The amount of people stealing retail items is OOC

And I don't mean the videos of people walking out of the stores in CA with arms full of clothes

For all the making fun of those videos we do here, the truth is that a huge portion of society steals just in different ways.

I started selling on Amazon about 4 months ago and the attempts of people to steal are staggering. The most common is an item not recieved claim or people swapping out their broken item for a new one and returning the old one.

I dealt with a Doctor today (I looked him up) who made an INR claim for a $400 product despite UPS taking pictures of the delivery. Amazon refunded him but did not count it against me but that's only because I shipped through them. Had I bought shipping not through Amazon I would be out the $400.

I also dealt with one woman returning a broken superglued piece. She obviously used the item she bought from me and sent back her old one. Just a real piece of human garbage.

I sell some stuff FBA (fulfilled by Amazon) and some FBM (fulfilled by merchant) and both are subject to fraud but FBA is worse and costs more to fight.

I read the Amazon seller forums almost daily and the amount of scams people have going on is staggering. People are returning rocks and other trash so the return package shows weight for when Amazon investigates a seller complaining about a return. Also, according to many long-time sellers on the forums, this is the worst it's ever been as more and more people feel emboldened that they will get away with it. There is a whole forum on Reddit dedicated to sharing tips on how to scam Amazon and make INR claims.

When an item is returned through FBA Amazon does not even check it or open it. They move it to unfillable inventory for which the seller has to request Amazon either dispose of it, send it back to you to inspect, or sell it for pennies in a return pallet auction so a lot of times you don't even know if its fraud unless you pay to have Amazon send the product back to you. Even then, you still have an uphill battle of ever getting any money back for a fraudulent return.

I know inflation is OOC but I now wonder how much price increases are to offset the rise in theft and fraud.

In short, the vast majority of people steal just in different forms. Scamming on Amazon is no different than the videos we see of people walking into a store and just taking stuff yet I wonder how many people scamming on Amazon would do that and/or look down on people who do it. There really is no difference between the two.