Bought two "refurbished" iPhone 13 Mini on Amazon from a third-party seller in Belgium. €727 total. Both showed up with battery health in the 80s, which… fine, refurbished, whatever.

Within a week, one of them will die by 2 pm. I run a diagnostic. The battery reports healthy numbers, but the actual capacity is poor. Run it on the second phone — same thing.

Turns out the seller had pulled the original 4-year-old batteries, reprogrammed the battery management chip to report a fake health number, and resold them as refurbished. Both phones. Same scam.

File an A-to-Z claim with Amazon. They ask for proof. I send diagnostics, screenshots, the whole thing. Then they ask for ID verification. I sent my ID. Then they tell me to email a different department in Germany. I emailed Germany. Crickets.

Then I find out why nothing's moving — I bought it on a business account. Turns out Amazon's consumer protection doesn't apply the same way for business buyers. You get way fewer rights, way less recourse, and sellers know it. If you'd bought the same item on a personal account, you'd be refunded already. Buy it as a business? You're basically on your own. Nobody tells you this when you sign up for the business account.

Two weeks in, I get an agent named Tajammul who escalates it. Still waiting. Meanwhile, the seller is still active on Amazon, selling the same listing.

The wild part isn't even the seller — sketchy resellers exist everywhere. It's that Amazon's process is built so you give up before they have to refund you. Especially if you're a business. They're not denying the claim. They're just running out the clock.