EclectEcon

I often order products from Amazon; sometimes I have found that the third-party vendors affiliated with Amazon sometimes offer products not available directly from Amazon and/or have lower prices and/or provide speedier delivery for some items. Until recently I have always been satisfied with my transactions with these third-party sellers (usually used-book sellers). In fact one of them was so good (prompt, efficient at checking on the order, courteous, etc.) that I specifically look for his listings.

Recently, however, I had a problem with one third-party seller. They advertised a product at a lower price than anyone else, and I ordered it from them. Their seller rating showed only that they were new and had no ratings from past customers, but Amazon offered a guarantee, so I figured, "what the heck?"

The place turned out to have been a fraud. Amazon was flooded with complaints as virtually no one who ordered anything from the place received their merchandise.

Two months later, after not a whole lot of trouble, I received a refund credit from Amazon to my charge card. I should be happy, I guess. But I'm not totally happy for two reasons:

1. As with any search process, I gave up the opportunity to purchase the item for the next lowest price when I tried to purchase it from the fraudulent vendor. The lowest available price now is higher than the second lowest price that was available back in August. Oh well....

2. I will be hestitant to order from new sellers on Amazon in the future. It wasn't a lot of hassle getting my refund, but it was a bit of a hassle. I would be far less hesitant if Amazon would implement a policy of holding receipts in escrow for 60 days for new sellers. Knowing this, I would expect that fewer fraudulent sellers would become Amazon affiliates; and as a result, I would feel more comfortable ordering from new sellers. I realize con artists could still build up some positive ratings and then put up thousands of fraudulent listings, but the probability of this happening would be lower if there were an escrow period for new sellers.

I submitted this suggestion to Amazon in several different e-mails, but received only computer-generated form letters in response — that probably ticked me off more than anything else, to be honest.

Details: the order was placed with Amazon.ca before there was any feedback. Here is the feedback to date. Yes, despite what you see there, I do know how to spell "expeditiously". My order was for this:

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I still haven't reordered it.