Have you ever gotten scammed, package stolen, or been a victim of fraud in any way?

I just got my package of new earphones from Best Buy, and the box was fucking empty. I mean there is the box and instruction manuals and charging cable, but the actual earphones aren’t there. They’ve used Shipt (which is like a doordash but for packages) but the box was inside another layer of packaging which was supposedly sealed before the delivery person got it so I’m leaning towards it being store employee theft, or someone returned an empty box and the employees didn’t verify it.

I’ll be contacting Bestbuy and Credit Card issuer as soon as customer support hours start.

I’ve literally never lost a package, I’m just so, annoyed. The money will probably be back, but like dude I just wanna listen to some music. Ugh… I guess phone speakers will have to do for now.

PSA: Record a video when opening packages just in case you need to file a dispute. I didn’t but I don’t think there’s gonna be an issue since these things rarely happen to me and disputes are rarely filed.

So have you ever been defrauded?

Update: I used the customer support chat and told BestBuy about it, and they gave me a replacement, this time I picked it up at the store and opened the box right in front of the employee just to be safe. Nothing was missing this time. 😀

AdamEatsAss,

A few weeks ago I shipped a package USPS and I wanted to track it’s progress. I googled USPS tracking and clicked on the first link that popped up. The search result looked like the USPS website and said USPS .com and had the same preview text that the actual website used but it was actually a Google ad that redirected me to supertracking .com. This fake website looked exactly like the USPS tracking website, the domain the web browser displayed was wrong but everything on the page was right, the buttons on the bottom and top even sent you back to the official USPS site. The fake site was set up so that no matter what you entered it would say the address was wrong and you had to update it for a $1.50 address update fee. I would have grown suspicious here except I actually did put the wrong zip code down when I shipped it. Again all the forms looked legit so I put my credit card info in after updating the address, then it wanted me to confirm my bank account login and pin. This is where I stopped because there is no reason for them to collect that data. I saw it was the wrong website and looked back in my history and sure enough I clicked on an ad without realizing it. I reported the domain, reported the ad, and cancelled my credit card. It was really scary how real the website felt, I didn’t suspect anything until they wanted bank info.

pterencephalon,

These ads are getting so much more prevalent, and so much more subtly marked. Google (and places like reddit and Facebook) designs them to feel as much like organic content as possible. I have a pihole on my home network, in part to prevent exactly the type of mistake you described.

TauZero,

One way that google explicitly enables these types of scams is by allowing advertisers to display a fake url in the ad footer. Ostensibly this is so advertisers can link to an intermediary 3rd-party tracking url instead of the target page without scaring the customers, but this is precisely what allows scammers to display usps.com in the link to a fraud site. Google even uses javascript to display the fake url in the browser tooltip when you hover over the link!

snowe,
@snowe@programming.dev avatar

I switched to Kagi the other day and it’s fantastic compared to Google now. I haven’t gotten bad results a single time.

mooseknee,

I’ve had FedEx deliver my package to a vacant neighborhood home. By the time I went to get the package, it was gone. FedEx did a “thorough” investigation and found that they delivered it correctly. I appealed and never got my money back.

VerbTheNoun95,

FedEx is the absolute worst, it’s amazing that I feel a sense of dread just by looking at who ships the things I buy online.

nivenkos,

Only on Runescape, it taught me enough for life.

My ex-gf was almost victim to one of the Nintedo Switch selling sites when there was a shortage. They constantly changed domains and had it really professional looking, but buying anything from scalpers is risky especially when it looks too good to be true like that.

tmax,

There are some insanely well thought scams on runescape

givesomefucks,

I once thought “Amazon refurbished” was a program by Amazon…

Turns out they just throw that label on random companies that refurbished on their own.

Bought a cellphone from one, they sent me the wrong phone model, and I paid for unlocked and they sent me one locked to a different carrier, then said that carrier was the most popular (it’s not) and they assumed it was what I wanted.

When I was complaining about that, they told me all I had to do was put it in a UPS drop box, explicitly told me I didn’t have to go to a store.

According to them, they never got the return.

I talked to Amazon, and their customer service just flat out lied and told me they could see the return was in transit.

Weeks later Amazon tried to charge me for the phone, and I had to do a charge back. Because apparently following the sellers instructions to put it in a drop off, meant I couldn’t prove I mailed it.

I have no idea if I was sent the wrong phone intentionally as a scam where they were always going to say they didn’t get the return, but it definitely felt like it by the end of it

average650,
@average650@lemmy.world avatar

I would bet they just didn’t care if it was the right phone or not.

alokir,

In the early days of smartwatches I ordered one from the manufacturer directly. The price tag and its features all sounded too good to be true, and it was. I don’t even remember their name but I was so hyped that I didn’t even do basic research.

I waited and waited and after a few weeks I did a search online. Turns out the whole thing was a scam, I found tons of blog posts about people either not receiving theirs or getting something that barely worked.

It was too late to do anything about it but I learned my lesson the hard way.

001100010010,
@001100010010@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Did you dispute the charges with your bank?

alokir,

No, at the time I didn’t know that it was possible to dispute a charge.

theragu40,

I ordered a Noctua CPU cooler from Amazon a few years ago. It was sold to me as new, and it definitely looked new, but when I opened the package to the it out and install it, it was missing several components. It had obviously been opened and either used or at least taken apart, then put back in the packaging.

I didn’t feel scammed necessarily, but it was extremely annoying. I had no trouble with Amazon taking it back and sending me a new one. Honestly the only reason I think you’d have trouble is if your account has a history of questionable or large returns.

givesomefucks,

If it’s sold by Amazon, Amazon will eat the cost on most stuff and allow returns for pretty much anything

If it’s “fulfilled by Amazon” they can’t just eat the cost. Either the seller or buyer has to pay.

It can be hard to tell which is which before buying.

Froyn,

On Amazon's website. Directly below the "Add to Cart" and "Buy it Now" buttons it tells you exactly who is selling it and who is shipping it. I'm not sure where the difficulty lies in checking?

givesomefucks,

Because sometimes it says “refurbished by Amazon”…

Would you assume that means Amazon is the seller? I did, and I was wrong.

Froyn,

I apologize, my previous direction must have not been clear.
Directly below the "Buy it Now" button on every item sold on Amazon's website.

Payment: Secure transaction
Ships from: Amazon.com
Sold by: Amazon.com
Returns: Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

Going directly to "Amazon Renewed" portion of the site and I snag a pair of Beats headphones. Directly under "Buy it Now" it says:
Payment: Secure transaction
Ships from: Amazon
Sold by: MallStop
Returns: Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 90 days of receipt

theragu40,

Yeah this is a good point to make. I am very careful to check the seller on Amazon when I’m buying.

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