I just got my package of new earphones from Best Buy, and the box was fucking empty. I mean there is the box and instruction manuals and charging cable, but the actual earphones aren’t there. They’ve used Shipt (which is like a doordash but for packages) but the box was inside another layer of packaging which was supposedly sealed before the delivery person got it so I’m leaning towards it being store employee theft, or someone returned an empty box and the employees didn’t verify it.
I’ll be contacting Bestbuy and Credit Card issuer as soon as customer support hours start.
I’ve literally never lost a package, I’m just so, annoyed. The money will probably be back, but like dude I just wanna listen to some music. Ugh… I guess phone speakers will have to do for now.
PSA: Record a video when opening packages just in case you need to file a dispute. I didn’t but I don’t think there’s gonna be an issue since these things rarely happen to me and disputes are rarely filed.
So have you ever been defrauded?
Update: I used the customer support chat and told BestBuy about it, and they gave me a replacement, this time I picked it up at the store and opened the box right in front of the employee just to be safe. Nothing was missing this time. 😀
A few weeks ago I shipped a package USPS and I wanted to track it’s progress. I googled USPS tracking and clicked on the first link that popped up. The search result looked like the USPS website and said USPS .com and had the same preview text that the actual website used but it was actually a Google ad that redirected me to supertracking .com. This fake website looked exactly like the USPS tracking website, the domain the web browser displayed was wrong but everything on the page was right, the buttons on the bottom and top even sent you back to the official USPS site. The fake site was set up so that no matter what you entered it would say the address was wrong and you had to update it for a $1.50 address update fee. I would have grown suspicious here except I actually did put the wrong zip code down when I shipped it. Again all the forms looked legit so I put my credit card info in after updating the address, then it wanted me to confirm my bank account login and pin. This is where I stopped because there is no reason for them to collect that data. I saw it was the wrong website and looked back in my history and sure enough I clicked on an ad without realizing it. I reported the domain, reported the ad, and cancelled my credit card. It was really scary how real the website felt, I didn’t suspect anything until they wanted bank info.
These ads are getting so much more prevalent, and so much more subtly marked. Google (and places like reddit and Facebook) designs them to feel as much like organic content as possible. I have a pihole on my home network, in part to prevent exactly the type of mistake you described.
One way that google explicitly enables these types of scams is by allowing advertisers to display a fake url in the ad footer. Ostensibly this is so advertisers can link to an intermediary 3rd-party tracking url instead of the target page without scaring the customers, but this is precisely what allows scammers to display usps.com in the link to a fraud site. Google even uses javascript to display the fake url in the browser tooltip when you hover over the link!
I switched to Kagi the other day and it’s fantastic compared to Google now. I haven’t gotten bad results a single time.
I’ve had FedEx deliver my package to a vacant neighborhood home. By the time I went to get the package, it was gone. FedEx did a “thorough” investigation and found that they delivered it correctly. I appealed and never got my money back.
Been the victim of fraud. Unfortunately - yes.
When I was younger and Chip ‘n’ PIN was becoming popular, many smaller shops had a Paypoint machine that would print the entire card number and CCV on the receipt. I was so paranoid about fraud, especially given that there was sufficient information printed on the receipt that anyone could do an Amazon order with those details. I used to get a black permanent marker and scribble the details out before putting the receipt in the bin.Imagine my horror when a decade later, I learn that I have been the victim of fraud, and a type of fraud it was entirely impossible for me to prevent. In the UK fraudsters watch for new companies popping up on Companies House and then use the details to go on a shopping spree. The way it works is like this:
They see my name, address and date of birth on the website. They are looking for a name that matches their surname and first initial. So for me that could be Alexander Jones for example. They go to a retail park and pop into Argos. They order several thousand pounds of stuff. When they go to pay, the person at the counter helpfully asks “Do you have an Argos credit card? If you apply for one today, we’ll transfer the balance of today’s purchases to the card” and armed with my address, date of birth and name, and a card that already has the same surname and first initial as me - they are accepted for an Argos credit card. Post nothing for the goods they just bought and leave the store. They go next door to JJB sports, and then whole process repeats. “Do you have a JJB sports card? If you get one today…”
They visited 6 stores in an hour and repeated this process at all of them. And a week later I start receiving credit cards…
It’s a surprisingly common scam (or it was), brought on entirely by the shops bring pushed to get people to sign up for credit cards…
I had to be on a register for several years, so if anyone tried to open an account or take out credit in my name, I would get a phone call to check if it was actually me.
Why in the world are you allowed to take out credit cards for so little information? In the US you _must _ give a social security number and then a credit check is done. It happens all at the register and can take a few minutes. You don’t just get automatically approved.
About 20 years ago I spent about $2k on a piece of electronic music gear on eBay. I was just out of university and this was a huge sum for me. It soon turned out that it was a fraudulent listing. This guy had gotten access to his girlfriend’s eBay account and posted a bunch of high value auctions and stole the money. A bunch of us victims were in touch and commiserating about our bad fortune. However, this story has a happy ending. The police got involved and were able to recover the money!
How long it took to get the money back tough?
I honestly don’t remember at this point, but I think the whole ordeal took something like 6 months. It was definitely under a year.
I ordered a Noctua CPU cooler from Amazon a few years ago. It was sold to me as new, and it definitely looked new, but when I opened the package to the it out and install it, it was missing several components. It had obviously been opened and either used or at least taken apart, then put back in the packaging.
I didn’t feel scammed necessarily, but it was extremely annoying. I had no trouble with Amazon taking it back and sending me a new one. Honestly the only reason I think you’d have trouble is if your account has a history of questionable or large returns.
On my wedding night, one of my vendors decided to go on a shopping spree with my credit card. I guess he hoped that there would be so many charges that I wouldn’t notice. I didn’t remember shopping for car parts while I was saying “I do”. Credit card refunded the charges. I actually got them the address that the purchases were shipped to but they didn’t care.
my partner, her friend and I traveled to another city 4 hours away to go see a musical. my partner found the accomodation on booking.com
when we got to where the apartment should be, we couldn’t find it. we looked around for ages to no avail. found a police station nearby. we asked them if they knew of the address. they pointed to the building across the street they said had been abandoned for 5 years. when we tried to call the host it went thru to an international phoneline in a different language.
oof
Several years ago, my credit card number was used to buy airplane tickets on a different continent. No big deal, right? I disputed the transaction with my credit card company and expected that to be the end of it. By the way, I had the card in my possession the whole time.
They wrote back and said they confirmed that the charge was legitimate, made in person, and I was responsible for the total amount.
I asked how they confirmed it (they never answered that) and explained that it was very hard for me to be 1/3 of the way across the planet while also making purchases at home such as gas and groceries. I was at work, made purchases with their card at the same time, and had toll booth records — lots of supporting evidence that I never went there to make the purchase.
It didn’t matter, they stuck to the story that it was made in person and was authentic. One of the letters from them said that they had asked the airline who in turn told them I was there doing it in person, but that was the only hint at the process I got.
I’m upset but busy with life, new baby, work, etc. so about a week goes by and another letter comes from them saying that my dispute was successful and I don’t owe the money. It was short, had very little information, and there was no answers to any of the questions I’d asked (questions about the bank policy for disputes, if the decision is final, how they verified I was in another country, how they know my card was there).
In the end, I got my money back but no closure on what happened. It was six years ago and I still feel frustrated about it.
In the early days of smartwatches I ordered one from the manufacturer directly. The price tag and its features all sounded too good to be true, and it was. I don’t even remember their name but I was so hyped that I didn’t even do basic research.
I waited and waited and after a few weeks I did a search online. Turns out the whole thing was a scam, I found tons of blog posts about people either not receiving theirs or getting something that barely worked.
It was too late to do anything about it but I learned my lesson the hard way.
Did you dispute the charges with your bank?
No, at the time I didn’t know that it was possible to dispute a charge.
