The seller in question was selling items they didn't have at a nearly 50% markup.
One time on Amazon, I purchased an air conditioner. The model they sent was not the model I bought so I went for a refund and to send it back the to the seller.
The seller representative basically tried to spin it as though the model I received was actually better than what I had tried to buy.
I told him that I didn't care, it is not what I bought, that this "better model" is twice the width of what I wanted and it states in its manual that it needs to be on its own dedicated circuit.
The fucking guy kept this up over a few messages. I told him that if he didn't take it back, I would just charge back my credit card because this was clearly a bait and switch
The next message the guy sends, he says that me "threatening" him by saying I'll charge back the card is immoral of me, and makes an allegory equating it to murdering someone by shooting them.
At this point I contact amazon proper, and give them the entire message log. The amazon rep is fucking horrified and says that they will investigate the seller.
The fucking guy sends me a message telling me that I shouldn't talk to amazon, because my correspondence with them gets CC'd to him.
I forward that message to the amazon rep as well.
The guy loses his fucking shit, starts making guesses at where I live, what I do for work, a bunch of shit. He says that he has a double major in marketing for some reason.
I demand that I never have to interact with him again. In his last message to me he tells me not to leave a bad review as it is a family owned business.
I leave a lengthy and scathing review, noting that someone with a double major in marketing who acts like this must have wasted a lot of money on their post secondary education.
I get connected to someone else who isn't insane who in their first message sends me the slip to mail this fucking air conditioner back, and I get my refund.
Let’s ALL buy the same thing as OP and then leave negative feedback. We’ll all get it for free and bleed this vendor.
Link, OP?
Nice try, vendor in question.
I had a seller try to pull this shit on Amazon a few years ago. I had bought a wrist rest for my keyboard, the one I'm tolerating at this very second in fact. Amazon's pages have a stark white background, the wrist rest was black. Even if details came through in the picture, the background of the page would wash it out. I wanted a simple straight wrist rest. This one has what I can only describe as a waist; the part your right hand would rest on is narrower and thus less supportive than the ends. I gave it a 3-star review stating such. The solution I've found is to turn it around so it's facing "backwards" and that puts the narrowest part in between my hands.
The seller emails me asking if there's anything they can do to make it right. So far, we're okay. I just say no, it's not worth bothering with on my end. They kept getting pushier about changing my review to 5 stars until I contacted Amazon about it.
Somewhere, be it Amazon themselves via the almighty algorithm, or the dropshippers themselves, there is a disconnect from reality. 5-star reviews carry no information, even if they are specific and detailed, the practice of paying or compensating for them is so common that you can just flush them down the toilet with the rest of the piss. It's the low end that carries the information. I have chosen to buy products based on their 1-star reviews.
For example, I'm invested in the Craftsman V20 power tool system. I went to buy the power inverter they sell for it, that lets you run normal electrical things off of drill batteries, has a NEMA15 socket and a couple USB ports on it. The negative reviews were mostly "Doesn't run my space heater. Would rate 0 stars if I could. Returned." I couldn't find a negative review of the product that didn't boil down to "I don't know what 150 watts max means." Not a problem with the product, it's a problem with people being ignorant. I bought, and am happy with, the tool.
On the other hand, I went to buy a pocket flashlight, I looked at the negative reviews and many of them said some variation on "tail switch broke after 4 or 5 months." Ah, this model has a common mode of early failure, I'll move on.
Honestly when I’m dubious of the quality of a product, I look for the negative reviews. If the only negative reviews are people clearly being dumb or really minor gripes, I take that as a good sign. If there are very few or no negative reviews, that’s a red flag that something fishy is going on.
I genuinely don't know if there's some Amazon policy or if they have an algorithm or whatever, or if people are just dumb enough to think anything other than 5 star reviews chase customers away.
A product with no negative reviews at all...you're telling me your QC is perfect, no one got a defective one, all of them survived shipping okay, it was never the wrong size or color, it perfectly met everyone's expectations, and none of your customers are pavement chewing morons?
Here's a mystery for you: Jorgensen's website. They sell carpentry clamps, plus an increasing line of hand tools. They've got a #4 smoothing plane that manages to be in the mid-range. You either get $20 pieces of useless shit from Harbor Freight, or $400 pieces of jewelry from Lie Nielson, and here comes Jorgensen with a $70 pretty okay plane. On their website, there's not even a section for reviews on the #4's page. They have announced a #5 jack plane, it's not out yet, there's a section for reviews there. With 5-star reviews "looking forward" to the product.
Idea cancer much?
Username checks out in the best possible way.
Oh this is possibly my least aggravated.
Fair 'nuff
My wife bought a Keurig coffee maker on Amazon for a Christmas gift. When it arrived, the box was mailed directly from JCPenny.com. I looked on their website and the coffee maker was $35 cheaper. We learned our lessons about dropshipping and only looking at Amazon for products.
Keep fighting the good fight OP!
Amazon hasn't been the cheapest for things in a long time. There's a few segments where they are competitive, but it's generally only small things that are cheaper to ship. The more people that learn this the better.
There was a time when you could have kitty litter delivered to your home for less than it cost at a local store, but that hasn't been the case for a almost a decade.
Yeah, whereas I used to have dog food shipped from Amazon because it was cheap and convenient, now I pretty much only do it for the convenience, because it's priced the same as Petsmart and Petco.
Small items have the shipping bulit in, so there's nothing useful under $10
So you returned it and re-bought it from jcpenney.com, right?
Nah, it was a last-minute gift for her mom, and my wife didn't want to go empty-handed. The bad guys won that day.
I think I'm gonna wait a few days before telling them no. Or maybe just not respond. I'm sure as hell not changing or removing my negative feedback. Clearly my review is worth more to them than the cost of the item.
Just take the item and run. Underhanded tactics deserve underhanded tactics
I left negative feedback for dropshipping
Not all heroes wear capes (unless you do, OP).
I wouldn't mind wearing a cape lol. Underrated fashion accessory.
Flowy thin capes that just make you look dramatic: cringe, impractical
Heavy, thick capes big enough to drape over a buddy for cuddles: hot + chad
I have to say, wearing a cape at a Renn Faire with colder than expected weather and having my now wife and her friend snuggling under it for warmth felt pretty good.
See folks? Warm capes are rizzmax... Is that what the kids say now?
Order one from him on ebay!
This happened to me once but diff platform. I gave the seller 3 out of 5 stars. Seller messaged me with the same m.o. I changed the stars to 1 and attach the screenshot. Fuck them.
Update it to include being pestered by them to change to a positive review.
To being blackmailed into only receiving a refund if they change their review. I see nothing in there about them giving a refund if they don't change it first
Change the review, get the refund, change it to a one star and include conversation snippets regarding asking to change the review
I'm out of the loop, what's drop shipping and why is it bad?
The seller just buys the item on Amazon and sends it to your address usually at an inflated price. They sell stock that they don't own.
To play the role of the annoying five year old, "And why is that bad?"
Drop shippers aren’t normally authorized sellers/resellers for the product so the manufacturer doesn’t have to warranty their products. Unfortunately, you won’t find out until 6 months down the road.
It can also hurt small businesses because they don’t get to interact with their customers. Their products could get negative reviews on Amazon even if they never wanted sell the product on Amazon. Negative reviews could be because of the shipping or customer service provided by the drop shipper and the customer doesn’t know that the business had nothing to with those issues.
They offer no service or benefit. They are a needless middleman.
They're taking your money without providing you any value. It's dishonest and it's against eBay's terms of service (unless they are working directly with the supplier, which I highly doubt is the case.)
It's a way of farming sales and reputation, to build an account for later scamming with.
A brand new account running a scam gets picked up almost immediately as they're watched closer. An account that's been around for 5 years, selling products without reports of fraud, suddenly switching to scams stays under the radar longer.
A deliberately deceptive business practice that does nothing to help consumers and only raises prices? If you have to have it explained to you why that is bad, well I'm sorry, but you are beyond saving.
You should suspect it for items with really long delays. They are waiting for a sale or new pricing. They sold you something they don’t have and don’t plan to send until they find it cheaply enough to hit their profit target.
Meanwhile you could have bought from someone who actually has it, direct from the original seller without extra markup, or waited for the same sale they are
Also you may be avoiding Amazon, but end up giving them your business against your wishes.
Why is doing literally nothing but adding cost a bad thing? 🤷♂️ they're even selling on the same platform, it makes the actual-priced product harder to find or is just a full-on scam, pretending they sell higher quality products than actuality.
Basically the way it usually works is.
Chinese knock off mass factory, makes stores and has the items.
They find a guy in America and say "Hey can you list our items on ebay, when you sell them, we'll take $20, you can probably sell them for $50.
Guy lists item for $50, someone buys it, he then just e-mails the dropshipper and asks them to send it straight to the buyer. Sometimes he will have to give ebay a fake tracking number (because ebay doesn't approve the practice).
Point is the drop shipper is just there to conceal the actual source of the product. That's generally because they are sketchy in some other way.
A co-worker of mine at one point got into a drop shipping scam. She was selling golf clubs that way (she was selling them about 80% of expected retail, place she was buying from was charging her about 25% of retail. She didn't know (but probably should have guessed) that the clubs she was selling were counterfeit, and she about had a heart attack when her 2nd customer called her out on it (she refunded him and took the loss).
Update the review with a screenshot of their begging.
I had this on amazon a while back. They offered to send me a new item and refund if I changed my review. They sent the item and refund and I stopped responding.
stay safe
Well, that doesn't feel vaguely threatening at all...
I had an Amazon seller offer to send me a gift card if I changed my review so I said I would take the card but would probably only change my review to note the gift card offer.
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