Amazon: Together we can defeat scams. Reality: HAH! No.
If you’ve ever reported a scam to Amazon you’re probably aware that Amazon does not do anything. They’ll close the ticket, tell you it’s under investigation, and it basically will run for months.
I’ve written in the past about the pains associated with attempting to get Amazon to deal with a scam. Here’s one time I wrote about it, here’s another, or this product where all the reviews were for a hose and they swapped out the listing for that’s been reported time and time again. The long and short of it is a wall of people who won’t read your email, if they do read it don’t comprehend it, and if they do comprehend it don’t do anything about it.
Amazon sent out an email today about how much they’re doing to protect their customers from scammers, but you can still search for any product, locate an obvious scam, and they’ll do nothing about it. If you manage to get it reported to someone who seems to have a clue you’ll get back that obviously they can’t share information with you about ongoing investigations. The scam will stand until it costs Amazon money.
Review swapping scams reported are not taken down – that’s where an item like a glass with a saying on it gets great reviews and then they swap the images, price, text to another product. One of the ones we ran across before was an SSD that was remarkably cheap and five stars, but all the reviews were for a glass with a saying about puppies on it.
So while Amazon is quite happy to tell you they’re doing something about scams, when it comes to very obvious terms-of-service breaking scams with too good to be true products, they let them sit and run out the clock.
But anyway, check your inbox, you’ve probably got the “we’re working to stop scammers” email. And if you want to see an example of what exactly Amazon will or won’t do, find a review-swapped item or a far too good to be true item and report it… it’s a good endeavor if you don’t have enough stress in your life.
