This was a recent article about a couple buying a $7k camera and getting an empty box. https://petapixel.com/2021/05/26/couple-buys-7000-camera-fro...
This guy bought an expensive camera from Amazon, got rocks, returned it and then got bricks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXPnOq-XJg8&t=0s
I have no problem buying $5/$10/$100 items. But for a $3k camera, no, not Amazon.
> This guy bought an expensive camera from Amazon, got rocks, returned it and then got bricks.
There's apparently a whole genre of "ordered iPhone, received iPhone box with Play-Doh inside instead of the iPhone" complaints.
The theory I've seen is that this is a scam by the purchaser against Amazon's return policy, not a scam by vendors on Amazon against customers. That second option doesn't work, because the customer just gets refunded.
The most egregious example in the last few months was I bought an $800 Warn winch, “new”, shipped and sold by amazon, and they send me a not only clearly used, but used in such a way that it was extremely dangerous in a way that was only apparent to a trained eye.
Amazon’s dishonest practices like labeling used returns as new if they think they can get away with it is not only unsafe, but leads to a ton of returned-item fraud where people buy equipment, replace it with a superficially sort of similar knockoff, return it to amazon, and amazon sells the fake item as new. This happens a lot with things like optics (scopes, binoculars, etc) where there’s a robust market for fakes in China.