[auggierose]

I think I stumbled across similar behaviour, but for a used book. I was looking for a particular computer science book, couldn't find it new, and then decided to buy a used one from Amazon, ordering from the store with the best rating. It didn't arrive, and after a while (a few weeks) I received a notice that the delivery service had lost the book. I was refunded the money, though. The tracking number I got for the book from the store never worked though, I checked multiple times during those weeks. So I guess the same thing was at play here: I was sold the book although the store didn't have it. After failing to acquire the book, they just cancelled my order by pretending the delivery failed.

This boring story has a happy ending: I contacted the author (a retired MIT professor) if he could share a PDF with me, and he generated one from his old roff sources. He also sent me a signed copy from a stack he got from his publisher back then (80's), paying over $60 porto (US -> UK). I was blown away by his kindness and generosity.

[reaperducer]

I was sold the book although the store didn't have it.

This happens a lot, and has recently become very visible with the death of Queen Elizabeth Ⅱ.

A lot of people suddenly hit Amazon and other online shopping sites to buy Queen merchandise, only to have their orders cancelled because the sellers weren't real stores with inventory, but just randos on the internet used to going out to tourist shops and buying one or two items a month as orders came in.

When the flood of orders arrived, they couldn't handle it, since their local shops ran dry of the specific items they listed, too.

[dec0dedab0de]

I did this a few times on craigslist a long time ago. I went to thrift stores and took pictures of stuff on the shelves, listed them for sale at a decent markup and when people wanted them I went and bought them. If it was already sold, I would tell them they just missed it. It ended up being not worth the effort for me, but it was fun for a few weeks.

[mistrial9]

a seriously troubled neighbor here would go to thrift stores, buy armloads of stuff.. way too much.. list it on a half dozen platforms, and then used Facebook to promote her 'sale' to friends of friends.. She generated some income, but fell to hoarding at the same time.. also serious "spend-a-holic" patterns were reinforced .. not completely over and it has been at least five years of this.. USA-California

[hotdamnson]

Here in Thailand, there were cases where the shop sent a package containing cash amount paid by the customer because they didn't have the item they sold. This was an attempt to avoid some negative repercussions from the platform they were selling on (Shoppe, Lazada). Totally mental.

[userbinator]

At least they didn't just keep the money.

[tomcam]

Well that was heartening. Thank you, and the prof.