I actually ordered a book from Amazon listed as "new." I got a tracking number from USPS shipped from Maryland or whatever. Book comes FedEx from India!! Yes, seller is buying fraudulent shipping to make it look like their books are shipping from the US!!! Worse, the book was in garbage condition. I mean really worn, ripped cover and all. Had to get a refund from Amazon. When I reported the seller to Amazon no action was taken that I could see, if it was up to me blatant fraud like that would be a auto-ban. I left a review warning other users of the sellers practices and the seller actually tried to convince me they weren't actually listing fraudulent tracking numbers with "we used to ship USPS but we had problems with packages getting stolen." Which makes no fucking sense at all.

Additionally, even worse (if this could get worse), I now believe that book to be a counterfeit/unauthorized printing. I didn't know that was a actually a thing until this week, but the book's quality and price-point is a huge indication. I thought the price point went down due to used books in the market and the book was just not great. I just Googled and counterfeits of this book are common and mine matches the description of the counterfeit version. :-/

I've heard horror stories about sellers who create a detailed listing for a product and a second seller comes along and changes the listing making seller 1 sell products not as described in the listing. I don't know if its true, but people claimed it happened to them.

Exactly!!! The legit stuff on Ebay won't be that cheap, but it is easy to find it, and distinguish it from the scammers and the Chinese counterfeits.

So... what arrived from Maryland? Was it just an empty box? Or is there a way to fake a tracking number without an associated package?

Amazon doesn't appear to care if the package status changes to "shipped" of not as long as USPS got paid?