kristenrice
NOT just an ambulance driver
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2006
My daughter is looking for a Voltron-inspired hoodie sweatshirt. She thought she had found one and wanted to purchase it from a website that I had never heard of so we decided to use a Visa gift card registered to my PayPal account and go through PayPal to make the purchase. Good thing we did! The day after we submitted the order, I received an alert from PayPal that someone attempted to access my account from overseas. I secured my account (already had 2-factor authentication in place) and so that was no problem. PayPal was great and their security measures did their job. Nothing was compromised since I had no bank account or credit cards linked to my account, just the Visa gift card. We waited 2 weeks for a shipment confirmation which was supposed to take 3-5 days....nothing. After 30 business days with no response (the hoodie was supposed to ARRIVE in 15-21 business days) or confirmation of shipment, I opened a dispute with PayPal. Within a few HOURS, I received a full refund after the seller replied to PayPal that I had cancelled my order.
Anyways...I am now very skeptical of overseas sellers and since most of the Voltron items she has found are coming from Hong Kong and China, I don't know what to do. She decided to look on Amazon since we figured that would be a "safe" vendor. Sure enough...she found one that she wants....but it is not sold by Amazon. It's sold by a third-party so, naturally, I am terrified of buying it for her. I don't want my Amazon account "hacked" again. (I already have a thread about that fiasco!) For those who don't know...the last time my Amazon account was compromised, the thief made fraudulent claims on my behalf that I did not receive my merchandise, hacked my e-mail and tried to forward the refunded gift card codes to their e-mail address. I caught the fraud before the thief could get the gift card codes and so they were "stuck" in my account and I tried for MONTHS to get Amazon to take their money back...they never did. So now, what concerns me is that if I place this order for the hoodie through a third-party vendor, and for some reason I truly do NOT receive it, I am worried about claiming a LEGITIMATE refund because it would be impossible to prove.
Sorry...this got a little long-winded....basically, my question is how safe is it to buy items from a third-party vendor on Amazon? Does Amazon only deal with reliable vendors or are they simply a storefront?
Anyways...I am now very skeptical of overseas sellers and since most of the Voltron items she has found are coming from Hong Kong and China, I don't know what to do. She decided to look on Amazon since we figured that would be a "safe" vendor. Sure enough...she found one that she wants....but it is not sold by Amazon. It's sold by a third-party so, naturally, I am terrified of buying it for her. I don't want my Amazon account "hacked" again. (I already have a thread about that fiasco!) For those who don't know...the last time my Amazon account was compromised, the thief made fraudulent claims on my behalf that I did not receive my merchandise, hacked my e-mail and tried to forward the refunded gift card codes to their e-mail address. I caught the fraud before the thief could get the gift card codes and so they were "stuck" in my account and I tried for MONTHS to get Amazon to take their money back...they never did. So now, what concerns me is that if I place this order for the hoodie through a third-party vendor, and for some reason I truly do NOT receive it, I am worried about claiming a LEGITIMATE refund because it would be impossible to prove.
Sorry...this got a little long-winded....basically, my question is how safe is it to buy items from a third-party vendor on Amazon? Does Amazon only deal with reliable vendors or are they simply a storefront?