Underunderstood Wiki

Amazon Scams

· Adrianne Jeffries

Summary

After our episode about mystery seeds and brushing, Adrianne learned about lots of other Amazon seller and buyer scams, so she shared them with the rest of us.

Show notes

List of items Ingo received via FBA brushing:

Transcript

Regina: Can I make a suggestion?

Adrianne: Sure.

Regina: What if, what if we, um, as our, uh, Patreon episode this week, if we do, like, just e- different Amazon scams?

Adrianne: Yeah, we could.

Regina: I think it could be good.

Billy: Oh, that, that would be cool, yeah.

Regina: It’s like a cool side piece, you know?

Adrianne: Mm-hmm.

Billy: Yeah.

Adrianne: Uh, yeah. There’s lots of different stuff that exists. I think there’s also, like, broadly really two big categories. There’s like get rich quick scams, and then there’s like sustainable, long-term scams.

Billy: But I’ve noticed sometimes when looking at stuff on Amazon, that the reviews are clearly for what seems to be a n- completely different product.

Adrianne: Mm-hmm.

Regina: Uh-huh.

Billy: It seems like sometimes they do this by, like, the selector where you would normally select like a different color or something-

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Billy: … is actually like completely different products. But it lets them insert a product that might not have a lot of reviews into a listing that does have 40,000 reviews or whatever.

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Adrianne: Yeah. It’s called listing hijacking. And so Amazon, the way Amazon works is like you have one can opener and lots of different sellers sell that same can opener, right? Like same as the real world, like Target and Walmart might have the same can opener. Except on Amazon, Target and Walmart are in the same space. So instead of having a listing for Target’s version and a listing for Walmart’s version, since it’s the same product, it’s one listing. And depending on when you look at it, you may see different sellers providing it. So you can, they call it the buy box, that it’s like one seller will get like the one-click buy spot based on Amazon’s like decision for, you know, like whoever they like the best at that moment. So what that also means is that all of the reviews for the products are combined. There’s a separate set of reviews for s- for the individual sellers that is nobody pays attention to really. But, um, product reviews are for, are gonna be for that can opener and not for like Target shipping the can opener to you or Walmart shipping the can opener to you. Which is really stupid because different sellers like may provide different, you know, like one seller may send like a broken version of the can opener and another s- and they’re still getting the benefit of the good reviews from Target’s can opener.

Regina: I mean, I get, I get why it’s, I get why it’s stupid, but it’s also like complicated, right?

Adrianne: It’s really complicated.

Regina: Like, yeah.

Adrianne: And the other thing that happens is that that means that anyone who is selling that product can control that listing. So what happens is, uh, called listing hijacking, where, um, someone else will get control of that listing. And if you are listing a can opener and it’s really great and it’s got 40,000 five-star reviews, and then someone else lists the same can opener, and then Amazon decides they are the primary seller for that can opener, then they can s- quickly switch out the listing to like eight, you know, uh, Bluetooth earbuds or whatever, and it’s a totally new product. It, it has all of these reviews, but they’re just counting on people not actually reading the reviews and just seeing the one big number, buying a bunch of stuff, and then they get out before Amazon realizes it.

Billy: Yeah, that’s what I meant. Or what I’ll see is like a phone case and a- and earbuds and a USB cable are all combined into the same listing, but they’re like-

Adrianne: Sure, yeah. That’s-

Billy: … under a, a selector for like different options f- that are supposed to be for the same product. So all the reviews are combined into one thing. So someone will be like, “Oh, my, my earbuds lit on fire.” And they’re like, “What? I’m looking at a listing for a pillow or whatever.”

Adrianne: Yeah, that’s another thing that happens. So like, uh, you can, you know there are products that have different versions. Like Jon was showing us the headphones that had different ohms. There are products that come in different colors. You can use those selectors to like do what you’re saying and list multiple products-

Billy: Got it.

Adrianne: … on the same listing. And that way they all ride on the same number of reviews. And this is also how counterfeiters will hop onto a product listing. So like it’ll be something that people think they’re getting that’s like, you know, like not necessarily a name brand, but it might be like a special cat toy. I think there was a Reply All episode about this, like a, or some kind of like, like a jump-to-conclusions mat type of thing that somebody came up with. And then these counterfeiters will make one. They’ll get on the same listing with their knockoff version. They will be selling off of the same listing with all of those good reviews for the original jump-to-conclusions mat, and then they will just like sell 10,000 units, get paid before anybody figures out what’s going on. And maybe they get kicked off, but they already made their money, so they just, they walk away-

Billy: They walk away, yeah.

Adrianne: … and then they start another company and list on Amazon again.

Billy: Yeah. My understanding is this a- this can happen not only for things that you could imagine being, uh, counterfeited for cheap, like a mat or like clothing items, but also like high-end electronics, like a professional microphone-

Adrianne: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Billy: … or something.

Adrianne: I think this can happen with anything. Although I think the more popular the listing is, the more likely it is that you will get caught. But what is really popular is to find these old abandoned listings, like stuff that is listed as out of stock, and then you can submit an offer on it as a seller and you tell Amazon, “Oh, I have this product now that you have listed as out of stock. Let me get on that listing.” Amazon’s like, “Sure. We want as much inventory as we can get.” They grant you the ability to sell off that listing, and then you get control of all of the reviews that have been sitting there for that product.

Regina: I actually, I’ve seen this a lot with like skincare products. Like they’ll say like, “Don’t buy the ordinary skincare products on Amazon.”

Billy: Oh, yeah.

Regina: “Because one, like they have really basic boring packaging and so it’s really easy to make dupes of, and then they can’t ensure what the actual like…”… uh, ingredients in it are, and so you can just be putting stuff on your skin that’s just a complete knockoff of the actual products.

Billy: Right.

Regina: And because they’re inexpensive, like, it’s not even worth necessarily doing anything about it. So, you’re just not supposed to buy certain products on Amazon because of it.

Billy: Makeup too, right? And fragrances.

Regina: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Billy: All that stuff. All things that end up on your body.

Regina: Right.

John: So, Adrienne, if I’m, if I’m a, a seller and I want to tell Amazon that like, “Hey, I have this product in stock,” what is it that I need to do to make that happen? That seems-

Regina: Yeah.

John: … very strange.

Adrianne: So, there was a little bit of detail on that in this article that Josh Jessa wrote for The Verge, and Josh Jessa has written some amazing stories about shady stuff on Amazon. Like, the shady things that sellers do to each other, buying each other, low-quality fake reviews. Like, reviewing a product and saying it exploded, which is like something that-

John: Oh, wow.

Adrianne: … will flag for Amazon. And he wrote this article-

Billy: Oh, that-

Adrianne: Oh, that-

Billy: Wow, I didn’t know that.

Adrianne: Oh, yeah. It’s brutal. It’s ruthless.

Billy: ‘Cause d- d- do they do photos as well? I wonder. ‘Cause that, it would be like… I’ll see this sometimes.

Adrianne: Oh, yeah.

Billy: Like some product.

Adrianne: Yeah.

Billy: There’ll be like photos-

Adrianne: For sure.

Billy: … of something that like had caught fire.

Adrianne: Exactly.

Billy: And you’re, it’s like really weird ‘cause it’s like, okay, well, there’s like thousands of positive reviews, but then there’s like a few people with pictures of it on fire. It’s like, who should I trust?

Adrianne: That’s probably what’s going on. It’s probably a competitor bought the product, wrote a review, uploaded a photo of a thing that they set on fire to try to knock down their competitors.

Billy: That’s incredible.

Regina: Do you think that places ever do this to themselves? Like, I was looking at headphones today, and all of the reviews were really, really positive. But they recently came out with like a newer model, and then there were some like recent reviews that were super negative out of nowhere. Everything was really good, and then all of a sudden there were these negative reviews, and now there’s a new- … version of the product. And I’m like, are you trying to, like, spike this product so that people get the new one?

Adrianne: Mm, yeah. I like that conspiracy theory. I don’t know. So, this-

Billy: Mm-hmm.

Adrianne: … listing hijacking thing actually happened to Amazon on old Amazon Basics listings, and Josh Jessa wrote about this.

Regina: I kinda like that actually.

Adrianne: I just put this into Slack. It’s an article from The Verge. “Amazon is so chaotic that even its own private label products are getting hijacked.” So, this article has a little bit of detail about what you have to do to get on an old listing. So, uh, according to this former Amazon employee who now works as a consultant for Amazon Sellers, um, the listings, she says… all right, I’m gonna read from the article. She says, “These listings were likely seized by a seller who contacted Amazon’s seller support team and asked them to push through a file containing the changes. The team is based mostly overseas, experiences high turnover, and is expected to work quickly. And if you find the right person, they won’t check what changes the file contains.” So, you could send over a file being like, “I have this product,” but actually it’s got a photo of a different product, a name of a different product that you’re trying to sell off of this listing in order to, um, get the benefit of the reviews that were there for whatever product was there before everyone abandoned and forgot about this listing.

John: This seems like something that would be trivial for Amazon to detect automatically.

Regina: Well, it depends what the product is, right?

Adrianne: Um, well, not necessarily. I mean, you just, you have to think about what Amazon’s optimizing for. They wanna have the most inventory, every category, every product available. They don’t want a customer to get on the site and be looking for something and that thing is out of stock. They want that to absolutely never happen. So, the way they do that is by making the system-

John: Mm-hmm.

Adrianne: … as open as possible. It’s like user-generated content.

John: Good God.

Regina: But, so what about brands that don’t sell products on Amazon, but you could resell on Amazon?

Adrianne: What about them?

Regina: Like, I’m thinking of, like, I’m thinking of like The Ordinary thing, where it’s like, how do you ever prove that it’s the real product?

Adrianne: Yeah, I think it’s hard. I think you… So, there are a couple things you can do. You can look at recent reviews. You can read a lot of reviews to see if someone else has figured out that it’s a fake. You can look at the reviews for the seller, which I don’t think most people know how to find-

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Adrianne: … because it’s pretty hard. But if you, if you’re on an Amazon listing, like, let’s all do this actually.

Regina: Yeah.

Billy: Okay. Just any page?

Adrianne: Look for Ordinary, Ordinary… I don’t, what’s a good Ordinary product to search?

Regina: Uh, niacinamide.

Adrianne: That’s really hard to spell.

John: What?

Regina: Uh.

Billy: I found it. Just hit N.

Regina: Yeah. It’ll come up.

Billy: Type Ordinary and then N.

Adrianne: Okay, got it.

John: What?

Billy: John, Ordinary is the brand name.

Adrianne: The Ordinary.

John: Oh, okay.

Adrianne: Yeah.

Billy: I feel like you’re very confused.

John: What am I looking? What is this?

Billy: It’s, uh, skincare, right?

Regina: Yeah. Makes your blackheads less visible.

John: Okay.

Adrianne: All right, so here we go. So, this listing, it says brand The Ordinary. There’s a link to Ordinary, The Ordinary, the actual brand.

John: Mm-hmm.

Adrianne: And then, if you go over to the right side, under Add to Cart and Buy Now, secure transaction, ships from Amazon, sold by Color Cosmetics. Sorry, Color Concept.

John: It’s funny ‘cause this is a clear item. There’s no color in it.

Adrianne: Yes, that is deeply ironic.

John: Hilarious.

Adrianne: So, now you’re on the Color Concept seller information page, and Color Concept has four and a half stars. 89% positive reviews in the last 12 months. And you can see the seller feedback for Color Concept. So, this is different from the product reviews. The product reviews are all grouped together for every seller selling the same serum…. but these reviews that you’re looking at on this page are specifically for the seller. So, when you buy something on Amazon, there’s two ways to leave feedback. You can leave feedback for the product, or you can leave feedback for the seller. This, like all things about the Amazon experience, is very poorly explained.

Billy: I looked up this address, by the way. There’s an address here, and it’s just a residential address. It’s like a random h- … it’s a random house in California.

Adrianne: Yeah. Why not?

Billy: Okay.

Adrianne: So, then, uh, so the other thing is that these reviews for the seller can just as easily be faked as products. You do, you have to buy from the seller in order to leave them a review, but you could fake that, um, the way you fake product reviews. Have, you know, have one of your, your guys buy the product or brush the product and leave the seller feedback review. So, these are not necessarily 100% trustworthy either, but this can give you some idea of the specific rating for the seller. Like, you might see that the product has five stars and then you click through to the seller and the seller has two and a half stars.

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Adrianne: So, that’s one way to check.

Regina: Well, and especially with products like where, like with this, where as long as it’s not something harmful, you don’t necessarily know if it’s working or not for, like, several weeks. So, at that point, you probably aren’t gonna go back and leave a review.

Billy: Sorry, did anyone else look at these customer photos?

Regina: I see 50. Oh, oh, oh.

Billy: Creates weird residue on face, hours later too. Hard to see in the pictures.

Adrianne: Yeah, just go to Sephora.

Regina: They don’t actually-

Billy: But it’s starting to build up on my face.

Regina: … sell this at Sephora, but I will say this product is bad even if you get the real one. Um… But I imagine a knockoff is even worse.

Billy: So, where do you buy them from? Where would be the good place to ru- buy them from?

Regina: Directly from them.

Adrianne: Their website.

Regina: Yeah.

Billy: Got it.

Adrianne: Okay. Do you wanna hear about this new Amazon scam that I never heard of? This stuff is all old news.

Billy: Please.

Adrianne: Okay. So, uh, have, have any of you heard of a professional refunder?

John: What?

Billy: A professional refunder?

Adrianne: Mm-hmm.

Billy: No. Is this some way of laundering money?

Adrianne: No.

Regina: It’s not like a, a rebate? Like, don’t often third party companies do rebates?

Adrianne: No. I just put a link in Slack.

Regina: Yoshi’s Refunds.

Billy: Top refunder, best rates, Bitcoin/PayPal. Oh.

John: Oh, wow.

Billy: Wow, zero followers and following zero people.

Adrianne: Click on the Google Doc in their profile.

Regina: Oh, I’m in the Google Doc.

Billy: How’d you find this? This person has no followers.

John: Let me take a guess. Do you pay a small commission? Yeah, a small commission for them to finagle a refund for a product that you don’t have to return?

Adrianne: Yes.

John: How does that work?

Adrianne: Well, so this is new to me. Apparently this is something that has been going on for a long time, but a bunch of companies relaxed their refund policies-

John: Oh, my God.

Adrianne: … during the pandemic and apparently it’s going gangbusters.

John: Oh, no.

Adrianne: So, these are people who will negotiate a refund for you. They know the policies of each retailer, Target, Amazon, Instacart, inside and out. They know the limits of how much you can get them to refund you, and they will do this for a 10 to 30% commission.

John: And the reason you would have someone, a middle person, do this for you is because you don’t wind up with the rebates, with the refunds on your, like, Amazon account?

Billy: No.

Adrianne: No, it’s because they are very good at it.

Billy: And they’re just getting you free mon- … free money essentially, right? ‘Cause you get to keep the product, and then you, you get-

Adrianne: Exactly.

Billy: … the amount back minus their fee.

John: This-

Billy: This is-

Adrianne: Right. So, if you’re buying a 300 for it.

Regina: What?

John: This is an insane double scam.

Regina: Yeah.

Billy: I mean, it’s-

Regina: This one is really bad.

Billy: I mean, it’s-

John: This is theft.

Billy: Well, yeah.

Regina: Yeah, exactly.

Billy: Sure.

Adrianne: They’re really popular on Telegram. I just put another one in Slack, and it was very easy to find these. Like, once I read about them, it was like they were everywhere. They, I mean, they advertise this service and they post lots of screenshots that purport to be showing reviews, but they ask you for a lot of personal information-

Billy: I was gonna say, how does this work in practice?

Regina: Ooh.

Adrianne: … in order to get-

Billy: They have to impersonate you, right?

Adrianne: Yeah, they impersonate you. Sometimes they’ll file a fake police report.

Regina: Oh, my god.

Adrianne: So, like-

John: Oh, my God.

Adrianne: … Amazon has reviewed this.

Billy: Suddenly you have a criminal record.

John: Oh, no.

Billy: It’s like, “I actually, uh, I got sent to jail because of this product. Give me a refund,” and now it’s on your record.

Regina: God.

Adrianne: No, it’s like, “Someone stole this product from my porch.”

Billy: Oh, right. Okay.

John: Ugh.

Adrianne: Amazon’s very generous about this.

Billy: Right, yeah. Well, it makes sense because they, they don’t get to just sell that product for the same price once you return it. It i- it’s, it’s like, you know, auctioned off. So, it’s a loss for them regardless.

Adrianne: So, this person I just put into Slack is, uh, Smetonas and they claim to have 1,300 members of this Telegram group, and they’re advertising, uh, “Single package, any delivery method. Fresh accounts accepted. Items must be sold or fulfilled by Amazon. No price limit per item. Timeframe for refund is 14 to 21 days. Reships accepted. Import taxes refunded. Fees. Minimum order is $1,000.”

Billy: Hmm.

Adrianne: “30% for orders under 2,000, 25% for orders over 2,000.”And this is the form that this person wants you to fill out in order to contract their services. Go in, in Slack.

Billy: So wait, so…

Regina: You need to give them your login?

Billy: That’s, uh, I was gonna ask that question.

Adrianne: Yeah.

Regina: Like, your credit card is saved in there, right? I mean, I guess you delete it, but…

John: Whoa. Ugh.

Adrianne: Shipping address, billing address, last four digits of your payment card.

John: Yeah, wait, can you have an, a, an Amazon account active without a, a credit card working in the account?

Regina: I think so, uh, but it’s a good question.

Billy: I think it’s just because it’s one of those questions that they’re gonna ask you on the phone when you’re trying to return something.

John: No, no, I mean like if you wanted to prep your account for giving over the-

Billy: Oh yeah, sure.

John: … the credentials.

Billy: The i- Not that we’re advocating for this, but the ideal way to do this would be to just set up a separate account that you don’t use-

Regina: Right.

Billy: … for anything else, that you buy your expensive computer from.

John: Oh.

Billy: And then pay someone to get you the refund, right? But…

Adrianne: Yeah, I guess that’s why they’re saying fresh accounts-

Regina: Right.

Adrianne: … aren’t acceptable.

Regina: I like the secret phrase, “You can ask me for this to verify you’re talking to the real Smetonas.”

John: Oh, great, yeah. Yeah, just put it in the Google Form. It, it’s al- it’s only me looking at it.

Regina: Right.

Adrianne: So, I did read an article about this by a fraud consultant who claims that this is a real thing, that they really do get money back for people, that retailers are losing so much money in this fraud, and I’m gonna put that in Slack now. This is Frank on Fraud.

John: Oh, yes.

Billy: So, this is someone who’s on the fraud beat.

John: Oh my God, this image.

Regina: Sorry, is that Frank? Why is he on fire?

John: Frank on Fraud on fire.

Adrianne: His headline is, “Professional refunders are fraud hit men for hire.” So, I think that that image is a hit man. Yeah, I guess we should say what the image is.

Regina: Why is the hit man on fire?

John: It’s a skinny, white, bearded4man w- like, who looks like he lives in Austin, wearing a black shirt but he, his arms are charred and glowing, and his beard, which is sizeable, is on fire.

Regina: And his face. A lot of his face is on fire as well.

John: Yeah, and he’s, he’s taken off his, uh-

Regina: His hair, somehow, is like completely-

John: … his, like, sunglasses.

Regina: … slicked and smoothed though, like it has not been bothered by the fire.

John: Yeah, and that stuff is the first to go up in flames, I think.

Regina: Yeah. Yeah, this seems unrealistic.

John: Whatever’s holding that in place.

Regina: Why is there more hairspray in your beard than on your hair?

Billy: I was thinking it was more of a, it was almost more of a Proud Boy look. That’s like a Gavin McInnes kind of-

John: Yeah, he is a little Proud Boy.

Adrianne: That’s kind of a Proud Boy look.

John: It’s a fine line between Austinite and Proud Boy.

Billy: Oh well, I think there was a point, yeah, where they, I, I feel like they stole the look and it made it, they-

Regina: They converged.

Billy: Everyone else changed. Everyone else grew out their hair because of it.

Adrianne: So, this guy, Frank McKenna, is writing about this. I would caution that I personally can’t verify that these people are actually getting anyone’s money back. And the fact that they’re collecting so much personal details suggests there could be a secondary scam, or that that could be the whole scam itself. But he claims that this is totally a thing. It has really taken off in the pandemic. And the reason people hire these, uh, hit men is, refunding hit men, is because they are just really good at knowing the ins and outs of these policies for different companies. And so he says, “There are scores of refunders with different specialties. Each of the refunders specializes in a different type of merchant exploitation. Some will specialize in getting you free food on Instacart, while others focus on helping you exploit Amazon’s refund policies.” And then he has a list of some of these services, The Refund Brothers, The Refund General, Radiant Elite, Refunder Pro.

Billy: Free food on Instacart seems like pretty low, it seems like too low stakes to be worth it for this person doing the service, right? Like, at most you’re gonna spend, what, like, a couple hundred dollars on groceries if you have, like, a big family? Uh, so the f- fee is only g- if the fee is, like, 20%, that’s not gonna be a lot of money for this person to go through all this work to get you a refund.

Adrianne: That makes sense, but I did see Instacart a lot. I think Instacart is in that phase of being a company where it’s still trying to get lots of adopters, so it just has-

Regina: Right, they’re just losing money.

Adrianne: … extremely generous policies that are like, “The customer is always right. Refund everything.”

Billy: Right. But in which case, you probably don’t need to hire someone to do it for you. You just need to, like, know the right button to hit.

Regina: Well, it’s probably also, it- it’s the right button, but it’s also, like, just the patience and the time that you have to put in, right? Where, like, theoretically, I guess, if you’re- … buying on Instacart, it’s like because you don’t have time.

Billy: But if, but if, but if someone’s taking a 20% commission to get, get a refund on, like, $150 worth of groceries, they’re not gonna be doing that if it takes a lot of time.

Adrianne: Well, I doubt they’re doing 150. The limit that is listed on Smetonas’ site is 1,000 for Instacart, which is the lowest of all of these.

John: Who’s getting $1,000 worth of groceries?

Regina: I mean, if you’re buying for the office or something like that.

Adrianne: People do.

Regina: Like, people do that.

Billy: You’re buying for the office and then getting a refund? W- h- how?

Regina: Ah, yeah, I guess that’s true. I don’t know.

Billy: That’s-

Regina: That’s a fair point.

Billy: Yeah.

Regina: Fair point.

Billy: I mean, startups, I guess.

John: What do the, what do the, like, complaints look… Like, what do these agents say to get the refund? ‘Cause I imagine that, like, part of this is also, like, getting fake indignant at a company or something.

Adrianne: Totally. Th- this guy says that’s a big part of it, is- Right…. that people just aren’t comfortable lying, and these professionals are. So, he writes, “The big thing is the fake police report-”

Regina: I can’t.

Adrianne: “… and saying that something got stolen.” You’re really getting close to getting-

John: … in some serious trouble-

Billy: Right.

John: … whenever you start, like, involving the police.

Billy: Right. That’s a crime, right? To file a fake police report, I would imagine.

Regina: Yeah, definitely.

John: A fraud is also a crime.

Billy: So, but I’m just saying-

John: I think you’re doing two crimes here.

Billy: … this person is impersonating you to-

John: Yep.

Billy: … commit additional crimes.

John: To commit a crime. Yeah.

Billy: Right. They’re like, “Okay. I’ll commit the crime that you want, but I’m gonna have to commit some other crimes under your name to be able to get there.” But I think we can get away with them all. Don’t worry about it.

Adrianne: Yeah. So, uh, anyway, that’s bad. Don’t do that. Um, but this, this guy does have some screenshots of alleged fraudulent Instacart refunds, and the total was 834 for the first one and 1,125- Sorry, is- …

Regina: is he categorizing these- … as friendly fraud?

Adrianne: Yeah. They call it friendly fraud.

John: Geez.

Regina: What is friendly about it?

Adrianne: I think it’s, like, the customer and the fraudster are collaborating.

Regina: Oh, I see.

John: That’s sweet.

Regina: Yeah.

Adrianne: Also, uh, Instagram calls the refund customer happiness refund.

Regina: Oh, Instacart?

Adrianne: What did I say? Instagram? Instacart.

Regina: Yeah.

Billy: So is it one of those things where if you know the name for it, you’re li- if you’re like, “Hi, excuse me. Yes, I would like the customer happiness refund,” they can’t, like, deny you it?

John: Hmm.

Billy: You know, it’s like the secret menu.

Adrianne: Mm-hmm.

Billy: It’s like, I know you have the customer happiness refund, and you can do it for anything for any reason. Uh, it just, it’s so, like-

Adrianne: Probably. Yeah, who knows what they say? They’re probably like, “I used to work at Instacart. I used to have your job.” Who knows?

Billy: Right.

Adrianne: Maybe they did.

Regina: So, what happens, like some of these have the tip refunded. What happens when the tip gets refunded? Does the person who delivered your food lose the tip? Like, especially if the tip was made on a card.

Adrianne: Well, the tip, the tips work weird.

Regina: I don’t know, ‘cause tips get paid out, yeah, after the fact if they’re made on a card.

Adrianne: Well, they-

John: Hmm.

Regina: Like, unless you tip in cash.

Adrianne: They also, a lot of these companies just put the tip toward the base pay of the delivery person.

Regina: Oh.

Adrianne: So there’s, there’s a lot of sketchy-

John: Mm-hmm.

Adrianne: … stuff with tips too. I don’t know. That’s been evolving. They’ve been called out for it. But, um, like Doordash was using the tip to, they would guarantee drivers, like, “You make 18 an hour.

Regina: I see.

Adrianne: And so you tipping the driver doesn’t necessarily, it’s not necessarily a tip. Sometimes it just goes into their base pay. Anyway, I, I’m, so it’s possible that, like, the driver wasn’t gonna get an extra tip anyway, yeah.

Billy: Do you think these people do different voices?

Regina: Now Billy’s considering. Considering giving it a shot.

John: Yeah. He’s like, “You know, maybe.”

Billy: Well, I’m just saying, it’s like most of them record all of their calls, right? They, like, start by saying, like, “This call is being recorded.” Um, so you would think they would have a way in their system to be like, “Okay, sort all of the calls that ended up being a full refund.” And then if they could somehow analyze those to see patterns, like voice recognition, like, “Okay, uh, for some reason 80% of our refunds are being detected that they’re the same voice.” You know, you’d think there’d be some ways to throw up red flags on this stuff. But I guess the systems just aren’t that sophisticated yet.

Regina: Yeah. Your, your like kind of doing the SVU thing of like, “Enhance.” When that system just doesn’t exist.

Adrianne: Yeah.

Billy: Right, and I guess by the time it gets to that point, that this person, you know, they’ve already made their money.

Adrianne: Right.

Billy: They could only track down the people that did the scam, and they’re paying it, like, anonymously via Bitcoin or whatever.

Regina: That’s not true. They could, they could also track down the people who got it, like it got delivered to an address.

Billy: No, I’m saying they could only track down the individuals, right? It would be hard… I’m sure the scammer is good at covering their tracks.

Regina: Yes.

Billy: They’re-

Regina: I see.

Billy: … calls aren’t super traceable. They’re doing Bitcoin transactions, whatever, so even if they could-

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Billy: … do voice recognition, the best system they could build is like, “Okay, this voice is a known scammer, so if a call in the moment is detected with our super sophisticated system, that’s that voice, then we’re like, then we do some additional steps to try to verify the identity of the person before we proceed.”

Adrianne: Right. So, real time voice recognition-

Billy: I’m just saying.

Adrianne: … mach- machine learning.

Regina: Right.

Adrianne: We need to train them, the algorithms with all of these voice samples.

Billy: Hey, listen. I’m not trying to, uh, favor Target in this, uh, this culture war that’s going on with the getting refunds, but if Target needed a new system, that might be one that works. I mean, I may or may not have ordered a rug once, and then didn’t think I got the rug, so I called them, and they gave me a refund, and then somehow I ended up with, like, three rugs-

John: Oh, no.

Adrianne: Yeah.

Billy: And I returned, I returned two of them, and so I, I got paid double, and I still got a rug.

Regina: To be fair, returning a rug seems like a lot of work. So.

Billy: Yeah, I was like, “No one wants to deal with this.” But there’s other cases where I got scammed by the companies, and I was just like, “I can’t deal with it.”

Adrianne: Yeah. It comes out. It all washes out. I got a, like, outdoor patio tiles from Ikea, and I thought they were lost, but really they just arrived on different days, like different boxes of the same order on different days.

Regina: Hmm.

Adrianne: And anyway, when I thought they were lost, I called them and was like, “I only got one of the boxes. I ordered two.” They sent another box, and this was great because eventually I got all the boxes, and I had misestimated how many tiles I needed. But with the extra box- Mm-hmm…. it was perfect. Yeah.

Billy: Nice.

Regina: In this article, it said, like, there was someone who said they were making, like, 120K a year.

Adrianne: Hmm. Mm.

Regina: You know?

Adrianne: I don’t know…. if I buy that. People online are always talking about how much they’re making a year.

Regina: I mean, yeah, I don’t know that I believe it, but they said it.

Billy: Honestly, that seems like a s- that… If… To do this amount of fraud at this volume and then to only make like $120,000 a year doesn’t seem worth it.

Regina: No.

Billy: Honestly.

Regina: No, 100% not worth it.

Billy: Like…

Adrianne: But this is your skill. You’re good at talking to customer service people on the phone and getting them to give you a refund. That should be monetizable somehow.

Regina: No, you’re good at lying. Like, that’s a skill that is monetizable-

Adrianne: That’s true.

Regina: … in every field.

Billy: It seems-

Adrianne: Yeah.

Billy: … like a lot of work. And it… And, and in addition to doing a lot of work, you’re doing a lot of illegal activity.

Adrianne: Crime doesn’t pay.

Billy: I guess. It should.

Regina: Even if it’s friendly.

Billy: I feel bad. I don’t know. The scammers should unionize or something. They need higher rates.

John: Oh my God.

Adrianne: You think they should be making more? They should get a f-

Billy: Yeah.

Adrianne: … 50% commission.

Billy: Yes. Absolutely.

Adrianne: I think they just don’t have enough customers, ‘cause how many people are gonna enter their home address and last four digits of their credit card?

Regina: We just did this episode.

Adrianne: Hm, that’s true.

Regina: And you guys were-

Adrianne: That’s true.

Regina: … just saying you would do it because you’re… … you just want packages.

John: Yeah, like, I think we know…

Billy: I have a theory about who’s doing the previous scam, by the way. It’s teens. It’s gotta be teens.

Adrianne: Easily.

Billy: Well, ‘cause you have to be savvy enough to know how to get Bitcoin, right? Or some kind of cryptocurrency. This is all cryptocurrency, and this is all Telegram.

Adrianne: It says PayPal or Bitcoin.

Billy: They would probably have access to a parent’s credit card where they could buy an expensive item, and if they could get it refunded before their parent notices or before it ends up on the bill-

Adrianne: Uh-huh.

Billy: … they could get something really nice as long as they have enough, um, Bitcoin to cover the commission fee.

John: I feel like teen Billy would do this.

Billy: Now, I don’t think teen me would do it necessarily. But, it’s like, if you’re a teen, what do you got to lose? Yeah, I’ll give you my parents’ address and like my…

Adrianne: I hate them anyway.

Billy: … and their credit card number. Yeah.

Adrianne: So, um, putting, uh, a button on that conversation, we… If you heard this week’s episode, we talked about a different kind of scam, brushing, where people are getting packages that they didn’t order in the mail.

John: Hey, we didn’t talk about this in the episode actually, but why is it called brushing?

Regina: Oh, great question.

Adrianne: It’s called brushing because that is the rough translation of the Chinese phrase. And I saw it explained in, I think it was, um, NPR or maybe Planet Money did an episode about it, and their translator said it was, like, brushing the record clean and, like, sweeping the record. And-

John: Hm.

Adrianne: … yeah. And, uh, but I asked Moss about that translation. He was like, “It translates to customer review fraud.” So, I was like-

John: Oh, well.

Adrianne: … “Oh, okay.”

Regina: What?

Adrianne: Uh, so he, he wasn’t aware of the literal analog.

John: Huh.

Adrianne: But anyway, that’s why it’s called brushing, one of those maybe. So, this i- this type of brushing is, uh, fulfilled by Amazon. So, Amazon is shipping the packages, but unknowingly to, uh, the address of someone who actually didn’t order the stuff. The stuff was ordered on this person’s behalf and then arrived at their residence and someone probably left a review for it. And we all know this person.

Playback: I’m Ingo. I’m, uh, a Patreon subscriber, uh, and fan of the show since day one. And, um, on Discord, we got to chat a bit about, uh, my experiences with getting random Amazon packages that I didn’t order.

Billy: Ingo. I love Ingo.

Regina: Mm-hmm.

Adrianne: So, Ingo lives in Hamburg, Germany. And this all started pretty recently. He told me he started to get these packages around July. And he didn’t get seeds, but he’s gotten a ton of other stuff.

Playback: The frequency is about, uh, one or two packages per week right now. So, uh, uh, when we get a package from, uh, Amazon, it’s, uh, my wife says, “What did you order again?” I say, “I didn’t order anything.” And then, uh, we, uh, open the package and laugh at it.

Adrianne: That sounds, like, really fun.

Playback: Yeah, it’s a bit like Secret Santa every week, so.

Adrianne: Okay. So, let’s look through some of these.

Playback: Hm.

Adrianne: Okay. Wow. Uh, this is a smartwatch. You got a smartwatch?

Playback: Um, just a kid’s smartwatch. It’s, uh, uh- … some kind of monster that’s really a, a dumb phone. It’s, it’s a 2G, uh, uh, GSM phone with, um, the bare minimum to make it a smartwatch. It can display the time, as you see on the picture. And, uh, there’s also- … a camera application that takes the terriblest pictures in the world.

Billy: Oh, whoa.

Adrianne: Do you guys wanna see this?

Regina: Yes.

Billy: Whoa. Wait, I wanna see this. Yeah, it actually-

Regina: Yeah.

Billy: … functions as a phone, the watch?

Adrianne: All right. Hang on.

Regina: Wait, do we think he’s just like covering up a shopping habit with his wife?

Billy: That’s a very elaborate way to do it. See, I was on this American podcast. We talked about it.

Regina: Yeah, exactly. This is proof.

Adrianne: But still, and yet it has, uh, four and a half stars.

Playback: Yes.

Adrianne: And 157 Sterne Bewertungen.

Playback: Sterne Be- Yeah. Star reviews.

Adrianne: So, and then the next thing, this is, uh, I don’t know what this is. It says it’s something for a PC and Bluetooth.

John: I just bought this. I literally just received this in the mail-

Adrianne: Wow.

John: … today.

Adrianne: The same one?

Regina: Wait, this exact product?

John: Uh, this was one… No, this was the one I didn’t get, but I got…I almost bought this exact one.

Playback: It’s, uh, um, expansion card for desktop PCs, uh, so you can, uh, have a wifi and Bluetooth, uh, on them. I actually installed this card-

Adrianne: Mm-hmm.

Playback: … in my son’s PC and he’s quite happy about it, so- … that’s, that’s a win.

Adrianne: Ooh, very nice. This is the most recent one thing he got.

Billy: Are you linking to it now?

John: Oh, wow. Oh, wow. I’m gonna translate this, German.

Billy: What, um, what is, what is this?

John: It’s training device, muscle stimulation, electrostimulation, muscle trainer, abdominal trainer, muscle stimulator, abdominal massager, muscle building, and-

Billy: Oh!

John: … fat burning home fitness machine.

Regina: Oh! Where, yeah, they like basically shock you, so you develop muscles.

John: Is-

Adrianne: They sh- shock your abs.

John: Does it make your abs twitch a lot?

Regina: Yeah, it’s like, you know, they’re like, “Oh, laughing is good for your abs.”

John: This laughs for you-

Regina: This is like the most-

John: … so you don’t need to.

Regina: … extreme version of that.

John: Yeah.

Regina: Yeah. Yeah, no, you don’t have to feel any joy for this to work.

John: Well, I wouldn’t.

Billy: Well, this is like an updated version of… What, what was it? There’s some classic product that you like strap around your waist and it just like jiggles your belly fat around, and it was supposed to help you lose weight. This is like that but for abs. But see, this seems like a classic symptom of, of bad communication causing issues where there aren’t any, right? Like, people didn’t know why they were getting these seeds and freaked out, and thought it was chem- like biochemical warfare, when really most people would love to get free stuff. And if it was clear, they’d be like, “Wow, China’s great. They send me free stuff all the time.”

Adrianne: Have you ever tried to complain to Amazon about this?

Playback: No, why should I?

Adrianne: I’m not saying you should. I’m just wondering.

Playback: Uh, no. I just laugh about it and, uh, well, I don’t want it to stop really.

Adrianne: So I signed you each up for incentivized reviews-

John: We’re all getting crap.

Regina: Remember when I asked for your addresses, this is why.

Adrianne: John sent us all guac balls.

John: Yeah, I’m expecting some-

Adrianne: I’m getting you.

John: … random Amazon shit in return.

Regina: Oh, John, I got you this, uh, this muscle thing.

John: Oh, thanks.

Regina: So I figured you could only wear it while you’re editing the podcast, so that way-

John: Yeah, no, I’m gonna get-

Regina: … it’s just like your muscles are tracked to the amount of time you spend on this.

John: I’m gonna get shredded.

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