Online scam?

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Mildane
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Posts:384
Location:Yewtah
Online scam?

Post by Mildane » 10 Oct 2008 10:15 am

My friend sent me this email. Anyone know what if anything he can do to get his money from it? Feel free to move the post if this is the wrong place for it.
If you thought major American companies were above shady scams, you thought wrong. I recently bought an Xbox 360 Elite on Amazon, because they had a $60 gift card promotion. The fine print said they would send the gift card code via e-mail by September 30th, but if your console hadn't shipped yet, they would send it after the console shipped. So a week goes by & I never got my gift card. When I followed up, they replied & said my purchase wasn't eligible because the promotion expired September 14th(I ordered it the 27th). I read the fine print 5 times before purchasing, and September 14th wasn't in there at all. So I look again, & BAM, they changed their fine print!! Go to google or yahoo & type in "Amazon 360 $60 gift card promotion", and hit the main link. Then go back to the search engine & hit the cached link(a snapshot the search engines had taken before as backup) and notice the difference at the end of the 1st paragraph.

The worst part is Amazon's customer services reps(in both e-mail & on the phone) have continued to play stupid and robotically repeat the expiration date as if I'm some idiot that didn't read the fine print, they wouldn't even so much as apologize, and they claimed there's no line for the promotions department. This is the most atrocious customer service experience I've ever had the misfortune of encountering, I'm reporting it to the BBB, and just thought I'd pass along this information so you all know what SCAMAZON.com is capable of.
Quade-(Sawed Off)

Wrahn
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Re: Online scam?

Post by Wrahn » 11 Oct 2008 09:52 am

I am no lawyer, but the way I see it is he has 3 courses of action, depending on how ticked off he is.

He could go to a lawyer and sue, or at least have the lawyer send a threatening letter and hope it will be enough to make them capitulate. Problem is, even writing the letter will be more expensive that the gift card more than likely and suing will definitely be.

He could go to the police and claim fraud. Problem is, most police will dismiss a 60 dollar loss with dubious proof versus an international company. Just not worth their time.

The third case is you friend spends some time and finds other people this has happened to. Then follow one of the two courses above, 20 people who have fraud committed against them is a lot more compelling than 1 and 1200 bucks to spread the lawyer fees over is a lot less painful.

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Nerple
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Posts:216

Re: Online scam?

Post by Nerple » 11 Oct 2008 10:23 pm

Instead of writing the BBB I would write the state, most states have an a department that handles such cases, in Massachusetts I believe it's the Attorney General's office.

All the BBB can do is say in publications, ooh this company is bad. If an AG gets enough complaints, they'll launch an investigation for legal actions (which your friend wont get anything out of except any sort of satisfaction for being a catalyst.)
Still stealing Mildane's Forest Loop with Clairvoyance I

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