As always with things like this, the worst part is that this anal-dwelling butt monkey gets away with it (unless Amazon charges his account, which I will never know.)
I’ve never had to do it, but is it possible to file a second Safe-T claim for just the postage? Anywhere except Amazon it should be a slam dunk refund due to their fraud.
If you can’t file a second one can you appeal on the first one?
A lot of slimy sellers who are buying to fill their orders have adapted to the unpredictability of what they will receive from other Amazon sellers and are buying multiple copies and picking the best to ship to their customers. A risky strategy but safer than drop shipping in some ways.
Obviously, they are more likely to return something to the highest priced sellers they bought from.
This sounds like that strategy could be at work. There was a seller in Northern NYS or VT who was accused of this back in the days when Marilyn topped the leaderboard in the Amazon forum.
I dealt with the problem by offering books which did not lend themselves to this strategy, Never had a problem with this seller who was a repeat buyer of mine. There were no SAFE-T claims then.
A trivial aside, shrink wrapping is cheaper than a plastic bag. I have a shrink wrap machine, somewhere, that has not been used for at least 25 years. Just don’t have the volume to justify the dedication of a flat surface to it.
I don’t think there’s any way to file a second SAFE-T Claim. We have appealed several times now for the return postage, to no avail. What a stupid policy.
