Online Retail Hack
Selling miniature replicas to unsuspecting shoppers:
Online marketplaces sell tiny pink cowboy hats. They also sell miniature pencil sharpeners, palm-size kitchen utensils, scaled-down books and camping chairs so small they evoke the Stonehenge scene in “This Is Spinal Tap.” Many of the minuscule objects aren’t clearly advertised.
[…]
But there is no doubt some online sellers deliberately trick customers into buying smaller and often cheaper-to-produce items, Witcher said. Common tactics include displaying products against a white background rather than in room sets or on models, or photographing items with a perspective that makes them appear bigger than they really are. Dimensions can be hidden deep in the product description, or not included at all.
In those instances, the duped consumer “may say, well, it’s only $1, $2, maybe $3—what’s the harm?” Witcher said. When the item arrives the shopper may be confused, amused or frustrated, but unlikely to complain or demand a refund.
“When you aggregate that to these companies who are selling hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of these items over time, that adds up to a nice chunk of change,” Witcher said. “It’s finding a loophole in how society works and making money off of it.”
Defrauding a lot of people out of a small amount each can be a very successful way of making money.
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seth godin • November 9, 2023 7:47 AM
Flashback to being scammed out of $25,000 thirty years ago…
The fulfillment house I was working with on a project called to apologize… an operator had mistakenly put orders from account 345 into my account, 354, could I please send it back?
I checked, and it was true, the money was there, so I sent it back.
Over the next two weeks, ANOTHER $25k disappeared from my corporate account, banks clawing back from chargebacks.
The chargebacks were from fraudulent orders on account 345.
They were selling a “matched set of designer luggage” for $29. With photos in the ad and everything.
When people got the ‘luggage’ is was one inch wide. Tiny dollhouse luggage.
A complicated scam indeed. The Secret Service got involved, and I learned a good lesson…