I woke up this morning to find this email reply from Amazon! (Read the original blog post here.)

Hello, 

I'm sorry to hear that one of our sellers provided a misleading information to you regarding with the product purchased. WE want our customers to experience great customer service and I completely understand that you want an immediate action regarding this issue. 

To help you with this, I'd like to ask you to send a report to our investigations team about this. Each report they receive is investigated and the appropriate action is taken. However, we won't be able to release the outcome of the investigation. Please go to the link below and select "Report a violation of our rules" as the subject line: 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/reports 

Please be sure to include the order ID if available. If the order ID isn't available, please include the ASIN in the comments and fill out the seller name field when submitting the form. 

Rest assured this issue will be passed to the appropriate team for them to take further actions regarding with the problem. 

I do apologize for the inconvenience this issue has caused you. 

I hope this incident will not affect your future purchases h us. We hope to see you again soon.

Best regards,
Ace C.

There was also an email notifying me that a refund had been issued. THIS is why I LOVE Amazon! What other company takes such good care of their customers so quickly? This is how you create lifetime customers. 

I've sent my report on to their investigation team. Let's see how long that seller is still scamming people on Amazon. :) I'll update more later.

I go through Perler Beads really fast and order quite a bit of them, usually through Amazon. On June 27, 2015, I found a decent deal on beads (which I needed quickly). I ordered them through a seller called "Qin H", who had an extremely high seller ranking (as seen below).

I thought it was a bit strange that the beads came in small ziplock type back instead of the usually packaging. ​

Working with beads so much, I noticed that these beads felt a bit different than usually. These were NOT Perler Beads. I'd been ripped off. The beads I'd gotten were a cheap knock off that were absolutely horrible! 

Apparently, some vendors routinely stock the off brand (which costs significantly less than the Perler Brand), mark them up, and sell them as Perler Brand beads. 

Why am I making such a big deal about this? Well, first, it's just plain dishonest of them. Second, well, this is what the off brand beads looked like after I melted/fused them.

The low grade plastic had all sorts of problems when melted. They wouldn't melt evenly, the edges rounded (which made them stick out from the actual Perler brand beads), and the finished piece's durability was compromised by the cheap bead (which broke easily). Pictured below: Knock off brand is black.

I've contacted the seller, saying I needed either a refund or factory sealed Perler Brand beads. We'll see what they say. 

While I wait, I decided to do a bit more research. I found out I'm not the first customer to complain about this issue. 

I've worked with Amazon before when there have been seller issues and they've been wonderful. Last time, the power cord I ordered tried to set fire to my house. It was a month or so past the return date, so the seller wasn't liable any more, but when I told Amazon's customer service about it, they immediately issued a full refund. I'm going to report this seller's dishonest practice to them and see what happens. 
Please be careful when you buy your beads! Always buy from a reputable seller. This is why I stick with Amazon. Even when things look great, something can go wrong. I trust Amazon to fix this. I'll let you know what happens.