Even on the Amazon website, you as a consumer are by no means protected against fraud. Whereby “fraud” does not mean any attempts at manipulation of the algorithms. But genuine rip-offs that violate the penal code. We reveal what you need to watch out for.
You are already used to this from dubious dealers: As a consumer, you do not always get what you order. But Amazon is not one of the dubious dealers. The US company is one of the largest online mail order companies and manufacturers in the world. Therefore, some buyers do not think too long when they discover a cheap product. A big mistake, as a recent case reveals.
BLATANT FRAUD ON AMAZON
If you’re looking for a high-capacity external SSD on Amazon, you’ll soon find some unbeatable deals. SSD data carriers with around 16 TB (about 16,000 GB or 16,000,000 MB) are sold for less than 100 euros. And that despite the fact that the corresponding branded products put thousands of euros on the price scales. A scam? That’s how it looks at first glance. But the reviews are excellent and Amazon even takes care of the shipping. So is everything going right after all? Not at all! Josh Hendrickson, Editor-in-Chief of the ReviewGeek portal, confirms this . He bought one of the data carriers mentioned and took it apart. A micro SD card with USB appeared2.0 and a storage capacity of 64 GB. And thus a data medium with only about 0.4 percent of the announced capacity. Actual cost: around 10 euros.
As part of our research, we also came across numerous similar offers on the German Amazon website. It does not necessarily have to be 16 TB. Sometimes it’s 18 TB or about 6 TB. Incidentally, the latter SSD hard drive is currently sold for only 48.99 euros. In most cases, however, the user reviews – if there are any – indicate fraud. Some report a lower capacity, but in most cases the respective storage media are labeled as “unusable”. This can be attributed primarily to the fact that the data carriers simply did not store any data and the files that were loaded were therefore irretrievably lost. And this despite the fact that some of the SSD data carriers were actually shipped from Amazon.
HOW DO FAKES GET GOOD STAR RATINGS?
Hendrickson assumes that retailers took over the ratings of other products. This works as follows: You take an existing product entry with good ratings and change the headline, the images and the description text. However, the ratings remain unchanged – although they focus on a completely different product in terms of content . In a statement to Reviewgeek, Amazon emphasizes that it does not allow the takeover of product lists. The same applies to incorrect product information. The mail order company speaks of a zero tolerance policy. Nevertheless, we can confirm that similar practices also occur in the German-speaking Amazon and therefore also pose a real danger for local consumers.
THIS WAY YOU MINIMIZE THE RISK OF FRAUD
First of all, it is advisable to always pay attention to the product reviews before making a purchase. And not on the 5-star ratings, but on those that are negative. If all reviews are consistently positive, this is also a reason to be suspicious. Because numerous Amazon ratings are still paid for. If this is the case, an unusual accumulation of images and videos can provide a clue. Because paid reviews are often supplemented by multimedia elements.
What remains are the ratings provided by the sellers themselves. We took a closer look at three cases of SSD fraud on Amazon. Two of the three sales only had one rating each. The last dealer, on the other hand, had two ratings. Three of the four reviews are not older than three weeks.
The last thing to note is that if something is too good to be true, it probably isn’t. That means: If you find a product that is sold for a fraction of the actual purchase price, then there is a good chance that you will end up without a product and without money.
