My Amazon Experience
It is an old saying that it is always easy to buy than to sell and that is very true.
In early 2012, I bought HP Compaq nc6220 laptop to use as my second PC. It was my best companion when I used to travel. It had a gorgeous screen and a stylish design. Then I decided to sell it on Amazon which was not a new thing to me as I was in the business of selling laptops on Amazon for quite some time and I wanted to try out a new model. So then I listed my laptop on Amazon on December 5, thinking it would catch the interest of holiday shoppers. I put a reserve price on the laptop as well as offered the “Buy It Now” option.
One week later, as the auction ended, the reserve price was met and the laptop sold. I boxed up the laptop, considering it a done deal. But two hours later, I received a message from Amazon, informing me the listing had been “cancelled due to bidding activity that took place without the account owner’s authorization.”
And then Amazon wiped out the listing. It was as if it had never existed. Worse, Amazon informed me of the following: “Unfortunately, it is not possible for us to automatically re-list these items for you. Instead, to re-list these items you will need to start from the beginning of the listing process. We know that this is an inconvenience and we apologize for the negative impact it may cause you. We are working on tools to allow you to re-list your items without starting from the beginning, but they are not available at this time.”
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In a simple language, if I want to re-list my laptop on Amazon, I had to start from beginning again.
When I asked Amazon about this, a spokesperson responded in e-mail: “The current process where we cancel the listing is optimized around immediately refunding the seller’s full fees (listing fee and final value fee). We realize that this solution can also have its drawbacks–specifically the inconvenience to the seller of having their listing removed and also the inability to offer Second Chance Offers to any under bidders, which is way Amazon is always looking for ways to improve its services to its users.”
A few days after the laptop’s second listing appeared, someone from Thailand contacted me by email and asked if I would ship to Thailand. I agreed to sell him. Minutes later, the man from Thailand used the “Buy It Now” option to procure my laptop and pay me via PayPal. He was in a urge to ship him as soon as possible. At 2:19 p.m. (Pacific Standard Time), I received an e-mail from PayPal that the funds were in my account. So I labeled the box containing the laptop and moved to post office. After returning home around 5 pm, I ot an email from PayPal saying that I “may have received an unauthorized payment.. .We have placed a temporary hold on the funds until the investigation is complete.
It took me 30 minutes to arrive at post office but all my efforts went in vain as my laptop was already on its way to the person in Thailand and for a moment I thought this is not true at all until I realized that it was my worst nightmare that had actually happened with me.
Conclusion
Up to date I have sold countless items on Amazon majority of which included laptops and never experienced fraud like this before. And as an Amazon buyer, I’ve never received anything that wasn’t what I had expected.
And I have some valuable experience to share with you. The first thing is always trust your instincts. Second always be patient and wait for twenty four hours after you receive payment before you ship your commodity specifically for higher priced items like laptop which was in my case.
Source:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24665478
http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/01/technology/amazon-seasonal-hiring/