- A very impressive AMEX phishing email by Miles Per Day.
- The surprising company beating Apple and Google in mobile payments by QZ. Not that surprising given the number of promotions we’ve seen Starbucks run to get people to use the app, plus discounted gift cards and all that other fun stuff.
- Roomipay 0% Fee Via Referral Was Possibly The Greatest Couch Ms Opportunity Of 2018 by Travel In Points. Before people get angry that I didn’t share this, this is one I didn’t know about.
- Amazon is Banning Shoppers For Too Many Returns by Danny Deal Guru. Makes sense, don’t think too many resellers will be upset to see serial returners banned.
Deals expiring at the end of today (view the full deal calendar here):
- [Targeted] AmEx Offer: Air New Zealand, Spend $1,500+ & Receive $300 Statement Credit
- Hyatt: Up To 40% Bonus When Purchasing Points (Points From 1.671¢)
Deals expiring at end of tomorrow:
Ironically, if Amex actually did offer proper 2FA on accounts (e.g. TOTP, U2F) the phishing email would be largely useless
Amazon banning serial returners isn’t new, its been going on for years.
Silly question, but if Amazon shuts down your account, do they refund the Amazon account balance?
Not that I plan on it, but it would be freaking awesome if they would write me a check for my credit balance. I am not much of a shopper, but sometimes debit purchase requirements for new bank accounts are a breeze with Amazon. If anyone knows a workaround on that, how to get a refund on the Amazon balance, I would be your friend forever!
I hear there are some workarounds to getting free shipping on your order like buying a pre-sale video game that isn’t due out anytime soon, then canceling the game order after your other items have shipped. I wonder if the literal gamers of the system will be the next banned. I am fine with that.
would be interested in this as well. according to this article https://finance.yahoo.com/news/banned-amazon-shoppers-too-many-093000038.html some guy with a $450 balance lost it when his account got shutdown, but eventually he got reinstated. If you just get shutdown for too many returns, it seems like they’d have no case to confiscate the giftcard balance, but they may make it really difficult for you to recover it. Would be interesting to hear more stories about this
This is basically what I’ve read, they don’t return it automatically, but if you make a big enough stink you can get it back eventually.
Not to mention you get topped up with an additional 2% with a transfer from a bank account or obviously the credit card points + discounted gift cards.. would be crazy 🙂
Any easy way to prevent most phishing attacks: just don’t click on links in emails. Go to the site directly to address any issues.
Now sometimes this is impossible. But in the cases where it’s not possible, you’re usually expecting an email (like when you sign up for a new account and they email you a link to verify that you own the email account).
But get into the habit of not clicking on links in emails, and you’ll very easily avoid most phishing scams.
Amazon is actually a part of the problem, as they don’t screen vendor or products very well.
They allow too many sellers to undercut price and provide counterfeit products that look legit with Screen printed packaging, inserts, but the products are made with inferior materials – easy Example “pop-sockets” you can see them on the back of cell phones. but the real ones use 3M VHB tape (Very High performance bonding tape) to attach to the back of cell phones. They typically retail in stores for about $9.99 but you can get one shipped from china for $.35 or a for $.99 or $1.99 OEM Samsung AKG S8 Headphones shipped. From a company called Zapals. I bought both as I own both legitimate items and was curious if they were just overuns or overstock or as I thought knock-offs.
Comparing the packaging and the screen printing as well as the adhesive on the popsocket knock-offs to legitimate. The colors were dull, the rubber and attachment was different and the size of the adhesive and thickness were different and testing on a my youngest Moto G5+ it didn’t last 2 weeks, thankfully it had a case for drop protection. My eldest daughter has used a real Popsocket on her S8+ since last July and it has never fallen off but she has also used with a case and screen protector until last week when she got the S9+ and swapped it over with no issues.
I still have my AKG that came with my S8+ in the box (I use BT), as well as an OEM packaged Popsocket that was a free promo from Xfinifty. If I could’nt compare to a legitimate one I wouldn’t have known just by first glance ( Sound quality is subpar to the real AKGs, I also did a blind test on my teenage daughter who is a musician and still has good hearing but I could also tell).
My point is that Amazon doesn’t screen sellers or goods and contributes to the problem and also gives legitimate goods a bad rep from poor reviews. While US OEM sellers pay to advertise and be promoted to the top they loose twice paying for the promotion (ad) then being under cut in price by 10-20% of their selling price and loosing to the same product Fulfilled by Amazon Prime as well as get free promotion by having a cheaper price.
I bring this up because I no longer will by the cheapest price, as I have ended up with to many defective products or items that don’t work as they should i.e knock-offs, etc .
But this is a part of the problem and the other is Amazons over liberal return that is not defined clearly.
TL;DR: Poor product quality from knock-offs + bad grammar = piss poor experiences
I agree. Once I bought something for $10 that normally sells for $50. It was fraud. Never got out. Amazon refunded the money. Then she said you should pay attention. $10 for something that normally sells for $50 looks like fake. Why should I pay attention? You should pay attention what you are selling on your site.
Amazon is bringing crap from China on mass scale. like Wal-Mart before. Assholes can only think of money. Like typical capitalist.
They also don’t package things right often; so when stuff arrives broken it’s not your fault, better to avoid Amazon for anything fragile. They sent me glass 4 times packaged incorrectly, I finally just gave up.
I just read the article about Roomipay. That person’s scheme seems pretty fraudulent to me. Would you advocate something like that (your comment seems to imply this)?
At the end of the day it just depends on where you draw the line for “fraud”. Assuming there are no T&C then using a generic link is not fraudulent. The question is, assuming the T&C ban such behavior, does that make it fraud? Fraud has five key pieces (legally) and I think you could argue it’s not fraud by saying Roomipay could not “justifiably relied on” people acting like new/refered users when they have a generic link to “validate” it. Other items would fall in Roomi’s favor but you need all 5.
-Not a lawyer, just a guy with google
Be careful about confidentially telling people “it’s not fraudulent.”
Fraud can loosely be defined as “theft by false pretense” and requires intentional deception. So if you gain monetarily by intentionally deceiving someone, it can be considered criminal fraud and no amount of “but the terms and conditions said/didn’t say…” would get you out of legal trouble, the law isn’t dumb.
“You didn’t stop me so it must be ok” also isn’t a valid criminal defense.
If you were generating the no fee referrals to use Roomipay to cut yourself checks, it’s probably fraud, because that’s clearly not what Roomipay is for, you’re clearly deceiving them, and you’re clearly benefiting monetarily.
If you were generating no fee referrals to actually pay your roommate or landlord, then its probably not criminal fraud and more of a grey line.
It would probably have to be a particularly egregious case for authorities to get involved though, for example, there was a case of a woman who ordered something from QVC and cancelled her purchase and noticed that they didn’t ask her to return it. She went on to a $400,000 shopping spree cancelling all her orders but keeping all the products, as QVC never asked for them to be returned. She was charged with (and pleaded to) wire fraud.
I mean that is the point of the rest of my analysis where I explained that while it likely hit 4 points for fraud you could argue it falls short on one.
My link was more about the deal no longer being offered, I wasn’t passing judgement one way or the other.
In fact, the screenshot doesn’t mention that she was shut down or even threatened to be shut down. Just a simple question what Amazon can do to improve her experience and not make her send back 15% of her orders.
When reading one of the many click-bait articles (yes, guilty) — it turns out that Amazon just shut down Accounts for review fraud. Which is IMO a good thing.
Well getting an email like that is indeed a bit concerning. I think I almost definitely have more than 7 returns with Amz per year, but I do shop a lot with them as well.
Yeah, we don’t know the background and it depends on how you generally react. I think it’s good practice for a business to ask how they can improve when they notice that a customer is apparently unsatisfied. Honestly, I don’t get why she gets worked up on that email so much.
In any case, re-interpreting this email as ‘people are getting banned for 7 returns’ is certainly not true.