Rules
1. Never order from an Amazon seller without checking their ratings AND profile. (I normally do this, but...)

2. Remember about Amazon customer service chat and the phrase “A-Z Guarantee Claim.” This covers problems with third-party sellers. (You can't get a normal refund if the seller has disappeared from Amazon.)

3. Don’t have Amazon orders shipped to your house if you can avoid it at all. Have them sent to an Amazon Hub or Locker, for security. I think most Amazon scammers won’t allow their listings to be sent to those.

I ignored these rules recently with a minor purchase, but now I’m finally getting a refund. The post office told me it was one of those scams, one of which is the Lawnmower Scam? or something, in which a seller doesn’t send the package you ordered, but sends a little thing under that tracking number, like a pack of gum. I didn’t happen to receive anything at the time I was supposed to, but apparently this is how it usually happens. I was waiting for a heavy box of 10 bottles of liquid soap. What was sent under the tracking number, when I inquired at the post office, weighed 13 oz. or less — since it said on their screen it was a 1st-class item, and 1st class only goes up to things weighing 13 ounces or less.

So definitely something else was substituted. And then maybe a neighbor got it, or it got lost.

I looked back at the seller’s profile and found all the trouble signs I should have seen before. Whoops. And he’s left the Amazon store, so he couldn’t be contacted.