The Ultimate Beginners Guide to Refunding Expensive Items PART 2

Part 2 - How to Identify Stores that Issue Refunds for Police Reports

Now that you know where to send the orders, lets talk about finding stores that will refund you for a package you claim not to have received, if you filed a police report. You only need one store to do this method, but if you develop even a small list of stores, you can do it multiple times and make a lot more money, even before you think about scaling by refunding under stolen identities. It's not difficult to build this list, though it is somewhat time consuming.

You have to place a bunch of test orders with any store you are interested in ordering from. The test orders need to be at least $1,000, though I'd recommend $2k to be sure. I don't know at exactly what dollar amount every store's police report policy gets triggered, but past $2,000, I'm positive that if a store will refund you for a filing a police report, orders of $2,000 qualify for that policy. Orders under that amount occasionally just get sent to internal review, even if that store does have that police report refund policy, which fucks up your search to identify stores for this method. That's one of the reasons I recommend using credit cards for refunding under your own name. $2,000 out of your checking account for 2 weeks is a pain, but if you have multiple credits cards, you shouldn't even notice the temporary debit on one of your accounts. Like I said, even criminals can take advantage of credit to make money.

Anyways, once that order arrives, wait a day or two, then call the company and tell them your order didn't arrive, or the box was empty, or someone that wasn't you signed for it and you didn't get it, or whatever your sob story is. The store will likely run an internal investigation. Then, if the store you're testing does offer refunds for police reports, you'll be asked to file a police report by the company. Sometimes it'll be on that first call, but other times as much as 2-3 business days after that call. At that point, just return the item, and mark that company down as one that will work (it should go without saying, only test this with stores that have return policies). If the store doesn't ask you to file a police report within 2-3 business days of you reporting the package as stolen, cross it off your list and return the item.

I also want to take a second to talk about why this works, because I believe the difference between people who fall off once a method stops working and those who find another method is understanding the underlying principles of what you're doing. Refunding in general still works, because major corporations value customer loyalty and brand reputation more than stopping refund abuse, see: https://homeofdirectcommerce.com/news/brands-sacrifice-profit-for-customer-loyalty-and-are-paying-the-price-as-fraud-surges/ . That means that even if this particular police report refund policy falls out of favor, it will most likely just be replaced a different policy, not eliminated altogether. If/when that happens, the bright people reading this should remember this part of the post, and start messing around with whatever new policy the institute, until a way of exploiting it on a systematic basis is found, because I promise you there will be a way to exploit it.

High value refunds given for police reports still works and will continue to work for the same reason. These companies value customers actually spending large amounts at their business and their loyalty, more than they value stopping people who abuse the system. That said, they also don't want to leave such a gaping loophole that fraudsters can seriously impact their margins. Refunds in exchange for police reports is the safest middle ground they have found. It limits large refunds to one per customer, stopping people who would otherwise serially abuse the system (the main target of these companies). It also stops a lot of would be fraudsters from getting a refund because of the fear that "filing a false police report" instills in people. Finally, it allows legit customers who actually had a delivery issue to get refunds, because they won't have fear of filing a police report if it's not false. It's not a perfect system, and I'll explain more about how you can abuse it towards the end, but that's a decent summary for why these stores have this policy at all.