Due Diligence; How to avoid being scammed
- Thread starter Packard
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hdv
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- Nov 13, 2017
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That particular payment was through Visa. You have to fill out a form contesting the payment. I presume they will make good on their promise of "insurance" for their upper-tier cards. But, luckily, I've never needed to test that yet.
Amazon is another story. I imported some stuff from Amazon.com to my country and had to pay duties. Nothing weird about that after Trump decided tariffs were the way to go. However, upon arriving here I had to pay duties locally as well. I contacted Amazon and showed them the bill and the proof of payment. They wouldn't refund the amount. Instead they said I had to wait 180 days for them to decide whether I would be refunded. Probably some administrative thing. After 180 days passed I got a message stating I would get part of the amount back. I asked them "What about the rest of it?". The answer in short was "Not our business." The difference was more than 20 USD. I don't think I'll do that again...
Amazon is another story. I imported some stuff from Amazon.com to my country and had to pay duties. Nothing weird about that after Trump decided tariffs were the way to go. However, upon arriving here I had to pay duties locally as well. I contacted Amazon and showed them the bill and the proof of payment. They wouldn't refund the amount. Instead they said I had to wait 180 days for them to decide whether I would be refunded. Probably some administrative thing. After 180 days passed I got a message stating I would get part of the amount back. I asked them "What about the rest of it?". The answer in short was "Not our business." The difference was more than 20 USD. I don't think I'll do that again...
hdv said:
Certain taxes are not refundable no matter what. There was a case in New York State a few years back where the tax people sent bills for property taxes to the wrong home owner.
The home owner was about to lose his house for non-payment of taxes for several years.
He said, “No problem. Give me back the money I sent to for these past several years and I will apply it to my current tax bill.”
Apparently, there is no possible way to be refunded the taxes once paid. I do not know how it was finally resolved. But the point is, perhaps Amazon was restricted in what it could refund. I don’t know.
Property taxes on Long Island, where I used to live were typically about $15,000.00 per year and then there were the school taxes on top of that. So it might be difficult to pay a multiple year tax deficit.
While I was still working, I tried to collect delinquent payment from a customer and finally we turned it over to a collection agency.
A week later we were paid.
I said to the salesman, “I don’t know what you did, but I tried to collect that money for about 3 months.”
He said, “You are a sales manager. You manage accounts, salesmen, check on orders, and so on. We, on the other hand, do nothing but collect from morning to nighttime. It should not surprise you how well we did. This is what we do. We’re good at it.”
So the online thieves are going to be better at cheating us, than we are at avoiding cheating. They cheat all the time. We only try to avoid being cheated once every few months. But it is good to know that there are some options that might minimize our exposure.
As an aside, we only hired collection agencies in the town that our delinquent customer worked. The theory was that they might stop in on the way to the office or on the way home. And even if they did not physically do so, the proximity raised that potential in the customers’ minds.
At any rate, we did better using these fine-tuned-by-location collection agencies than we did being loyal to our local only collection agency.
A week later we were paid.
I said to the salesman, “I don’t know what you did, but I tried to collect that money for about 3 months.”
He said, “You are a sales manager. You manage accounts, salesmen, check on orders, and so on. We, on the other hand, do nothing but collect from morning to nighttime. It should not surprise you how well we did. This is what we do. We’re good at it.”
So the online thieves are going to be better at cheating us, than we are at avoiding cheating. They cheat all the time. We only try to avoid being cheated once every few months. But it is good to know that there are some options that might minimize our exposure.
As an aside, we only hired collection agencies in the town that our delinquent customer worked. The theory was that they might stop in on the way to the office or on the way home. And even if they did not physically do so, the proximity raised that potential in the customers’ minds.
At any rate, we did better using these fine-tuned-by-location collection agencies than we did being loyal to our local only collection agency.
