There’s a new scam going around when it comes to buying Kindle ebooks that people need to be aware of. I’ve seen this mentioned a few different places lately, but I didn’t know exactly what people were talking about until now.
There’s a post at reddit describing how the scam works, and it’s coming through in ebooks from Amazon so I can see how it’s causing confusion for some folks because it seems like it should be a legitimate offer since it’s shown in the description for ebooks that came directly from Amazon.
I don’t know how scammers are making this work, but somehow they’re adding a section to the “Book Description” box on certain books that says there’s a special offer where you can buy the ebook cheaper by using a link to a website url shown in the description.
If you visit that website it takes you directly to a page trying to get you to enter your credit card information. It’s clearly a scam so don’t do it.
I verified this myself with the book shown in the picture at reddit. I sent a sample of Outlive to my Kindle Paperwhite, and at first I didn’t see it, but then I noticed the fraudulent offer appears at the top of the Book Description section on the About This Book popup.
The “About This Book” box normally appears when you first open an ebook, so the scam is front and center when you first open a sample ebook, but I had the box turned off so I didn’t notice it at first.
It says, “Leverage this special offer! Get this ebook for 0.99 buying from this link: (removed) This is your chance to buy it at this great price. This deal is too good to pass up!”
That particular ebook is selling for $13.99 right now so I can see how that “special offer” might be tempting to some, but you know how it goes, if a deal seems too good to be true it probably is. This is definitely a scam so don’t fall for any kind of these offers directing you to buy Kindles ebooks from somewhere other than Amazon.
This kind of invasion was bound to happen some time. Hopefully, Amazon’s working on countering it right now.
This seems a bit confusing to me, if you already bought the ebook (it’s on your reader to be opened?) why would you wish to buy another copy?
One reason might be to cancel the expensive buy, you can give a bought ebook back and get your money back from Amazon. There is a timespan for this (10 or 14 days?) and you should not do it too often, but just an example, I accidentally bought an ebook cheap from Amazon itself, which was also available for a higher price, but when I opened it it was in Russian (title and lots of other things where in English).
Now I check the publisher, or it would have happened again just yesterday.
One reason for an ebook to be available with two different prices is UK publisher vs. US publisher – I live in Germany so sometimes both versions are offered to me.
As described in this blog post It shows on SAMPLE ebooks.