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  Geebo 10:56 am on November 28, 2016 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Amazon, Cyber Monday ( 2 ), gift cards ( 107 ), Scams ( 1,605 )   

  Beware of this Amazon scam on Cyber Monday 

  

  Today is known as Cyber-Monday, an internet alternative to Black Friday. It’s supposed to be a day of deals, but it can also be a day of scams.

  While you wouldn’t think of Amazon.com being a haven for scammers it sure can be. Not unlike Ebay, Amazon has a number of third-party vendors. Some of these vendors can be potential scammers, especially if they’re asking for payments in Amazon gift cards. A number of people claim that they’ve ordered something on Amazon, bur they were asked to contact the seller before purchasing the item. The seller would then request that the buyer purchase an Amazon gift card, then give them the serial number of the card. The problem was that the sellers were scammers and got away with the gift card money. Sadly, Amazon is not being very consumer friendly when it comes to the victims trying to get their money back. Amazon basically says that once the gift card is exhausted, the matter is out of their hands.

  There can be some good to take out of this story. When purchasing something online, whether it’s Amazon or not, never make a payment with gift cards to a third-party. This is a scam that has been going on since the dawn of gift cards. No legitimate retailer will ever ask you to pay this way.

  So on this Cyber-Monday, gift cards still make a great gift for someone on your Christmas list. However, they’re not good for making payments outside of the vendor itself.

   

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  Geebo 10:01 am on November 2, 2016 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Amazon, Amazon Prime ( 6 )   

  Amazon charges more to non-Prime customers in physical stores 

  

  Online retail giant Amazon has opened physical brick and mortar stores in Seattle, Portland, and San Diego. They plan on opening two more stores in Chicago and Boston. At these physical locations they sell mostly books, which is where Amazon originally made their bread and butter. However they’ve started a minor controversy by charging Amazon Prime members lower prices at their physical stores.

  Amazon Prime is a paid perk for Amazon.com members where they can receive additional benefits like faster delivery and access to their Netflix-like service, Amazon Video. However, what the Prime membership doesn’t do is give Prime members better prices on their website. By using the stick and carrot of lower prices at the physical stores to get customers to sign up for Prime, it seems that they’re trying to extort their customers into paying close to $100 a year just to get a few bucks off for books at their physical location.

  Now some may say that this sounds like any other ‘price club’ that a lot of stores have. The store gives you a card and when you present their card at checkout you get a discount on sale items. So how is that different from Amazon Prime? Well, at most of these stores that have price clubs, membership is free. That’s a far cry from $100 a year just for books. This sounds like it may be a minor backfire for Amazon as the only people they’ll be getting at their physical stores are people who need to have a book right now and will be willing to pay a few extra bucks for the non-Prime price.