
Amazon May Have a Counterfeit Problem - cfadvan
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/04/amazon-may-have-a-counterfeit-problem/558482/?single_page=true
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xoa
One major facet of this issue The Atlantic missed in this article is that of
commingling. The article repeatedly talks about Amazon's claims to take
counterfeiting seriously, and how they're often just a platform for other
sellers, but a critical part of maintaining that normally is that a brand has
a 1:1 relationship between what it sells and what a buyer gets. But for the
free default Amazon commingles FBA (and apparently their own stock too now)
based purely on claimed SKU. That means someone can sell their own legitimate
product that they put into Amazon's system themselves, through their own store
brand or "Sold by Amazon", and then Amazon will go ahead and ship a
counterfeit someone else put into the system. I believe it's possible for
sellers to avoid that if they perform additional labeling and pay Amazon a fee
per unit, but naturally the vast majority go with the default (and Amazon
doesn't seem to give buyers any clear labeling/search options to prefer non-
commingled sellers either, it couldn't just be B2B to be a significant aid to
the reputation problem).

This to me is one of the clearest, black & white indications that no Amazon is
not taking this seriously enough. Commingling is purely on them, they do it to
ease their own logistics and in turn improve their own profits. They shouldn't
be able to claim to be merely at direct linking platform but then act as an
aggregator. Merchants shouldn't need to go to any extra work or need to pay
extra money for this either (though I recognize Amazon might have to raise FBA
pricing if they can't stealth optimize it or pay extra for verification or
some such), they should be able to send items into Amazon's system properly
packaged and have Amazon automatically take care of ensuring if a customer
buys from them they get one of their specific packages only.

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CodeWriter23
My mom's business sells a lot on Amazon. Her stuff is in the brand registry.
She does not sell at wholesale, yet has competitors that sell products with
her branding and labeling for less than she sells it. Amazon rarely cooperates
with her reports of counterfeiting, saying dumbass stuff like "prove it".
This, coming from Amazon's legal team, who seems to fail at understanding the
fundamental economic rule of "buy low, sell high".

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Regardsyjc
Have you ordered the counterfeit products, inspected them, and reported them
as counterfeit? There are many ways to tackle this problem and there are many
people who abuse it on many sides.

Amazon has messed up the operations for a lot of companies so usually the
burden is on you to fix whatever the problem is. For example, I currently have
a problem where Amazon has virtually given me $10,000+ of product that I never
sent in and even after months of contact, trying to get them to acknowledge
their error and take back the inventory is like pulling teeth... That's my
problem, the bigger nightmare is for companies that now need to document and
tighten down on their entire supply chain for unauthorized vendors... .

I haven't had to deal with any counterfeiters yet but look up Cynthia Stine's
Egrowth Partners or Ed Rosenberg. They deal with this type of stuff everyday.
There's probably free advice floating around too. Best place to ask in my
opinion are the Amazon seller Facebook groups. Seller Tradecraft and FBA
private label high rollers might be a good resource.

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CodeWriter23
Thanks for the tips, I’ll pass them along.

She has gone through purchasing the counterfeits with varying levels of
success. One time, she got one of the cockroaches kicked off her ASIN then the
next day a brand new company appears on the same item. Other times she got
them to stop.

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craftyguy
"May" have a problem, they _do_ have a counterfeit problem.

Maybe I buy a disproportionate amount of electronic components from Amazon (or
used to), but I'd spend way more time trying to figure out if a particular
product was counterfeit or not. I also spent a lot of time returning crap that
was (it's super frustrating to receive a part for a project only to discover
it's a completely not functional replica). I canceled my Amazon Prime
membership a few weeks ago, and plan to rely on Digikey + local electronics
stores from now on.

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Semirhage
I’m really tired of tech giants claiming they’re just platforms when it’s
convenientm for them. Twitter, Google, and Facebook claim they’re not
publishers, just platforms. Meanwhile they’re acting like both. Amazon isn’t
engaged in commerce, it’s just a platform, but again is very much both. It
seems that some regulations on this kind of “platform” is inevitable, and
probably overdue.

The degree to which companies on the internet thrive through aggressive
doublespeak is frustrating beyond belief.

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arooaroo
I’m pretty sure that Google, Facebook, Twitter et al., stick to acting as
platforms because they are relying on years of legal precedents which protects
them from liability of any abuse carried out by users.

If however they start curating content or being especially controlling then
they risk being classed as a normal publisher, and as such liable to
additional regulations or damages based on actions of their users
and/partners.

This is why Facebook is in a bind about “fake news” being shared on their
network. If they remove it then they will be accused of not being an impartial
platform. So instead, at best, they have to algorithmically cross reference
posts with other reliable content sources to “flag” to the user that the
shared article “may” be inaccurate. Unless that post contains a bit of naked
flesh, it ain’t being taken down.

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tracker1
They seem to manage keeping counterfeit chromecasts off their site just fine.

Aside: what about their kindle/fire lines? Are there counterfeits of their own
items?

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tracker1
It would be _VERY_ easy for Amazon to put per/seller labels on all (or at
least most) packages, so that they could filter out specific sellers, even
with the mingled stock.

