26 Apr 2026 - AJ
As I like to remind people, even I get scammed sometimes.
In this case, I ordered what might be a useful item off eBay. I usually order collectables off eBay but this time, I went for a new item that I thought might be helpful.
Imagine my surprise when it turned up the next day, shipped from Amazon, even though tracking indicated it would arrive in about a week and a half.
Now, most of the time, when you hear about tracking-related scams, the person orders something and doesn’t get it. But in my case, I did get exactly what I ordered (whether it’s useful for my situation is questionable, but I ordered, they made sure it was sent). From what I tracked down, Amazon dropshippers use other companies to hide the fact that they’re actually dropshipping from Amazon. I paid extra for something I didn’t need to - fortunately not a huge amount. It was worth it for the education on what they were doing, so I’m not upset.
Unrelated to that, but I want to talk a bit about this week’s scam post. I honestly didn’t know how to structure this one - not in terms of the scam, that’s pretty straightforward, but to not converge “poor people scraping by as they can and maybe doing some ethically grey stuff to make this month’s rent” from “scammer wanting to bilk you out of your money. This week’s one was also a reddit post, and several people spotted this trend as being rampant in neighborhood groups - people asking for groceries, then making an identical post in a different area’s group, again, looking for groceries. It’s definitely safer to steer people towards charities.