Ozone and scammers

A short history of a purchase in a popular marketplace in order to draw the attention of users to a problem that has reached indecent proportions and protect them from such situations.

About everything in order. The situation is classic – I needed AirPods headphones, which I went to choose Ozone, because. I’ve been shopping there a lot lately. At the first search, I find that the range of offers for the price is too indecent – from 3000 rubles. up to 23000r. Well, can’t AirPods Pro 2 cost 3000 rubles? Can not. How much can they? Well, I take the golden mean and start looking for an adequate offer from a well-known store with a good rating and positive reviews for the product. I find an offer from Technopark for 11700 rubles. with an addition that the discount is 43%. What are they throwing away so much? Yes, God knows them, they know better. Well, this is a Technopark – a large network, they certainly will not sell a fake. “Loch classic,” you say, and you will probably be right. But there is a hole in the old woman too. Fraudsters would not eat their bread if from time to time each of us did not find himself in a situation where his vigilance is dulled.

In general, I went to the product card, there were quite a few reviews, all positive, everywhere it says that the headphones are original, etc. The seller himself had a Premium mark, a 5-star rating, and everything seems to be quite convincing. I order!

A few days later the order was delivered by courier to the house. On the same evening, we sit down with my wife and check what came to us there. The serial number on the box and on the headphones themselves has been verified on the Apple website. The headphones themselves are recognized by the iPhone and nothing seems to arouse suspicion – neither the workmanship nor the packaging. Well, except for some reason there was no transparent film. Later, of course, they noticed that the box is a little strange.

The first suspicion crept in when the headphones started to play themselves, when you take them out of your ears, after pausing the track before that.

Then my wife decided to check the recording quality of the built-in microphone, since there is something to compare with – the first airpods are still alive, and we bought a replacement for them. Recorded two identical voice messages on one and on the second. And here we were in for a surprise! In the recording from freshly bought headphones, I could not even recognize the speech right away. Feeling like a voice from under the pillow. There is no longer any doubt that we were simply bred like children. But we decided to check out the noise cancellation, which can be turned on / off in the headphone control interface on the iPhone. I probably won’t surprise anyone if I say that the headphones didn’t react in any way, the sound didn’t change in any way.

In general, I got to the Ozone website to figure out how this could happen, and for one write a review and issue a refund. I open an order, go to the product card … but it’s not there! Redirecting to the search page. In the search, I find exactly the same offer from the same seller, but a little more expensive. And the card is brand new! There are 5 reviews and all positive. True, there is one caveat – all reviews have an unusually large number of dislikes, somewhere 1-2, and somewhere 8-10. These are deceived buyers like me who are trying to somehow give a voice, because it is impossible to write a review for a product that you did not buy (I remind you that the product card is new, albeit with the same description). Immediately I go to the seller’s page, I see a logo there that has nothing to do with the Technopark, as well as a tooltip when hovering over an inconspicuous icon – IP Khosravi Ferdaus.

A quick search showed that this was not an isolated situation, people had also experienced ozone scams in a similar pattern and they had problems with returns when they indicated “Fake” as the reason for the return. The support service stated that since the serial number “beats”, then the product is original. Therefore, people advised to issue a return due to poor-quality goods – which we did.

After some time, a response to my appeal comes. The seller offers me a partial refund of 9000R, and I will keep the goods. What generosity! They sell me a fake for 2700r. No, thanks. It’s not about money, it’s about principle. I don’t want the scammers or Ozone to get away with this. Even if I spend my time and money on it.

By the way, about Ozone. Dear management of this formerly respected company, where I made most of all my online purchases until recently! Don’t you know what’s going on at your site? Or do you think it’s normal?

Nowhere in this issue does it say that this is a copy, not the original. Moreover, in the comments it will be written that this is the original, which is a lie and the company does not react to it in any way. Well this is written by the user, where does Ozone, right?

Dear Ozone! Some scammers en masse register their accounts with you for fake one-day IPs, indicating names that are identical or mimic well-known sellers (Technopark, App Store, Rus store, MegaMarket, TechnoSila). Many of them have a Premium account and this gives the buyer another reason to trust them. At the same time, they sell outright fakes that somehow pass the test on the Apple website. By the way, how? VAG (Volkswagen-Audi Group) has a system for verifying the authenticity of their parts and consumables using unique codes hidden under a protective one-time sticker. Each check of this code through their site is recorded. If you enter the code, and someone has already entered it before, then you have a fake. Hacking such a system is obviously not easy. What about Apple? They have the serial number right on the box. If you work in a distributor’s warehouse, nothing prevents you from copying at least all the serial numbers from Apple packages. Does Apple show the number of serial checks? No. Only a month! (not the exact date) of purchase. By the way, my headphones have a purchase date of December 2022, but my wife did not attach any importance to this, because. she only looked at the warranty expiration date. Just don’t tell me about the sanctions, that the goods are not directly delivered and the date of purchase is generally recorded somewhere in Turkey. In early February, I bought an iPad and February was listed there. Hardly delivering batches every week.

In any case, be that as it may, but the serial number on the Apple product does not guarantee ANYTHING. And if the date of purchase is also a couple of months behind, then this most likely indicates that the number was simply copied from the original product. And in this situation, the refusal to return due to the fact that a fake was sold raises questions.

What about product reviews? They are all marked with a green tick “goods bought for ozone.” There are cards with 20+ reviews and they are all “confirmed”. Do scammers buy from themselves to increase ratings? Not excluded. But still I urge the management of Ozon to pay attention to this situation, it may be worth conducting an internal investigation. This state of affairs completely devalues ​​both the reviews and the rating system.

At the moment, the story is not over yet, I rejected the offer of partial compensation and now I’m waiting for the seller’s response.

But I wandered a little through the catalog and found a card where they managed to write a real review:

Why do you think the seller has not been disabled yet, but the product is still in the search results? But because Ozone thinks everything is fine!

Well, that is, they ask for documents! What other questions do they have? Or is it more correct to replace the union “I” with a dash in the title?

What do you think?

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