I read the article with a more skeptical eye. It could be that he didn't request the items back in time because they were fake and not worth the price of the return shipping. Amazon's response was interesting:
"The spokeswoman said Amazon repeatedly asked Govani to provide evidence that the products sold were authentic but that the invoices he sent were either illegible or didn't match the records of the brand owners."
So he's got (by his own admission old), and by Amazon's telling, illegible, or the brand disclaims them. It made me think of that scene in Fargo where the car dealer is faxing forms with illegible VINs repeatedly to General Motors to keep his scam going.
I don't put stock in claims of illegibility by Amazon.
I had a similar (but by comparison nearly inconsequential) experience with Amazon where they accused me of running a fraudulent account (for reasons that are still bewildering to me).
The whole experience was too kafkaesque to summarize here while on my phone, but at some point they demanded scans of something be faxed.
I sent it twice and both were rejected as illegible.
First, if amazon gave a damn about legibility they wouldn't be insisting on faxes.
Second, if I sent those faxes to a million people, I'm confident less than one percent of them would have said they were illegible.
"Illegible" is an excuse used by Amazon because it's in their control to decide, and is ambiguous enough and plausibily denialable enough in a legal sense that it protects them.
To me "illegibility" is just what Amazon gives as a reason when they don't want to give a reason. It's bureaucratic stonewalling.
"The spokeswoman said Amazon repeatedly asked Govani to provide evidence that the products sold were authentic but that the invoices he sent were either illegible or didn't match the records of the brand owners."
So he's got (by his own admission old), and by Amazon's telling, illegible, or the brand disclaims them. It made me think of that scene in Fargo where the car dealer is faxing forms with illegible VINs repeatedly to General Motors to keep his scam going.