
Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake - indumania
https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-fake-supplements/
======
throw20102010
Amazon needs to stop with inventory comingling. They know it and refuse to
stop, so they are culpable. I'm sure it would hurt their logistics to stop,
but it also hurts cigarette companies to not advertise to children and we made
that a law.

It is ridiculous that you can order a supplement where it says "sold by
Proctor and Gamble, fulfilled by Amazon" on the product listing, and then
receive a counterfeit product that was sent in by a different company. If they
received it from a different company, then it wasn't "sold by Proctor and
Gamble."

At the very least they need to give brand owners the tools to protect their
brands- an option to put non-authorized resellers' shipments into a separate
comingled bin, and have all the authorized resellers in another.

Right now the only option for a brand with a popular product to protect from
counterfeiting is to not sell anything through Amazon and sue everyone that
tries to list your products on Amazon- which might not even work and really
hurts your market reach.

~~~
tracker1
Or at least require a deposit for sellers of a non-insignificant amount, a
hold on new seller payouts for up to 30-60 days and per-seller stickers on
intake inventory so sellers of counterfeits can be rooted out better.

Also, allow product manufacturers who sell directly, to block other sellers on
the platform for their products and handle reports for alike-named and-or
brand confusing products.

Amazon does very little to actually do anything meaningful to limit
counterfeit products.

~~~
amluto
Screw the deposit. Amazon itself should be liable if they don’t track who
actually sold the merchandise.

~~~
AnssiH
Amazon does track the original supplier.

From their seller help pages:

> Note: Amazon ensures that the initial source of the commingled units can be
> traced throughout the fulfilment process.

> Important: Amazon ensures that the exact same units from two sellers,
> participating in the commingling programme, are always physically
> segregated. This means that Amazon storage logic does not allow same ASINs
> of different sellers to be stored in the same bin in our warehouse if they
> are commingled.

In other words, Amazon ensures that commingled items are never physically
commingled.

For a public source, see e.g. Amazon comment in this article:
[https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2019/04/03/1554287401000/Amazon-...](https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2019/04/03/1554287401000/Amazon
--sub-prime---Part-II/) (outline link:
[https://outline.com/4R7fp6](https://outline.com/4R7fp6))

> The system is purposefully designed so that similar products are not placed
> next to or near each other, and Amazon can also track the original seller of
> each unit.

~~~
ceejayoz
The next sentence of your last paragraph says:

> Sellers are able to choose whether to share identical inventory or not.

That seems to indicate physical commingling. IIRC, avoiding commingling has an
additional cost to the seller.

~~~
AnssiH
As far as I understand it, that just means that sellers have the option to opt
in/out of the commingling program (Settings => Fulfillment by Amazon => FBA
Product Barcode Preference).

Yes, there is a cost for the seller if opting out - they need to apply their
own barcodes to the products in that case.

------
duxup
For some foolish reason I had notifications turned on for the Amazon app... it
recently offered me a deal on some sort of supplements that seemed kinda
strange / made some weird claims. I had never even searched for any kind of
supplement or even food / drug items before.

Other offers were for what looked like seriously questionable quality things,
that were semi related to items that I had searched, but looked like rock
bottom quality, but they were a few $ cheaper.

It all has a very Kmart / Wallmart, but maybe worse vibe.

Amazon seems more and more like a wide open low cost kinda store where fakes,
low quality garbage, and such aren't just too common, but even pushed by their
own system. Sometimes Amazon takes some light action, other times they argue
they're simply not responsible for whatever it is they sell:
[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/07/amazon-on-the-
ho...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/07/amazon-on-the-hook-for-
third-party-goods-that-cause-injury-federal-court-says/)

It's all the opposite of what I chose to go to Amazon for. I went to Amazon to
find options I couldn't find elsewhere, and generally want good quality things
BECAUSE the local retail stores already were in a race to the bottom.... But
now Amazon wants me to wade through their garbage to find it and seems to want
to join that $1 cheaper for $5 less quality type race .... and I swear I'm
seeing fewer good quality items sold in areas where they used to exist, but
now seemed to be dominated by garbage.

~~~
cgriswald
Amazon is busy shooting itself in the foot. The problem is, the gun is small
and the foot is huge, so they probably don't feel it right now.

Supplements (or really _anything_ I put in my mouth) is one of a growing set
of classes of items I won't buy on Amazon anymore. That probably doesn't
result in much loss for Amazon right now, but what it does do is:

1\. Makes me trust Amazon MUCH less, which means I'm much more likely to forgo
purchasing additional classes of items from them.

2\. Makes me find new online or offline vendors for the classes of items I no
longer buy from Amazon. Those vendors sometimes sell other items I would
normally buy from Amazon as well. If I need those items, I'm not going to shop
BOTH places. I'm going with the one I trust.

3\. Makes me reconsider my Prime membership. (Among other things, like
shipping having become less reliable recently.)

There's a tipping point here somewhere, where I'll just stop being an Amazon
customer entirely.

~~~
therein
Normally I'd just upvote and continue on my way but with the expectation that
maybe someone from Amazon is reading and thinking "surely not everyone feels
that way".

We all feel this way. Inventory co-mingling will have major long term costs.
If you think about it, it is pretty crazy how big of a reputation hit Amazon
has taken in the last few years.

~~~
felipemnoa
Ditto

~~~
skierguy
Same here

------
ADSSDA
You'd have to be insane to buy anything you'd put in your body from Amazon.
Just this week I received an obviously used item that was "Shipped and sold by
amazon.com" and sold as "new".

I realize they're trying, but Amazon is clearly failing to control the tide of
fakes that is infesting their storefront. I find that for almost anything I
search for, the knockoff/fake is actually the Amazon "recommended" item.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> You'd have to be insane to buy anything you'd put in your body from Amazon.
> Just this week I received an obviously used item that was "Shipped and sold
> by amazon.com" and sold as "new".

I bought a new mp3 player from Fry's once which, oddly enough, turned out to
be stocked with a sizeable music library already.

I'd still be pretty comfortable buying a candy bar from them though.

~~~
darkpuma
In the case of Fry's, you have evidence that they've received a counterfeit
product from a single supplier. It may be rampant, or it may not be. With that
single datapoint, it's hard to say.

In the case of Amazon, we know them to have a long and extensive history of
selling a wide variety of counterfeit products. There is not nearly as much
ambiguity to the situation. Elsewhere in this discussion the comparison to a
flee market has been made, and I think that describes it well.

~~~
panda88888
No, in this case is Fry’s selling a returned product as new. This is actually
the main reason I stopped shopping at Fry’s. It could be the case that the
customer re-sealed and returned, but I’ve seen it often enough at Fry’s that I
suspect the store is re-sealing returned product and re-sell as new.

------
gshakir
Amazon has a big counterfeit problem. The reviews are entirely gamed, so can’t
trust those any more , even the 2-star or 3-star ones.

So I recently dropped Amazon prime and ended up buying popular name brands.
Even those you can get price matched with other retailers and Target even
gives you 5% percent discount and BestBuy gives you points.

Unless you are a person who is not mobile, there are several options now.

~~~
michaelmrose
Enjoy price matching while you can. Nobody price matches craigslist for
example and as Amazon trustworthiness dives towards craiglist levels one
wonders if said policies will continue.

~~~
bmurphy1976
Eh? So what. If everybody stops price matching because nobody buys from Amazon
anymore because everything they get is compromised, then GOOD. We'll be in a
better more honest place.

------
kerkeslager
I'd like to believe that this is Amazon actually trying to crack down on fake
supplements on their website, but it coincides too neatly with a noticeable
increase in presence of the Solimo brand, Amazon's own supplement brand.

So Amazon's model here looks like:

1\. Allow sellers to sell counterfeit products, so they can take a cut of
profits from both legitimate and fake inventory.

2\. Copy the best-selling products after they've been product tested, and
compete against their own customers (sellers on their platform).

3\. Undermine the credibility of their competition by warning that their
competitors' products might be counterfeits.

------
20years
I don't buy anything that I would put into my body from Amazon. This also
includes creams, make-up, etc. Way too many counterfeits to trust them and
trying to figure out which are legit is a huge task in itself.

~~~
empath75
Yeah my wife bought ‘tylenol’ that was a bunch of individually wrapped packs
of two marked ‘not for resale’. I made her throw them out.

~~~
vernie
Why?

~~~
empath75
Because who knows where they came from or what it was.

------
ben7799
Supplements are buyer beware anyway because even when they're direct from the
manufacturer there is no guarantee the product actually contains what is
claimed.

My favorite example is that I'm lactose intolerant, I've tried a bunch of
different Whey Protein products that were all listed as "Whey Protein Isolate
100% lactose free" and all of them made me sick as if they had lactose. I
finally caught on and tried a Vegan protein.

------
HillaryBriss
> "When consumers have tried to sue online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay
> for selling dangerous goods in the past, courts have ruled they aren’t
> responsible for products offered by third-party vendors..."

If there's one thing that makes me back away, as a consumer, from Amazon, it's
this sort of thing, this lack of real accountability. Sure, Amazon, says they
do things to prevent counterfeits from being sold through, but there doesn't
appear to be any powerful _outside_ force that consumers can bring to bear on
the company when they screw up.

~~~
starsinspace
And IMO it's even worse on Amazon than on eBay. At least on eBay you know that
it's not sold by eBay themselves, because that's how the whole website works.
And also, eBay prominently shows who the seller is on the listing pages.

Amazon's product pages make it so easy to overlook who the actual seller is,
and I don't think that's coincidence.

~~~
panda88888
Even the seller information on Amazon may not accurate due to inventory
commingling.

------
tbabb
Everyone is rightly ragging on Amazon for being terribly irresponsible and
consumer-hostile in allowing counterfeit products to be sold on their
platform.

But doing what CVS is doing (independently testing all their stocked products)
is not the solution. This is _ahem_ WHAT REGULATORY AGENCIES ARE FOR. The FDA
needs to do its gottdang job and test and regulate supplements. This is
utterly shameful for a first-world country that consumers can't be certain
that pills on shelves contain what they purport to.

------
kirykl
Amazon also has issues with returned items. If they judge the returned package
to be cosmetically sellable, even if the item is used or half gone, they'll
re-sell it.

~~~
empath75
Yep, got a car seat cover that was supposedly new and had a broken zipper and
someone else’s name written on the tag.

------
dralley
There's entire classes of items that I no longer buy off of Amazon, because I
have no trust in their supply chain.

* Supplements

* Anything vaguely medical, really

* Chargers

* Certain types of electronics e.g. phones

------
foobiekr
if risking blinding people during the eclipse due to counterfeit eclipse
glasses was not sufficient to get Amazon to change, nothing will do so until
someone actually dies.

~~~
wyre
In that case it might even be cheaper to pay a few million in settlements than
it would be to change their ways.

------
sjg007
It's a big issue: supplements, batteries, cables, headphones etc...

------
LinuxBender
I've bought supplements from Amazon on a regular interval without issue. Maybe
I just jynx'd myself. If I ever received fake supplements, I would treat that
as being poisoned and report it to the CDC, FDA, FBI and local news.

My only bad experiences with Amazon to date was with NVidia video cards.
Twice. Shame on me for falling for it twice. Each time they swapped out the
cards with slower clock speed video cards. They also censored my feedback.
Apparently nobody else checks their cards clock speed once installed?

------
elektor
Knowing how ill-equipped Amazon is for the supplement market, are there any
legitimate lab-tested online vendors?

~~~
ar-jan
If there's one vendor I'd trust over any others it's Nootropics Depot. They do
all their testing in-house, because it is much more reliable than 3rd party
lab testing. The owner frequently gives extensive insight into how the supply
chains and testing work. Recent example:
[https://old.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/comments/cength/testing_...](https://old.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/comments/cength/testing_your_supplements/eu59kxg/)

~~~
exolymph
I was about to recommend Nootropics Depot too. Don't get thrown off by the
name, anyone, there are plenty of "normal" supplements in addition to the
racetams and such.

------
Havoc
>“If you still have this product, we recommend that you stop using it
immediately and dispose of the item,”

I've received one like that before so this isn't the first time they're
sending out a mail like that

------
vernie
And if you return too much stuff they'll ban your account; very cool.

~~~
viburnum
I stopped buying a lot of stuff from amazon because I don't want to get
banned. They just put books loose in boxes now. If I'm buying an $80 art book
I want it delivered in mint condition. It might take amazon three tries to do
that now.

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ck2
there's a new trick/scam on amazon I am not sure if anyone else has noticed
yet

seems designed to trick not only buyers but also sites like fakespot

a vendor lists an item for awhile, something cheap and reliable enough to
gather plenty of legit 5-star reviews

then they leave the listing and ASIN but delete and change out the photos and
the title/text with another item, not even similar item in some cases

so the ratings/reviews remain but the new product is given all their weight
instead

cannot believe amazon does not detect and stop this

~~~
earthshot
There's an e-mail thread going around Amazon about this, internally. The scam
is that the fraudulent seller finds an item that is real but out of stock from
all sellers. The seller than sends in their inventory, and updates the listing
because they are now the only seller of that item.

It really sucks, and I hope we find a way to solve this, soon. It's a terrible
customer experience.

~~~
garmingps
Wouldn't one easy way to solve be that a human has to approve all changes to
the name of an item? Or that name changes that change more than x% of the
title have to be approved by a human? Or that all changes only happen after
some waiting period? I would think anything that slows this down/makes it even
a little harder will have big knock-on effects.

------
taurath
Then don’t sell it. You created the platform.

------
graeme
Does amazon canada have a counterfeit problem? To my knowledge I haven't
received any and I'm wondering if the same comingling issues exist.

Or are counterfeits generally perfect visual frauds?

~~~
Raphmedia
This year, I bought a lot of cosmetics and hair products from Amazon Canada.
Most of what I received was fakes and knockoffs. Now I know that every time I
buy a product, I have to look first at the 0-star reviews.

It seems that sellers first build a reputation and then move on to
counterfeiting. As a result, product listings have excellent reviews, even
when they are clearly false. I'm talking things like a cream shampoo, brown
water instead, etc.

I have practically given up buying these products on Amazon. Instead, I pay
the manufacturer's small additional shipping and handling fees.

~~~
graeme
Interesting. I guess I always check for zero stars, so maybe that's how I
avoided it.

Would it be clear the branding was different? Like, the brown water didn't
have an immaculately reproduced shampoo bottle? Thinking of supplements, where
it can be hard to tell what a legit one should look like.

~~~
Raphmedia
I think they either use old empty bottles, dilute genuine product or steal the
content for themselves and then refill the empty bottles.

------
ninedays
Amazon cares about counterfeit products as much as YouTube cared about
copyright videos in its infancy. It's just here to enable growth until they
start to fight it.

------
CPLX
Awesome do Apple headphones next

