from Hacker News

High-value Amazon orders 'switched for cat food', say customers

by rwky on 3/11/23, 7:52 PM with 16 comments

• by brianjking on 3/11/23, 8:10 PM

  Lol, so I used to work in the live events business. We would have to order and ship many PA speakers to various trailers when the equipment would break, generally to a hotel where one of the event staff was staying. We would tend to order from Amazon since the event staff wouldn't be in the same spot for long.

  One of the times, we ordered a 500-watt Behringer PA speaker; these are around 2 feet tall. While sitting and eating dinner, my phone kept ringing repeatedly. I eventually picked it up only to have the event manager say "Hey, so I got the speaker...but upon opening the box it's full of dolls from the movie Frozen".

  The box had all of the Behringer branding on the outside, was sealed, and had the styrofoam to protect the "speaker", but inside...all Elsa.

  The strangest part was the Amazon rep didn't ask for the dolls back or even for proof; they simply reshipped the speaker the same day.

• by Trencin on 3/11/23, 10:03 PM

  So what's actually happening here? Amazon is allowing fraudsters to sell on their site, or someone within Amazon is switching products before they're delivered. I would have thought this could easily be avoided by only ordering from authorised sellers.

• by nytesky on 3/11/23, 10:20 PM

  Is the only with 3rd party sellers?

  Does it happen with other retailers like Best Buy or Target?

  Are they buying for below market prices?

  So many questions…

• by iancmceachern on 3/11/23, 9:37 PM

  This happened to us at work this week. We ordered a bunch of 5g modems and got a bunch of knee braces.

• by more_corn on 3/12/23, 12:56 AM

  I wondered where my cat food was going.