Can you get scammed on amazon

If you see a "write an Amazon review" email, hit that delete button. This Amazon scam afflicts site buyers who believe they're purchasing a genuine, brand name product only to find that the product is a rip-off and nowhere near worth the money paid for it. Counterfeit sellers are a fact of life on Amazon and, even though the company does solid work in vetting and kicking fake sellers off the site, too many bogus sellers slip through the cracks and into the Amazon.

To avoid this scam: Before you hit the "add to cart" or "buy with one click" button, do your due diligence and check out the seller's feedback and reviews. If there's anything remotely suspicious about the seller, or any red flags, keep looking for a reputable Amazon seller you can trust. By and large, Amazon. Just avoid the potentially fraudulent scenarios listed above, and keep your personal data, and your money, safe and out of reach from Amazon fraud artists.

Receive full access to our market insights, commentary, newsletters, breaking news alerts, and more. I agree to TheMaven's Terms and Policy. Here's how to do just that. What Is an Amazon Scam? There is no one, single Amazon scam that rules them all. Top 7 Amazon Scams Let's examine the most common - and threatening - ways Amazon fraud can strike and provide some tips to keep Amazon fraudsters at bay. Gift Card Scams Amazon continues to deal with a nefarious scheme - gift card scams.

Bogus Online Listings In this scam, fraudsters claiming to be an Amazon seller, once again approach potential victims offering deeply discounted goods and services. TheStreet Recommends. By Tony Owusu. By Rob Lenihan. By Dan Weil. By Vidhi Choudhary. See More. Stickers also work as an indicator to check if the product was actually the one you sent. Tip: Inform buyers on your listing that you carry out quality tests on your product with a sticker warranty. Phishing or spoofing happens when someone pretends to be a trusted company, like Amazon.

The purpose is to take personal information and profit from it. Phishing scams are fairly common on Amazon and, over time, they have become more and more sophisticated. Usually, malicious links and attachments are sent via email or texts so you can fall for it and download a virus. This way, scammers will have access to passwords and private information from your device. Amazon will never ask you to login via email. To keep your seller account safe, log in directly on Amazon only.

It is important that you ignore all emails sent from non-Amazon emails. The emails you get from buyers will appear in your Seller Central Account. Scammers will try to collect information from you. A return scam occurs when a buyer returns an item that is different or damaged. They happen pretty often on Amazon, especially with expensive electronics.

It might be hard to believe, but buyers make use of the slickest moves to get away with their endeavor. The most common unethical return practices are:. When an item is returned to an FBA seller, the buyer will be instructed to send the product back to an Amazon fulfillment center. Amazon workers are under a lot of pressure and spend only a few minutes in the process. It is easy for the item to be misclassified. Therefore, it is important that you keep track of all your return requests.

Here are some crucial tools for preventing FBA return fraud:. For buyers that want to pull a return scam, it is unlikely that it reflects in your Return Dissatisfaction Rate RDR , A-to-Z Guarantee claims, or negative seller feedback. You can also monitor returns using the FBA customer returns. You can find this report in your Seller Central. It shows the return date, ASIN, return reason by the customer, and what Amazon decided to do with the inventory.

If you want to find out the reason why the buyer is returning an item they just bought from you, log into Seller Central.

Finally, fill out the form, and run the report. In this section, Amazon specifies:. To find out if you are eligible for a customer return reimbursement, enter the order ID number here. If a refunded customer does not return the item to an Amazon fulfillment center within 45 days of the refund, in most cases we will charge the customer and automatically reimburse you on day Per our returns policy, Amazon does not reimburse for refunded items that customers cannot return, unless the refund is for a reason for which we take responsibility.

In that case, you will be automatically reimbursed 45 days after the customer refund. If the disposition is Defective, Customer Damaged, or Damaged, consider submitting a removal order for those items or enabling the option to remove unsellable inventory automatically.

Learn more. Credit card scammers buy credit card numbers and personal information and attempt to buy items and ship them to different addresses. This can lead to chargebacks, which are a problem for the seller. They can be frustrating to deal with, because as a seller, you will be required to prove that the transaction was legitimate.

Legitimate sellers are immensely frustrated by what they see as fraudulent competition -- some even think it's an attack on Amazon, perhaps Chinese corporate espionage. The direct financial impact on Amazon is hard to judge, let alone the damage to the website's brand, but sellers' outrage is very clear.

Amazon denies that "just launched" scammers have a significant impact on their platform. In the event that sellers do not comply with the terms and conditions they've agreed to, we work quickly to take action on behalf of customers. Here's how the scam supposedly works: Someone signs up for an Amazon seller account using fake information. They use software to identify the most prominent listings, then say they are also offering those products for sale. Occasionally the fake seller will build up a couple of months of legitimate activity first, or hijack an established seller account.

People buy from the fake listings, and are told the product will be shipped in a couple of weeks. By the time they realize the product isn't coming, the fake seller has already made off with the money, and Amazon ends up eating the refund cost. In March, video game website Polygon noted a rash of unrealistically low-priced Nintendo Switches supposedly for sale on Amazon. By the time the shipping date has passed and you file for a return, the seller is long gone. Polygon's account is slightly imprecise: Amazon pays its sellers roughly every 14 days, and it doesn't disburse money to sellers until they confirm that an order has been shipped.