An Open Letter to Amazon.com

[dankkk]

I like the idea of purse.io, but ultimately what's to stop you being on all sides of the same transaction (i.e. using stolen cards to buy yourself stuff from Amazon and, of course, receiving the escrowed bitcoins to another address)?

purse.io should take the risk, but do you think they will?

There is nothing to stop someone from doing this. This is the reason why amazon will not reimburse the OP for the stolen gift cards.

That's true, and that's why I didn't expect Amazon to instantly reinstate the cards without an investigation. Posting the details as I know them (and being willing to answer any other questions that come up to the best of my ability, probably with assistance from Purse) was done precisely to help an investigation determine that I'm not playing both sides of the fence here.

What are they suppose to investigate? It doesn't matter if you are on both sides of the "fence", the fact of the matter is that gift cards were purchased and Amazon did not receive payment. As a result they canceled the gift cards. I cannot imagine anyone even hoping for any different of a result.

If the gift cards did not work despite paying for them via purse then you should bring up this issue with purse.

[toleng]

I like the idea of purse.io, but ultimately what's to stop you being on all sides of the same transaction (i.e. using stolen cards to buy yourself stuff from Amazon and, of course, receiving the escrowed bitcoins to another address)?

purse.io should take the risk, but do you think they will?

There is nothing to stop someone from doing this. This is the reason why amazon will not reimburse the OP for the stolen gift cards.

That's true, and that's why I didn't expect Amazon to instantly reinstate the cards without an investigation. Posting the details as I know them (and being willing to answer any other questions that come up to the best of my ability, probably with assistance from Purse) was done precisely to help an investigation determine that I'm not playing both sides of the fence here.

What you are doing is nothing more then extorsion to amazon. Amazon is not a party to the subject dispute. Inputs.io is. They resulted in the fact that amazon is having to reimburse a cardholder that did not pay in exchange for nothing.

[ebliever]

I like the idea of purse.io, but ultimately what's to stop you being on all sides of the same transaction (i.e. using stolen cards to buy yourself stuff from Amazon and, of course, receiving the escrowed bitcoins to another address)?

purse.io should take the risk, but do you think they will?

There is nothing to stop someone from doing this. This is the reason why amazon will not reimburse the OP for the stolen gift cards.

That's true, and that's why I didn't expect Amazon to instantly reinstate the cards without an investigation. Posting the details as I know them (and being willing to answer any other questions that come up to the best of my ability, probably with assistance from Purse) was done precisely to help an investigation determine that I'm not playing both sides of the fence here.

What you are doing is nothing more then extorsion to amazon. Amazon is not a party to the subject dispute. Inputs.io is. They resulted in the fact that amazon is having to reimburse a cardholder that did not pay in exchange for nothing.

What is inputs.io?

Is the Ebay buyer also guilty of extortion against me for asking for a refund? I am a bit surprised at the negativity of many people here. I'd have thought that with scamming being so widespread in crypto people would have more sympathy for victims, rather than calling them extortionists, etc. for asking for a refund. I guess not.

Keep in mind that Amazon has not actually told me what the issue is that has led to revocation of my own gift cards. I don't know if they have actual bad charge(s), or were cancelling en masse due to one bad charge, or what. This is still very much an open investigation, at least for me. How comfortable are you with the idea of a company unliaterally revoking gift cards you've paid for, without warning and without even the bother of notifying you? And then refusing to tell you why despite repeated inquiries? Does that seem right? I don't mean to sound distrustful, much less paranoid, but companies can make mistakes, not to mention outright corruption, and if there is no accountability things will tend to get worse.

[murraypaul]

Keep in mind that Amazon has not actually told me what the issue is that has led to revocation of my own gift cards. I don't know if they have actual bad charge(s), or were cancelling en masse due to one bad charge, or what. This is still very much an open investigation, at least for me. How comfortable are you with the idea of a company unliaterally revoking gift cards you've paid for, without warning and without even the bother of notifying you? And then refusing to tell you why despite repeated inquiries? Does that seem right? I don't mean to sound distrustful, much less paranoid, but companies can make mistakes, not to mention outright corruption, and if there is no accountability things will tend to get worse.

Again, you didn't pay for them.
You anonymous counterpart did, and then transferred them to you.
As I understand it, the following transactions occurred:
You transferred BTC to AnonBuyer.
AnonBuyer purchased a gift card from Amazon.
AnonBuyer transferred that card to you.
Amazon probably can't tell you anything about whether a credit card was stolen, or whether a chargeback took place, because it wasn't your card, and you weren't their customer.

[blumangroup]

I like the idea of purse.io, but ultimately what's to stop you being on all sides of the same transaction (i.e. using stolen cards to buy yourself stuff from Amazon and, of course, receiving the escrowed bitcoins to another address)?

purse.io should take the risk, but do you think they will?

There is nothing to stop someone from doing this. This is the reason why amazon will not reimburse the OP for the stolen gift cards.

That's true, and that's why I didn't expect Amazon to instantly reinstate the cards without an investigation. Posting the details as I know them (and being willing to answer any other questions that come up to the best of my ability, probably with assistance from Purse) was done precisely to help an investigation determine that I'm not playing both sides of the fence here.

What you are doing is nothing more then extorsion to amazon. Amazon is not a party to the subject dispute. Inputs.io is. They resulted in the fact that amazon is having to reimburse a cardholder that did not pay in exchange for nothing.

What is inputs.io?

Is the Ebay buyer also guilty of extortion against me for asking for a refund? I am a bit surprised at the negativity of many people here. I'd have thought that with scamming being so widespread in crypto people would have more sympathy for victims, rather than calling them extortionists, etc. for asking for a refund. I guess not.

Keep in mind that Amazon has not actually told me what the issue is that has led to revocation of my own gift cards. I don't know if they have actual bad charge(s), or were cancelling en masse due to one bad charge, or what. This is still very much an open investigation, at least for me. How comfortable are you with the idea of a company unliaterally revoking gift cards you've paid for, without warning and without even the bother of notifying you? And then refusing to tell you why despite repeated inquiries? Does that seem right? I don't mean to sound distrustful, much less paranoid, but companies can make mistakes, not to mention outright corruption, and if there is no accountability things will tend to get worse.

Toleng should have said purse, which acted as escrow to the transaction.

What you are not understanding is that the purchase and sale of gift cards is not something that is risk free. This is why they trade at a discount to their face value. If you are getting a 30% discount on a gift card then you should assume that there is roughly a 30% chance the gift card will ultimately have no value by the time you are able to spend the amount loaded on it.   

[zorke]

I like the idea of purse.io, but ultimately what's to stop you being on all sides of the same transaction (i.e. using stolen cards to buy yourself stuff from Amazon and, of course, receiving the escrowed bitcoins to another address)?

purse.io should take the risk, but do you think they will?

There is nothing to stop someone from doing this. This is the reason why amazon will not reimburse the OP for the stolen gift cards.

That's true, and that's why I didn't expect Amazon to instantly reinstate the cards without an investigation. Posting the details as I know them (and being willing to answer any other questions that come up to the best of my ability, probably with assistance from Purse) was done precisely to help an investigation determine that I'm not playing both sides of the fence here.

What you are doing is nothing more then extorsion to amazon. Amazon is not a party to the subject dispute. Inputs.io is. They resulted in the fact that amazon is having to reimburse a cardholder that did not pay in exchange for nothing.

The other party to the transaction is actually purse, not inputs lol. Other then that you are 100% correct. If the gift cards were fraudulently purchased and amazon did not receive any money from the sale of the gift card then they would have no reason to give the gift cards any value. 

[Eastwind]

If Amazon accept bitcoin directly, there will much less hassle.

[btbrae]

I knew what happened here.

After reading the first sentence.

[dankkk]

I like the idea of purse.io, but ultimately what's to stop you being on all sides of the same transaction (i.e. using stolen cards to buy yourself stuff from Amazon and, of course, receiving the escrowed bitcoins to another address)?

purse.io should take the risk, but do you think they will?

There is nothing to stop someone from doing this. This is the reason why amazon will not reimburse the OP for the stolen gift cards.

That's true, and that's why I didn't expect Amazon to instantly reinstate the cards without an investigation. Posting the details as I know them (and being willing to answer any other questions that come up to the best of my ability, probably with assistance from Purse) was done precisely to help an investigation determine that I'm not playing both sides of the fence here.

What you are doing is nothing more then extorsion to amazon. Amazon is not a party to the subject dispute. Inputs.io is. They resulted in the fact that amazon is having to reimburse a cardholder that did not pay in exchange for nothing.

This is exactly correct. (except for the inputs part). The OP is trying to use social media to extort amazon because his investment went bad. The OP should have known that he should have diversified his sources of gift cards and that he should have only traded with more established traders

[wasserman99]

I like the idea of purse.io, but ultimately what's to stop you being on all sides of the same transaction (i.e. using stolen cards to buy yourself stuff from Amazon and, of course, receiving the escrowed bitcoins to another address)?

purse.io should take the risk, but do you think they will?

There is nothing to stop someone from doing this. This is the reason why amazon will not reimburse the OP for the stolen gift cards.

That's true, and that's why I didn't expect Amazon to instantly reinstate the cards without an investigation. Posting the details as I know them (and being willing to answer any other questions that come up to the best of my ability, probably with assistance from Purse) was done precisely to help an investigation determine that I'm not playing both sides of the fence here.

I think this was asked above, but I don't see that you have answered it....what do you think amazon is going to investigate? From the looks of it (based on your very long story), they did not receive money for the gift cards (they did but the money was taken from them when the credit card used was likely reported either stolen or had a charge back filed.

If you are wanting amazon to give you gift cards with value when they did not receive payment then you might as well be asking amazon for a check in exchange for nothing

[ebliever]

I've updated the first post below the OP with the results of my contacts with Amazon (and Purse so far as that's gone). In a nutshell, Amazon NOW tells me they revoked every gift card I purchased through Purse, but won't tell me why or when or any details about the revocation. So (despite the screwy claims that the victim is committing "extortion" here) I'm out 100%, including the refund(s) I'll be providing on Ebay because I won't stoop to treating people the way Amazon has treated me.

Please note that Amazon has only just today reported revoking cards going back to June 23. When did they decide this? Why don't they bother notifying customers when they are revoking gift cards? My first couple gift cards to test the waters were $50 each. If they'd acted and notified me in a timely manner it would have provided red flags that would have stopped me from making purchases of hundreds of dollars more in gift cards. Moreover I (and others in the same boat) could have warned one another and the public in forums like this (not to mention Purse itself), preventing many thousands of dollars in other gift card purchases that Amazon is no doubt revoking. (As can easily be inferred now from the scale of Purses' listings the last few months.)

Instead everything went smoothly with zero trouble for three months, enabling the problem to snowball. And Amazon can just unilaterally revoke it's own gift card funds and absolve itself of responsibility, while everyone on the BTC-selling side at Purse.io is left holding the bag. Amazon's secrecy and refusal to notify customers took what could have been contained as a small-scale problem and now my best guess is it is several orders of magnitude bigger.

And while I'm not one of those who bash corporations as sinister or evil, I also don't regard them as automatic saints - they are filled with sinners like the rest of us. So how do those of us licking our wounds know that Amazon is only terminating gift cards for which it has specific evidence of fraud? I know for a fact that I used Purse to make a BTC purchase, so not every transaction there was fraudulent.  So Amazon's report today that they revoked 100% of my cards raises the question - were Purse transactions really so overwhelmingly fraudulent, or is Amazon just punitively or avariciously canceling any and every gift card it thinks it can get away with, whether they've been paid or not? With Amazon behaving as a black box it's impossible to say.

[murraypaul]

I've updated the first post below the OP with the results of my contacts with Amazon (and Purse so far as that's gone). In a nutshell, Amazon NOW tells me they revoked every gift card I purchased through Purse, but won't tell me why or when or any details about the revocation.

Because (again), you didn't purchase them from Amazon, someone else did. They won't give you details about someone else's transactions.

So Amazon's report today that they revoked 100% of my cards raises the question - were Purse transactions really so overwhelmingly fraudulent,

Almost certainly.
It is a setup perfectly designed to launder stolen money, converting it into anonymous BTC.
That is why you are being paid a 25-30% markup, to help them launder the money.
As you were warned by several people.

or is Amazon just punitively or avariciously canceling any and every gift card it thinks it can get away with, whether they've been paid or not?

I'm going to be pretty comfortable guessing that it isn't this one.
Amazon have been pulled into a laundering scheme against their wishes.
They are out the value of anything bought that they haven't managed to cancel.
The real owners of the credit cards are going to see lots of fraudulent Amazon transactions, and it will lower their opinion of Amazon.

[zorke]

I've updated the first post below the OP with the results of my contacts with Amazon (and Purse so far as that's gone). In a nutshell, Amazon NOW tells me they revoked every gift card I purchased through Purse, but won't tell me why or when or any details about the revocation. So (despite the screwy claims that the victim is committing "extortion" here) I'm out 100%, including the refund(s) I'll be providing on Ebay because I won't stoop to treating people the way Amazon has treated me.

They likely have notified the person who purchased the gift cards. More likely then not the gift cards were purchased with a stolen credit card.

Please note that Amazon has only just today reported revoking cards going back to June 23. When did they decide this? Why don't they bother notifying customers when they are revoking gift cards? My first couple gift cards to test the waters were $50 each. If they'd acted and notified me in a timely manner it would have provided red flags that would have stopped me from making purchases of hundreds of dollars more in gift cards. Moreover I (and others in the same boat) could have warned one another and the public in forums like this (not to mention Purse itself), preventing many thousands of dollars in other gift card purchases that Amazon is no doubt revoking. (As can easily be inferred now from the scale of Purses' listings the last few months.)

The likely reason is that the person you bought from likely bought the first few gift cards in a legit fashion in order to gain trust, either with or or the purse community. Another possible reason is that the account holder of the credit card did not report the what was likely a fraudulent transaction until some time later. Until the transaction was reported as fraud by the card holder amazon would have no way of knowing they were not going to receive the funds from the credit card company

Instead everything went smoothly with zero trouble for three months, enabling the problem to snowball. And Amazon can just unilaterally revoke it's own gift card funds and absolve itself of responsibility, while everyone on the BTC-selling side at Purse.io is left holding the bag. Amazon's secrecy and refusal to notify customers took what could have been contained as a small-scale problem and now my best guess is it is several orders of magnitude bigger.

The cards were revoked because payment for the cards was reversed. If you had purchased gift cards from amazon with a check and the check were to bounce would you expect amazon to keep the balance on the gift cards you purchased? If you say yes, then you are unreasonable, if you say no then how is this any different? It is not, only that it took longer for the payment to "bounce"

And while I'm not one of those who bash corporations as sinister or evil, I also don't regard them as automatic saints - they are filled with sinners like the rest of us. So how do those of us licking our wounds know that Amazon is only terminating gift cards for which it has specific evidence of fraud? I know for a fact that I used Purse to make a BTC purchase, so not every transaction there was fraudulent.  So Amazon's report today that they revoked 100% of my cards raises the question - were Purse transactions really so overwhelmingly fraudulent, or is Amazon just punitively or avariciously canceling any and every gift card it thinks it can get away with, whether they've been paid or not? With Amazon behaving as a black box it's impossible to say.

You implied that all the gift cards were purchased from the same person. That person likely purchased 100% of the gift cards sold to you with a stolen credit card.

The question is not about fraud, the question is if amazon received payment for the gift cards in question

[ebliever]

You implied that all the gift cards were purchased from the same person. That person likely purchased 100% of the gift cards sold to you with a stolen credit card.

I don't think I implied that; on the contrary I have stated that each of the gift cards came with a slip of paper giving the name of the purchaser; every time it's been a different person.

Of course it's conceivable that one person is creating many accounts on Amazon and Purse to buy the cards. Conceivable, but not parsimonious. I understand it takes time for credit card fraud to show up, but it should not have taken 3 months. And we're still just assuming card fraud - Amazon won't say anything.

I understand it's easy enough for folks to second-guess, especially in hindsight. Keep in mind that when the question of risk came up originally it was raised as a possibility, not proven as the sole possibility. The coindesk article did a good job of portraying Purse as a service for casual investors seeking some bitcoin to buy in without the bother or difficulty of getting bank accounts and doing verification steps, etc. Given the general slide in BTC pricing it was easy for me to imagine people remembering a price of $700 for bitcoin a week earlier, seeing a listing for bitcoin at $750 on Purse (marked up from $600 it had slid to in the interim), and making a legit purchase. My point is simply that fraud was raised as a possibility, not proved as the only source of Purse transactions.

I took what steps I could to mitigate this risk, with the gradual buildup in time being a key step. That's my concern over Amazon's slow response and non-notifications when it did act. I guess I just should have taken it slower.

The one other time I've suffered a significant theft loss was a few years ago when I sold a 30' camping trailer to a young man in the construction industry. He paid $4,000 of the $10,000 purchase price up front, but then after a couple monthly payments he vanished leaving me out $5,000. My attempts to trace his nomadic path were fruitless. (Closest I came was talking to a former landlady who told me "If you find him, let me know. I am trying to serve papers to him myself for property damage!") I still have title to the trailer, so it's conceivable that at some point he'll sell it, and then the subsequent purchaser will discover I have the title. Would it be fair to him at that point to demand an extra $5,000 or I'm confiscating the property he paid for?

Several posters here seem to suggest I'd have that legal right, but it doesn't sit right with me at all. Emotionally I wrote off the loss a long time ago. Unless I found evidence the buyer was conspiring with some knowledge to take advantage of the situation I'd not burden them with any ugly surprises.

At any rate, I see my funds have cleared in paypal this morning. I'm refunding AH because it looks like Amazon's a dead end. And Tigerdirect and NewEgg will be seeing more business from me in the future (especially the former given they accept BTC.) It's not a revenge thing - it's more a visceral fear/distrust thing. How can I ever trust Amazon given how they handled this?

[murraypaul]

It's not a revenge thing - it's more a visceral fear/distrust thing. How can I ever trust Amazon given how they handled this?

How else do you think they would have handled it? Serious question.
On the assumption we are all making so far:
Someone has tried to launder stolen money through them, buying cash equivalents with stolen credit cards.
Unless they think the scammers are sending random people gift cards out of the goodness of their hearts, they much assume that there is some relationship between the scammer and the recipient. (As indeed there was).
Amazon are out the purchase price. They have the ability to 'recall' the goods purchased with the stolen cards.
You think they should just shrug, and accept being scammed out of thousand of dollars, and the value being sent to people they have a reasonable cause to suspect is working with the scammer?
You knew you were entering into a risky transaction, and were paid a premium for this. They didn't.
Amazon have not reneged on any transaction with you, because you never entered into a transaction with them. You keep ignoring this, but it is a basic fact. Your transaction was with the scammer, their transaction was with Amazon. Your only relationship with Amazon is being the recipient of fraudulent obtained goods. What obligations do they owe you?
Your complain is against the scammer, not Amazon, who were used as a patsy by you and the scammer.

The result you seem to want is that the scammer gets their BTC, you get your cash + 25% profit, and Amazon pays for everything. How do you think that is fair?

Here is one of my posts to you from month ago:

I hadn't gotten the delivery and asked for tracking info, etc., but did not get a response. This morning was the 1 week mark since the bidder claimed it was delivered, so I was planning to open a dispute with Purse to try to resolve it (since my funds are tied up in escrow indefinitely otherwise), but I found Purse had proactively created a dispute last night, reporting that Amazon had canceled the order. I'm still awaiting final resolution on this bid but I appreciate Purse being on the ball and hope to be able to get the transaction canceled out so I can relist again shortly. Having a bidder claim to have paid for an item and not getting it on my end is obviously a worst case scenario, but even in this case it appears to be getting handled well.

It just struck me that another very good use of this service (and perhaps a reason for orders being cancelled by Amazon when it doesn't work) is for people trying to drain money from stolen credit cards or hacked Amazon accounts.
Normally the problem with buying online with a stolen card is that you have to actually receive the goods, which means being tied to an address. Here you can send the goods to someone else's address, and get (reasonably) untraceable bitcoin in return.
Purse risk becoming (not necessarily through any fault of their own) a high tech online fence. And Amazon may get fed up of being drawn in to that.

Seems like Amazon did get fed up of being drawn into this scam, and have cancelled orders.

[The00Dustin]

The one other time I've suffered a significant theft loss was a few years ago when I sold a 30' camping trailer to a young man in the construction industry. He paid $4,000 of the $10,000 purchase price up front, but then after a couple monthly payments he vanished leaving me out $5,000. My attempts to trace his nomadic path were fruitless. (Closest I came was talking to a former landlady who told me "If you find him, let me know. I am trying to serve papers to him myself for property damage!") I still have title to the trailer, so it's conceivable that at some point he'll sell it, and then the subsequent purchaser will discover I have the title. Would it be fair to him at that point to demand an extra $5,000 or I'm confiscating the property he paid for?

Several posters here seem to suggest I'd have that legal right, but it doesn't sit right with me at all. Emotionally I wrote off the loss a long time ago. Unless I found evidence the buyer was conspiring with some knowledge to take advantage of the situation I'd not burden them with any ugly surprises.

It doesn't sit right with me at all, either.  It is how things work, though.  There was an article on the front page of Yahoo! again today about someone getting a car back that was stolen years ago.  The car was captured by customs on the way out to the Netherlands, and the buyer in the Netherlands is certainly out the funds spent to buy the car.  What really bothers me about this kind of situation is that, at least in the US, "receiving stolen property" is against the law, and I'm afraid there are plenty of innocent people being punished for that crime simply because they made the mistake of trusting a scammer/thief.  To that end, sadly, you should be thankful that Amazon doesn't do something so unthinkable as to press charges against recipients of gift cards purchased with stolen credit cards.

At any rate, I see my funds have cleared in paypal this morning. I'm refunding AH because it looks like Amazon's a dead end. And Tigerdirect and NewEgg will be seeing more business from me in the future (especially the former given they accept BTC.) It's not a revenge thing - it's more a visceral fear/distrust thing. How can I ever trust Amazon given how they handled this?

NewEgg accepts BTC as well...  At least in the US and Canada.

[johncarpe64]

At any rate, I see my funds have cleared in paypal this morning. I'm refunding AH because it looks like Amazon's a dead end. And Tigerdirect and NewEgg will be seeing more business from me in the future (especially the former given they accept BTC.) It's not a revenge thing - it's more a visceral fear/distrust thing. How can I ever trust Amazon given how they handled this?

From the looks of it, you are not even a customer of amazon. You bought gift cards from purse, therefore you are a customer of purse, and you sold them on ebay, therefore you are a vendor on ebay. I do not see your involvement with amazon.

If you were to use newegg then you would not be able to engage in risky arbitrage as you did in this situation

[kingscrown]

amazon implementing = BTC going to 50$

[Eastwind]

amazon implementing = BTC going to 50$

If amazon does not keep the BTC, the price could drop. If amazon pay staff salary with BTC, the price will rise.

[toleng]

At any rate, I see my funds have cleared in paypal this morning. I'm refunding AH because it looks like Amazon's a dead end. And Tigerdirect and NewEgg will be seeing more business from me in the future (especially the former given they accept BTC.) It's not a revenge thing - it's more a visceral fear/distrust thing. How can I ever trust Amazon given how they handled this?

From the looks of it, you are not even a customer of amazon. You bought gift cards from purse, therefore you are a customer of purse, and you sold them on ebay, therefore you are a vendor on ebay. I do not see your involvement with amazon.

If you were to use newegg then you would not be able to engage in risky arbitrage as you did in this situation

I would say that the OP is simply trying to engage in a smear campaign against amazon to try to force them to give him money (via gift cards) in exchange for nothing. He is hoping that their PR department will write off the funds from the gift cards as a loss. I personally consider this kind of behavior as fraudulent