Can anyone provide clarification on this? Any experience?
A week ago my wife got an email saying her amazon order had shipped. It was about 50 dollars worth of hair clips. She never placed this order. When she checked “my orders” it doesn’t show up in amazon, but if she searches her orders for those keywords it pops up. I guess it’s a hidden order.
The weird thing is, it’s being shipped to our home according to the tracking data and will arrive tomorrow. It was paid for using a strange credit card that isn’t associated with us.
She reported the order to amazon as fraud and didn’t think much more of it, since it wasn’t our account the money was coming out of. Well today, amazon emails her and says the bank has disputed the charge (I guess the person who actually does own that card reported the fraud) and now amazon needs us to pay the 50 dollars or they will lock our account.
We haven’t replied to any emails or clicked any links in case they are phishing, but this order really does exist on her account as verified with another device independently from the email.
If amazon thinks we disputed the charge with our bank, why do they think we would be willing to pay with another card?
I can only guess the seller is using hacked amazon accounts to buy their products with stolen cards? I’m curious if the stuff will actually show up tomorrow. Maybe its a local scam and someone is hoping to intercept the package? Such an odd item tho.
Wife changed her amazon password as soon as all this started by the way.
I recently phoned Amazon about something I ordered that stopped working after one day. I spoke to a live human being, who shipped a replacement and an email with a prepaid mailing label attached. I would recommend you call Amazon.
I recommend you contact Amazon Customer Service, without using the email you received.
There is a feature in Amazon that is not well known by customers called Archived Orders. To see your archived orders, go to Your Account, and under " Ordering and shopping preferences" click Archived Orders. Oddly, this option is not available if you go to My Orders. You should check to see what’s there.
Your situation is a little different than mine, but my account was hacked. The first thing they did was re-order something I had already ordered, then they archived the order so I wouldn’t see it unless I went to Archived Orders, which I had never heard of. Once they determined they could do that, then they ordered a couple of Sephora gift cards for $50 each and had them delivered electronically to some gmail address. These were archived also. I did not find out about any of this until I received the first re-order, at which point I reviewed my credit card statement and found the other charges, and learned about Archived Orders.
That could be but if so they would going for fungible goods like gift cards, not hair clips.
That sounds phishy to me. When there is a dispute, the bank contacts the merchant to get their story. If the bank determines that the merchant is liable, the charge is reversed, end of story. The merchant has no further recourse and should not be asking for anything. If the bank sides with the merchant, then the cardholder is told the charge is good, alternate end of story. I have been through both of these scenarios.
If the dispute was because of a stolen card, and you have already reported this transaction to Amazon, then your ass is sufficiently covered and you should contact Amazon to see if they are really going to lock your account, and if so tell them why they shouldn’t.
Oh, and by the way, the worst thing about Amazon is that to have an account you must keep at least one credit card on the account. After I was hacked I tried to remove it so I could just enter my card information every time, but they will not allow that.
For a long time I had an empty prepaid debit card on my Amazon account. Then I switched it to Amazon gift cards. Don’t recall if my Amazon account has a card as I use the wife’s mostly.
I have an Amazon card with a pretty high limit on it, which was the card I kept on the account, until I heard they were getting hacked. I switched it to a card with a low limit. Then I realized I could leave the Amazon card on the account, and just have the low limit card as the default, and just switch cards when I bought something.
Eventually, the low limit card expired, and I left it on the account. Now, my default card is expired, and I just have the one extra step of clicking on a non-default card.
If I get hacked, it’s doubtful a hacker would think to do that, especially because hackers just want to jump in and out.
One of the reasons I have several credit cards is to have a mix of high, medium, and low limit cards. I have one very, very high limit card I keep in a lock box, and two medium ones I keep in a drawer, then two low limit ones I carry with me. The medium ones I pull out when I buy something like plane tickets. The very high one is for major emergencies I have not had yet, like a medical emergency, or getting evicted because our building was sold to someone who wanted to remodel, albeit, I use it twice a year just so it doesn’t get rescinded for non-use-- I pay the car insurance with it, then pay it off in the same billing cycle.
The low limit ones are $300 & $500. I have occasionally run them up at fairs or festivals, but they are about what I can afford to pay off in two billing cycles. I keep getting offers to raise the limit, and I keep turning them down.
The fact that the hair clips are being shipped to you is rather odd, but clearly something hinky is going on: the scammers evidently did as other said: placed the order then archived so it wouldn’t be that obvious. I wonder if this was the scammer’s attempt to check whether the card was actually valid (much like card thieves will sometimes run a card at a gas station or vending machine).
Sounds like two kinds of identity theft are happening: the cardholder’s info was stolen, and your wife’s Amazon account was hacked. You might want to change passwords on other accounts tied to that same email, especially if her password wasn’t strong.
I can actually see Amazon saying “hey, you disputed the charge, pay up” but presumably simply returning the merchandise should solve that. Also, I suspect the people in charge of THAT notice don’t talk to the people who handle fraudulent orders.
Did your wife get any notice that the order had been placed? (as opposed to a shipment notification). Usually you’ll get one email when you place the order, and another when it ships.
I have my accounts all set up to email me when charges of more than a certain amount are made.
With my debit card, it’s $200, because other than my rent, there’s no regular charge that comes out over that amount. It means that I get notified of legit charges all the time, but it’s just a notification. Nothing happens, unless I initiate something.
Once, I was subject to some odd scam, and notified of a $2,000 charge at the Post Office-- not even my regular one, but one I’d never been to. And I don’t think I’d used my card at my regular one recently. I’m not sure what you could legitimately buy at the Post Office that would cost $2,000. I would assume that large businesses buying that much in prepaid boxes or something would have them delivered.
Anyway, I notified my bank ASAP, and got the charges reversed. There was an investigation, and I had to get a new card issued; the investigation took over a week, but in the end, they decided that in fact, the charges were bogus, and I got the money back permanently.
I never did figure out what kind of scam it was. But there’s obviously some advantage to charging large amounts of odd things to a card when you are running a scam.