Scammers are constantly trying to lure customers on Amazon with offers that are too good to be true. A user recently went to check it out.
On Amazon, you can frequently find offers for graphics cards and other expensive hardware that are too cheap. A gamer decided to have some fun and visited the address of a potential scammer. He was not surprised to find out that there was no company located there.
What did the user do? Several users discussed nasty scam offers on Amazon on reddit. However, one user explained on reddit that he lives not far from the mentioned address of the company and intended to pass by the next day.
When he passed by the next day, he noticed three things:
- At the mentioned address, there is an administration building of the government. In the posted picture, you can see the entrance gate of the government building.
- There is no sixth floor in the building at the mentioned address, which is stated on Amazon. On the roof, he only finds a wooden door and some snow.
- He could not find any company that sells graphics cards or hardware, no matter how hard he tried.
He himself stated as a brief update under the post:
For those of you who have checked in with the Remindme’s, the address provided on Amazon was unfortunately, but somewhat expected, a fake address.
You can protect yourself against scams, but not against mistakes
Are there ways to protect yourself against scams? The most important tip when buying things on Amazon is: Only buy offers that are sold and shipped directly by Amazon. Then you are on the safe side. You can also be quite sure about sellers who ship through Amazon directly. Because here, the items are already in an Amazon warehouse.
But even here, things can go wrong; for example, you may receive the wrong product or another buyer may have exchanged the goods in the box for something else. Such incidents, where people receive wrong graphics cards from Amazon, happen repeatedly and can never be completely prevented.
Such errors like receiving the wrong item are particularly nasty, as at first glance, the purchased products and the seller seem reliable. The swap in the box may, in the worst case, only be noticed by the next buyer.
And then this buyer has a problem when the purchased product doesn’t work or is even non-existent. Because in the worst case, the seller may consider this buyer a fraud. This happened to a father of the family who wanted to report a fake graphics card to Amazon.
