[readyplayernull]

At least you can personaly inspect an item before buying it in a flea market. Last time I bought a tablet in Amazon the seller sent the right box with a completely different cheap product inside that had no serial number anywhere. Since the serial is absolutely required there was no way to return this thing. I left a 1 star polite review with pictures that was quickly removed with an automated message about "focusing too much on the seller", edited the review to remove any mention of the seller and it got quickly removed with no reason at all. What a great scam.

[delichon]

Unlike with flea markets, I've always been able to return such items bought from Amazon. They've never given me a hard time about it. That's happened frequently enough that I plan for it. I still don't like it of course. But if an Amazon-with-zero-scams opened up I'd only be willing to pay a little more for that service.

[OJFord]

I try not to buy third-party shipped, and certainly wouldn't for something not very cheap. The returns/customer service experience is just so much worse, Amazon will eventually get involved (sounds like it didn't help in your case) but you have to suffer through it with the third-party and reach an impasse first.

And without painless returns, Amazon loses a lot of appeal (over the high street, John Lewis online, etc.) for me.

[JohnTHaller]

Even if you buy it from Amazon or a trusted third party, due to stock mixing, you can't guarantee it actually came from them.

[OJFord]

That's not relevant here, it doesn't affect the customer service; what does 'actually came from them' mean in the context of who is the seller in the transaction?

If somebody put something bad into the supposed-to-be-fungible warehouse pool, and I'm the unlucky recipient, then that's one example of where the better customer service comes into play.

If you buy sold by BESTWAREZ-FOR-U and despatched by Amazon, then you get it shipped from the same pool but crapper service when you get the same amount of unluck and receive the dodgy one. (And if it's despatched by them and you've not heard of them before, even crapper, and it probably won't take nearly as much unluck for it to pan out poorly in the first place.)

[latchkey]

> Since the serial is absolutely required there was no way to return this thing.

If you have prime, just contact support. My experience is that it is a fairly fast painless process and they either just credit you right there, or allow you to free return the item for credit.

[zepton]

Amazon was right to remove your review - product reviews are for reviews of the product. You never owned the product, so you can't review it.

You should have left a seller review (on the seller's Amazon page), not a product review.

[readyplayernull]

Not sure why you got downvoted, but I want the complain to be very visible, and I still got the product's box and manual, so I got a partial product?