I bought an electronic item brand new, sold by Amazon, and they sent me a used one that already had its digital bundle redeemed by someone else and 5 out of 12 manufacturer warranty months used. I contacted Amazon support about this within a week and they told me replacement is not possible in my situation, I can return it but a full refund is not guaranteed
That seems like illegal fraud on the part of Amazon. They sold something they claimed was new and it wasn't. They have to give you a full refund if you return it.
And what is their recourse if Amazon just says "nope, deal with it"?
Sue them? Even assuming that kind of time, money, and energy expenditure is within their resources, Amazon's legal department is likely to be able to stonewall until they run out of money.
Then multiply that by however many thousands or tens of thousands of customers Amazon has done this to. No more than a fraction will ever complain, no more than a fraction of those will ever sue.
Amazon has been allowed to get too big, and the usual methods of dealing with fraud at this level simply don't work reliably.
I tried, but they basically said we can't help anymore in this matter and disconnected me and I saw no further way to escalate. This was in the US. In the EU when I had another problem with Amazon and CS was unhelpful I was able to escalate via relevant authorities and it eventually got someone from Executive Customer Relations to send an actual human-written email apologizing for the whole ordeal and resolving my situation
