Home Forums FineTunedMac Community Lounge Crooks lurking at legit vendors

Well, so much for thinking that, as long as you're purchasing from a legitimate on-line vendor, you should be okay..... this is quite an eye-opener.

Legitimate vendors are still legitimate. The article seems to focus on vendors that are umbrellas for collections of other vendors. The question may be does the umbrella (e.g., eBay, Amazon) have a responsibility for checking on the legitimacy of its sub-vendors? And do these sub-vendors know that they have fakes?

A parallel to this is that companies like Facebook and YouTube are not responsible (for the most part) for the veracity of what is posted on their sites. Of course this may be a free speech issue; is there freedom of commerce?

No and YES!

eBay, at least, lets you see what each individual vendor claims to be selling, while Amazon just posts a blanket pic that's supposed to be representative of what all vendors are selling.

As with phishing emails, common sense is all-important...look closely at pics, and just plain NEVER buy certain types of merchandise on those platforms.

FYI, free speech issues don't apply to private platforms like Facebook and YouTube, and FineTunedMac for that matter. Not to put too fine a point to it, they (and we) can shut down anything and anybody.

As Don Imus so eloquently proved, you've got the right of free speech ONLY on your own dime.

I wonder if there is an assurance of original product when Amazon states "Ships from and sold by Amazon" rather than providing the name of the third party vendor. Certainly it seems to be implied.

Ships by means physical delivery will be made by Amazon.

Sold by indicates Amazon is acting as a retailer and has purchased the item from the manufacturer or a wholesaler for resale to the consumer. There is a growing number of products sold by Amazon that carry an Amazon owned brand name as well.

In Stock means the item is in stock at an Amazon Distribution center and ready for delivery. In Stock items may be sold by Amazon or a third party. If it is sold by a third party there will also be a statement "Sold by seller's name and Fulfilled by Amazon" which I take to mean Amazon is acting as an agency for the seller.

I have also seen notices to the effect that the picture shown may be different from the product you receive but in the one case where I ordered one of those the difference was in the packaging not the actual item that was ordered

There is a LOT of information on an Amazon product listing and it takes some persistence to dig out all the information. I have encountered a couple of "sold by" cases where the listing implied the item was OEM but turned out to be a third party workalike but Amazon unhesitatingly refunded both purchases and in one case I noticed the listing disappeared shortly after that.

If a product is ordered through Amazon it is backed with Amazon's return policy which I have also found to be easy and fast. When I have returned an item to their drop box the refund was deposited to my credit card account within 24 hours of my placing the item in the drop box. That includes items that were not satisfactory for any reason.

"Fulfilled by Amazon" means that the actual seller stores its inventory at an Amazon location rather than one of its own, and Amazon fulfills orders. There are also listed products that are shipped by their actual sellers other than Amazon, same as with eBay.


MORE: Amazon also offers fulfillment service to sellers on other platforms, which is why some items purchased on eBay come in Amazon packaging.


Not all items offered on Amazon are backed by their return policy, and I've seen items change from one status to the other as their prices changed.

Also, I've encountered something odious in their return policy: I ordered and returned three different brands of compression elbow brace, all of which sported a
banner, but when it came time to return them because of a bad fit, the only free options I was offered were drop-off at either a Target or UPS store.

I had to waste my time calling Amazon to get the promised "free" shipping label.

That's sneaky, underhanded, and altogether NOT cricket!

(In the instances in which I was returning one size to get a different size I got around the roadblock by saying that the second item sent was the wrong size and returned the first, and since my reason for the return was Amazon error, the free label came up automatically.)

Your prompt refunds may result from your being a Prime member; when I use my daughter's Prime account I get my refunds when I drop my return packages, but when I use my own account I don't get them until UPS says they've been delivered.