A player wanted to buy a new graphics card and seized a particularly good deal. However, he didn’t pay close attention when making the purchase.
A graphics card is an important upgrade for a computer and unfortunately often very expensive. A player wanted to save money and took advantage of a special offer on Amazon. But when he accepted the package, it was empty. The image shows it on reddit.com.
The community quickly explains to him that the mistake is also his fault. Because instead of focusing on the good offer, he should have paid more attention to the seller.
What was the important detail? The player did not order his graphics card directly through Amazon, but from a third-party seller, who merely uses Amazon as a platform. Some explain that he probably fell for a scam and will neither see his money nor a graphics card. One person writes:
I just googled “TKF Electronics Store.” Dude, there was a whole thread in this sub about the same “deal” from the same scam shop, which by the way is based in India. Good luck! Due diligence pays off. You have been scammed and the cold, hard facts are that you will probably have to swallow that. Maybe your bank can help you with a chargeback?
Those who order directly from Amazon are usually safe
What should he have paid attention to? Anyone ordering on Amazon should ensure that “Sold and shipped by Amazon” is indicated at checkout. This way you can be sure that the package usually comes directly from Amazon’s warehouse. In this case, you also conclude the contract with Amazon.
What happens when you buy through a third-party seller? Then “Amazon is neither the buyer nor the seller of the seller’s items,” as Amazon itself explains on its own help page. The contracting party is the seller who uses Amazon as a platform.
According to Amazon, the Amazon A-to-Z Guarantee and the 30-day voluntary return policy still apply.
What’s the catch? The catch is that if shipping is not handled by Amazon but by an external provider, typically the sender and seller take on the responsibility instead of Amazon.
But even Amazon does not necessarily look inside boxes and check the products contained before they are shipped. This is repeatedly proven by players who receive fake products from Amazon.
What happens if something goes wrong? Amazon explicitly points this out as well: “If the seller does not participate in Amazon’s customer service, they also take care of their customer service.” This means that Amazon is also not involved in processing orders with sellers, and any issues must be addressed directly with the marketplace seller. And this is where the problems start, according to reddit.
Amazon does threaten to suspend selling accounts in the case of abuse, but that would probably be of little concern to fraudsters who ultimately use a hijacked customer account that supposedly sells goods but ends up not delivering. It gets really dangerous if you transfer money to an account outside of Amazon: You then receive a strange email from Amazon urging you to make a payment outside of Amazon. At that point, even Amazon cannot help you anymore.
Many from the community therefore explain to him that one should never buy very expensive products from a third-party seller. For cheap products, the damage is usually minor, so the effort is hardly worth it. But for a graphics card that costs more than 1,000 euros, one should indeed be more cautious. One person writes:
When it comes to more than 100 dollars, I only buy items that are sold and shipped by Amazon. […] For items not sold and shipped by Amazon, I would look at Micro Center.
But even with Amazon, not everything always goes smoothly. A father had ordered a graphics card on Amazon but received a fake product. And Amazon refused to refund the product because Amazon considered the father to be the culprit: Gamer buys graphics card on Amazon, receives fake product – seller refuses refund until the “correct” item is returned
