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Comment by olyjohn | Hacker News Reader

I have bought factory service manuals for car and motorcycle projects off of eBay and Amazon. Multiple times, I received 3-hole-punched photocopies stuck in a binder or bound together with some kind of tape. Every time, I e-mail the seller, my only recourse is to spend my own money and ship it back and get a refund. Amazon and eBay both don't care, because the sellers just have to claim that they are authorized resellers. They made money off the transaction, so that's why Amazon and eBay don't care... end of story.

I don't buy anything anymore without an actual picture of the phyiscal product. I didn't pay $150 for a book so that some guy could photocopy it, I wanted the original, real deal book.

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If it's marketed as the book and Amazon/Ebay refuse your claim when you receive a counterfeit, just chargeback with your bank - Amazon has failed to deliver the advertised product.

Sounds like a good way to get Amazon to cancel your account. Could be bad if you consume AWS, or other Prime services.

Hasn't everyone already learned to keep your personal and work Amazon accounts heavily separated?

I'd be surprised if Amazon cancelled your account unless the issue with counterfeits happened with alarming frequency, as maintaining a good relationship (and low processing rates) with banks is far more important to them than providing service to counterfeiters.

> I have bought factory service manuals for car and motorcycle projects off of eBay and Amazon. Multiple times, I received 3-hole-punched photocopies stuck in a binder or bound together with some kind of tape.

There is a flip side to this. Being able to purchase a pirated DVD copy of Ford's official mid-1990s workshop manual and wiring diagrams (which is not a paper manual, but a win32 VB/ActiveX application) on eBay was invaluable for a recent project. The seller was up front that this was a DVD copy and charged a very reasonable $12. If you are really serious about getting factory manuals, there are communities out there with private forums and digital archives of these things. I don't do this seriously enough to get involved, so having a way to obtain that manual at all, without spending a bunch of time, was really valuable to me.

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