
More than 90% of ‘genuine’ Apple chargers and cables sold on Amazon are fake - Lio
https://9to5mac.com/2016/10/19/amazon-fake-apple-chargers-cables/
======
mox1
Over the past year I've gotten increasingly frustrated with the overall
Quality of the Amazon shopping "experience."

I used to be able to trust Amazon. I could simply type in the type of item I
wanted, search for the highest reviewed / rated and click buy.

Now, I have to:

1\. Wade through the Ads and crap products to find what I actually searched
for.

2\. Read all of the comments, perform some type of judgement whether these are
fake reviews, sponsored reviews, etc.

3\. Figure out if it is "Fulfilled by Amazon" or sold directly (I only
recently realized all of the "Fulfilled by Amazon" items get commingled, so
I'm getting basically god knows what).

4\. If Fulfilled, now I have to research how reputable the selling company is.
Just yesterday I found a company selling baby formula, whose domain name was
registered last month, and via a privacy service!?!!? If you can't list your
business address, I'm not buying from you.

5\. Now I need to determine whether the sold by Amazon item is fake or legit.
Lets hope some other sucker buys it before me and posts a good review.

At this point, I would rather just goto Target or Walgreens, CVSm etc and buy
the damn thing. Taking 20-30 minutes to research every purchase is getting
very old.

...But hey 2 day shipping for $8/ month right!

~~~
DashRattlesnake
> Over the past year I've gotten increasingly frustrated with the overall
> Quality of the Amazon shopping "experience."

Me too, and I can add:

6\. Spend time figuring out if the product is available locally for the same
(or better) price. I feel like sucker buying from Amazon and waiting a
_minimum_ of 2 days to get something I could have gotten locally in 20 minutes
for the same/cheaper price.

7\. Deal with Amazon's new, _terrible_ delivery service. Using untrained, un-
unformed randos to deliver packages in their personal vehicles means my
deliveries get screwed up _much_ , _much_ more frequently. I've had these
people fail follow my package delivery instructions _that are posted on my
door_ (deliver to the apartment office, rather than leaving at the door),
_even after I 've talked to them personally._ No other delivery service has
this problem. I blame Amazon for this experience far more than the drivers.

It's gotten to the point where I only go to Amazon for less-common long-tail
stuff. If it's an item that may be reasonably available at a retailer, I just
shop locally.

~~~
SilasX
Out of curiosity, is it an issue of the apartment office being far away? I can
imagine not following the instruction if it's something heavy and I just
searched and walked a long distance, only to be told I have to go find the
apartment office.

~~~
DashRattlesnake
No, these are light items and the apartment office is less than a minute walk
away from my door.

I think the main issue is that there's only one lady staffing the office part-
time, so it's sometimes closed when the driver gets there. That's not a
problem for the major carriers: their drivers are professionals who know their
route and when to be at the office; and if they they're late, they just put
the package back on the truck for tomorrow. Amazon probably pays their randos
on a piecework basis and they're not incentivized to follow the instructions
and return the package to the shipping depot when I'm not at home and the
office is closed.

I have communicated the office's hours to Amazon Logistics, and they said
they'd enter it into their system, but that has done absolutely no good: the
problems persist. A good carrier would have drivers that could read signs and
update and retrieve notes from their own systems without requiring customer
intervention. Amazon Logistics is not a good carrier.

Edit: Did some Googling and found this:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/amazon/comments/53ybde/amazon_logis...](https://www.reddit.com/r/amazon/comments/53ybde/amazon_logistics_driver_here_here_to_answer_any/)

> Amazon put enormous pressure on drivers, the reason drivers put parcels in
> recycling bins is due to the fact that we are reprimanded for returning to
> the depot with parcels. They expect 100percent delivered everytime.

No wonder they suck.

------
saryant
Beyond Apple accessories, Amazon is getting more and more unusable. With
electronics and fashion, it's due to wading through fakes. But in virtually
any category, the problem is wading through tens of thousands of results.

The reviews can't be trusted. I've seen _so_ many products with a seemingly
five-star rating, but the top three up-voted reviews are 1-star. Yesterday I
was searching for bedsheets. The term "bed sheet set" returns over 600,000
results.

I just want the top 5 or 10. I don't want to wade through this many. Problem
is, if I can't trust the reviews, how do I sort the shit from what I actually
want?

With some products, of course, this isn't a problem—books, for instance—but
that's only because I know what title I'm looking for or my search is so niche
that I'm only going to get a tiny handful of results.

There's big money in someone taking Costco's model of picking the handful of
products in a category that will work for most people and applying it to
Amazon. Either search needs to get a _hell_ of a lot better or someone needs
to bring in curation.

(I used to be skeptical of business models like Casper but now I get it—a lack
of options can be a luxury)

~~~
wpietri
> a lack of options can be a luxury

Definitely. I worked for a couple of years on a startup that aimed to help
people make better shopping decisions. In user interviews and tests, we really
saw the pain. The technical term for this is "tyranny of choice". [1]

One important distinction here is that shopping behavior tends to fall into
one of two modes, optimizer and satisficer. [2] Satisficers just want to pick
something adequate; optimizers want to pick the best thing. Everybody does
both, but people tend toward one side or another.

People here surely skew toward optimizer, so the problem is especially painful
for us. Amazon's reviews have become so reliable that my first stop will often
be something like Consumer Reports, Wirecutter, or SweetHome. Knowing that
some other optimizer has already done the research lets makes me more
comfortable making a satisficer-style choice.

[1]
[http://www.economist.com/node/17723028](http://www.economist.com/node/17723028)

[2] [http://abundancemeasures.blogspot.com/2012/01/choice-part-
ii...](http://abundancemeasures.blogspot.com/2012/01/choice-part-ii-
satisficers-vs.html)

~~~
endemic
I'll confirm your anecdote RE: using other websites for curated reviews. I
recently needed a new router; instead of wading through the innumerable search
results on Amazon, I simply chose Wirecutter's recommendation.

~~~
dom0
In Europe (mostly the German and English speaking parts) there's a search
engine for "stuff", formerly only computer-related things, that is often used
for this: [http://geizhals.de/](http://geizhals.de/)

Their unique features are curated filters (boatloads of them, extremely handy
to narrow choices down) and accurate, non-fake reviews and ratings.

This removed 95 % of the annoyingness in buying hardware for me: 1.) Define
requirements 2.) Apply filters on gh 3.) Check reviews for the few resulting
choices 4.) Buy.

~~~
thesmok
The same thing for Ukraine is hotline.ua

I'm surprised there's no service like that in US.

------
danso
As a loyal Apple user, I humbly suggest that maybe this would be a lot less of
a problem if Apple itself sold better cables for a more reasonable price? I
have no problem going into an Apple store to buy overpriced things. I would
just never buy their cables or chargers, as virtually every cable I have from
them is wrapped up in electrical tape. The funny part of this story to me is
why people would buy even cheap cables that are branded Apple when you can get
quality, very high-reviewed cables from vendors like Anker.

edit: In retrospect, I don't have any complaints about the chsrgers. I've
never bought a store charger because the ones that come with devices work just
fine. It's the cables that I have issue with. Even with things like the HDMI-
lightning adapter ($50), they go to pieces without being under heavy use.

~~~
mikestew
_I would just never buy their cables or chargers, as virtually every cable I
have from them is wrapped up in electrical tape._

I ask this a lot of times that I see someone complain about the quality of
Apple cables: what the hell are you doing to your cables? I've still got 30
pin cables with cracked plastic on the 30 pin end, but they still work. After
over 10 years of buying Apple devices that have cables, I count one cable that
has gone bad.

More of a rhetorical question I guess, as we're just trading anecdotes. But I
find it interesting that some complain about the quality of Apple cables,
whereas I have piles of them that just refuse to die.

~~~
oldmanjay
I see a lot of people unplug their MBPs at the end of the day, and wrap the
cable so tightly around the power brick it's like they're trying to protect
its chastity

~~~
lotyrin
And twisting the cable as they wrap it instead of rolling it up.

------
r1ch
We sell esports merchandise (t-shirts, hats, etc) with our team logo, and
there's a lot of counterfeits out there trying to use our brand on print-on-
demand sites (Redbubble, Zazzle, etc) and generic shopping sites like Alibaba
and Amazon.

Out of all the sites we've investigated and sent takedown notices to, Amazon
has by far been the worst. The marketplace is full of counterfeit products,
and we've been having a very hard time trying to get them removed, even though
we have copyright over the design and trademark on our brand name.

Quote Amazon on our latest batch, "We respect a manufacturer's right to enter
into exclusive distribution agreements. However, we do not help to enforce
these agreements. This is a matter between the manufacturer and the
distributors.".

------
Apreche
Yeah, if you want to buy the genuine article it sucks that you end up with a
knock-off. It's very hard to tell the difference on Amazon where the photo on
the product page isn't guaranteed to match the product you will receive.
Happens with a lot more than just cables and chargers. I've even seen it with
things like kitchen tools.

But that's distracting from the real problem. That problem being that even
genuine Apple cables are overpriced and shitty. If Apple provided quality
durable cables of various lengths at reasonable prices, nobody would buy
buying them from Amazon instead of from Apple. Every time someone goes to
Amazon to buy a cable, it's because their Apple one disintegrated.

As for chargers, the Apple ones are just fine, but they only charge one device
at a time. There are plenty of small, inexpensive, and high quality charging
devices available that can charge 5x or even 10x devices at once. The third
party products are just better.

~~~
cstejerean
It's definitely not every time. I haven't had any problems with Apple cables
for example. But I still buy more on occasion because I have misplaced them,
or because I need extras for traveling, for the car, for the office, etc. I am
really curious what everyone complaining about Apple cables manages to do to
theirs in order to cause so much damage. I suspect most people could benefit
from learning how to properly coil a cable.
[https://www.wired.com/2013/08/tnhyut-coil-
cable/](https://www.wired.com/2013/08/tnhyut-coil-cable/)

~~~
Retric
For longer cables I often find this works even better.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkYQWJl3Zv8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkYQWJl3Zv8)

The advantage is you can get at both ends, and add remove length at will, plus
you avoid having excessive tension. Downside is you can't really throw long
cables and have them unwind which can be really useful.

------
martin-adams
I am now very wary of buying some products from Amazon due to counterfeiting.
I seem impossible to buy genuine razor blades as one example.

I bought my wife a Nutribullet from Amazon (marketplace seller) only to find
it was counterfeit. It even cost more than my local store. Amazon weren't
consistently helpful either. After being really supportive speaking with them,
they just didn't follow through. They then asked me to return the item to the
seller, but I refused as the seller would only list it again. If it wasn't a
safety risk to others, I wouldn't have cared as much. I did get my refund
after a lot of effort.

When it comes to power adapters I don't risk cheap third party makes.

~~~
techthroway443
How did you figure out it was counterfeit?

~~~
martin-adams
I saw a BBC report suggesting the dangers of this product being counterfeit
which made me think. Then I compared online images to the product and the
thing that convinced me was there is a missing registered symbol on the logo.
The logo looked a little out of alignment as well. Then after buying a store
brought version I compared them side by side and you can tell all the
differences really easily then. It was a very, very good copy though.

------
xenihn
I have an increasingly growing list of things that I'll never buy on Amazon
because all of the listings are through 3rd-party vendors participating in
Prime. The risk of receiving counterfeit and/or defective product is too
great.

\- any peripheral for Apple not directly sold by Apple or Amazon

\- Gilette razor blades (yes, I've tried straight razors, my skin and hair are
awful)

\- SD/MicroSD cards

\- Condoms

I know Amazon will instantly refund me and pay for return shipping if I do get
a fake, but I'd rather just spend a bit extra and buy it somewhere else where
I know it won't be an issue.

~~~
DanielleMolloy
In my experience their customer service indeed refunded and paid return
shipping on counterfeit products. I had to request a refund due to fake
products 2-3 times over the many years I have been a happy customer there. No
problem with Amazon's service with such issues, ever.

Counterfeits have been a problem on Amazon for several years. There was a time
when only places like eBay or Rakuten had these issues. On Amazon you could
just clearly see which products come directly from their warehouses and which
you thus could trust 100%, and which from e.g. their Marketplace sellers
(which has always involved a little risk). I am really puzzled when / why they
decided to mix both worlds up, in visual disguise. Apparently at some point
they have made the bad decision to become the Western Alibaba-like
marketplace.

I had hoped that they, having some very intelligent employees, will eventually
solve this issue; but I don't see this happening right now. In online shopping
trust is extra important, and regarding the counterfeits they are gambling
with their strong customer trust quite a bit.

------
jbpetersen
Anyone who's into blockchains take note. As fun as tracking complex financial
logic may be, accurately tracking physical supply chains is probably the
quickest route to notably improving the lives of people in general.

~~~
infodroid
In the case of tracking counterfeit Apple products, how would a blockchain
solution be better than a simple database of serial numbers maintained by
Apple for example?

~~~
majewsky
A SQLite file doesn't get you VC money.

------
mmagin
One little trick I've found: Once you select something a couple levels down
the tree of categories, then the "Seller" is a filter available on the left
side of the screen. There are some searches where I just filter to what's
directly sold by Amazon, because 90% of everything is the random sellers
direct from China like you find on ebay.

------
mancerayder
All the counterfeit crap on Amazon has another unintended effect: it makes the
reviews less accurate. For example, when looking at the review of shirts the
other day from Lucky, some of the reviews were normal, then others said things
like, 'Stitching came apart, material flimsy, but may have been a knock off.
Shame on you Amazon for not preventing that.' Roughly paraphrased, I've been
seeing reviews like that of late. It skews the average rating of the product
and hurts the manufacturer.

~~~
infodroid
It not only makes the reviews less accurate but it turns shopping into
something of a gambling experience. Here is a current example... I was
shopping for a Sony DK52 charging dock on Amazon UK. Even though this device
is the only official dock from Sony for many of its current devices on sale,
Amazon doesn't sell it (anymore?). It is only available new from one of 31
third-party sellers. And most of the prominent reviews on the product page [1]
complain that the device they received was poor quality and likely to be fake!

[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-DK52-Micro-Charging-Xperia-
Bla...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-DK52-Micro-Charging-Xperia-
Black/dp/B00XWH0EFO/ref)

------
ChuckMcM
I appreciate Apple pursuing this, they have the resources and it does give
them a black eye when something seems legit and then blows up.

And Amazon has definitely changed in terms of the sketchyness of its store
experience. I expect that is a change in leadership and I really mourn the
fact that Wall Street has rewarded them for it by boosting their stock
price[1].

I observed Ebay trying to "get to Amazon's level" and of course Amazon has
been coming down to Ebay's level and they are meeting somewhere in the middle,
a global cutthroat marketplace with the buyer having to seriously up their
game in order to avoid scams.

But the case in point is counterfeit Apple products being sold both by Amazon
and by people using Amazon as a sales platform. It would be useful if there
was some blowback on Amazon itself for facilitating fraudulent sellers as that
would provide some incentive for them to crack down on it. In much of these
cases when it is a lot of disconnected individuals getting hurt there isn't an
effective feedback mechanism to get it corrected.

[1] Disclosure I do hold AMZN stock but not very much.

------
exogen
Shopping on Amazon has become terrible and I've stopped doing it unless it's
the only option (which is very rare). There is seemingly just no quality
control at all in their catalog; it's like shopping in a flea market or
junkyard and they need to take responsibility for it.

Two screenshots from last year, when I was trying to shop for electrical
receptical covers:

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CTQroCDU8AAw5U7.png](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CTQroCDU8AAw5U7.png)

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CTQqWPnVAAArZM1.png](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CTQqWPnVAAArZM1.png)

The first is categorized under "Tools & Home Improvement > Power & Hand Tools
> Hand Tools > Pliers > Snap-Ring Pliers".

The second is categorized under "Musical Instruments > Drums & Percussion >
Folk & World Hand Drums > Timbales".

How does that even happen? Can't they use some machine learning to detect that
this is so obviously wrong?

~~~
majewsky
Machine learning wouldn't help there, because it will learn from the existing
categorizations. Garbage in, garbage out.

~~~
exogen
(1) Why would they train on the existing categorizations? You train on a
smaller, known-good dataset.

(2) Outlier detection is a thing, even if they included the bad data. It would
be trivial to detect that a small percentage of things categorized as "musical
instruments" have extremely dissimilar facets/descriptions/images to all other
things in that category, and very similar to things in a completely unrelated
category.

------
dman
Amazon is using dark practices in more than one place now. For instance in
their Prime video page the listings and search results will include movies /
shows you are not allowed to watch. (for some reason some content is only
available for select devices or for certain regions). This makes the catalog
look a lot larger than it really is. From a user point of view it is
frustrating because you click through on many results before you find
something you can watch. I reported this as an issue to them sometime back but
havent seen any changes.

------
jheriko
this is poor form from amazon, but this rattles the cage of the bees in the
bonnet of my bugbear because of the subject matter of apple proprietary
standard cables

why doesn't apple just use a generic standard? its in the best interests of
everyone involved. they can still make official cables...

i'd also give them a bit more credit if they made these things to a decent
quality standard - like actually earthing my macbook when its plugged in
instead of lacquering over the connector so it looks shiny but can't possibly
work. i've never owned anything that so frequently gives me small shocks - and
i've heard the same story from everyone who uses these things in the uk...
(maybe other regions get some better quality... our plugs are after all their
own special type)

they are getting better though, the new iphone 5 and later charger cable
actually has a practical level of build quality. unlike the previous
generation of official apple cables, which seemed almost designed to fail....
that weak connection on the charging end that always wore out, always
developed kinks, and in the hands of the naive would end up as frayed wires...
and thats after a mere 6 months to a year of light use. worse build quality
than any usb cable i've ever owned.

------
gnicholas
This headline is misleading—it’s not that 90% of all chargers/cables on Amazon
are fake, it’s that 90% of the suspicious ones that Apple purchases/tests are.
They’re not going to buy ones from Belkin, Amazon Basics, or other
manufacturers that are Apple-certified. They’re going to focus on ones from
unknown manufacturers, or ones with prices that are suspiciously low.

~~~
kgwgk
I don't think Belkin et al. sell their products as 'genuine' Apple products,
do they?

~~~
gnicholas
Good point. But still, it's not that 90% of all listed products are fake—it's
90% of the ones that Apple selected to purchase and test. Given that they only
purchased 100 different products, this isn't a huge sample.

It would be interesting to know how many they looked at on Amazon and decided
not to purchase (presumably because the appearance and price were not
suspicious). That would shed more light on the true percentage of "Apple"
chargers/cables on Amazon that are fake.

------
ChildOfChaos
i have always kinda hated Amazon. There service is just badly made and run,
there products are pretty crappy too.

Last purchase I made, took them ten days to get it to me, even though it was
supposed to be next day delivery. I wasted three seperate days waiting at home
for it all day, while there tracking showed it was out for delivery, only to
find that it was far far away from me and had arrived at the wrong depot that
morning (Why did nobody call or alert me of this?)

They kept blaming the delivery company but it was Amazon's own delivery
company that finally delivered the item. Even then on a different day than
they promised and luckily someone else happened to be home.

They then offered me a free month of prime, I couldn't care less about prime.
It's a total rip off, basically a next day delivery service with a few half
assed add on services, that if you wanted, you would pay someone else for a
real version of the service, ie Music - Spotify etc, Movies - Netflix.

------
nikanj
I'm currently waiting for a package ordered in september with a "2-3 days"
shipping time. Apparently everyone and their dog are running drop-shipping
businesses nowadays, and ordering from amazon gets you the same reliability
and speed as aliexpress.com does.

------
tostitos1979
I bought an Apple case at a retailer in my country (sort of like Radioshack).
While the case was Apple priced, I have a bad feeling it was a fake (case has
minor blemishes). What is bad is I have no good way of verifying if it is real
or fake.

------
sevensor
I'm waiting for Amazon to spin off its still-reliable store for physical books
as a separate premium brand. (Although the only reason there's not much fraud
there is that bookselling doesn't pay very well in the first place.)

------
koolba
They should check Woot too. They have " _Genuine(TM) Apple Chargers_ " on
there every other week. I wouldn't be surprised if some, or more likely all,
of them fell in this category as well.

~~~
nommm-nommm
Woot is now owned by Amazon so its possible its from the same sketchy
inventory.

------
DenisM
Just send the counterfeits back. Amazon will catch on fairly quickly.

~~~
mikeash
That only works if you can reliably detect them.

------
izzydata
So are we coming full circle? Are malls going to be popular again?

------
throwaway420
Interesting that Apple is concerned about the fire and electric shock hazard
of the knock-off charger cables when their own cables are brittle as hell and
subject to the same issues.

Almost entirely across the board, Apple's hardware hardware quality is
absolutely unmatched or comparable with industry leading standards except for
their flimsy cables which routinely fall apart for so many people. Whichever
person inside their company fetishizes thin cables is 100% evil. Not just in
terms of deliberately designing a failing product that needs to be replaced
after a year or so, but in terms of putting people at risk for fire and shock.
This is a well known problem with Apple's products.

The idiotic knock off companies should forget trying to copy Apple here and
just make some normal slightly thicker cables with proper strain relief that
don't break if you look at it wrong. You eliminate your lawsuit risk from
Apple and you sell to a growing market of people who hate Apple's cables.

~~~
majewsky
> Whichever person inside their company fetishizes thin _anything_ is 100%
> evil.

FTFY

------
desireco42
However 'fake' they are, they seem to be working well.

~~~
randyrand
Power adapters break all the time and there is a _very real_ risk of burning
down your house when they do. Electrical fires are not rare. Take a look at an
Apple charger vs a counterfeit. The lack of proper circuit isolation on the
counterfeit is a prime example of how to cause a fire when a component fails.

[http://www.righto.com/2016/03/counterfeit-macbook-charger-
te...](http://www.righto.com/2016/03/counterfeit-macbook-charger-
teardown.html)

~~~
infodroid
There are hundreds of obscure branded power adapters on Amazon, and they are
likely to be just as dangerous as a counterfeit Apple-branded adapter. So the
real problem is the lack of electrical safety guarantees for products sold
online, not the existence of counterfeit products. A counterfeit handbag never
killed anyone.

~~~
randyrand
> So the real problem is the lack of electrical safety guarantees for products
> sold online

I disagree. Not all products have this problem. I may be in the minority here,
but I actively throw away my crappy power plugs because of the risk they pose.
That's an uneeded risk I don't take.

Looking in my apt I have:

\- Anker chargers for my USB stuff

\- An Apple power adapter for my mac

\- A Vizio TV with built in PSU

\- AudioTechnica PSU on my speakers

\- General Electric Microwave

I'm sure I'm missing some PSUs that plug into the wall (as opposed to internal
ones) somewhere. But the point is, I have a reasonable guarantee of safety
when buying from an established brand. General Electric is over 100 years old.
By allowing counterfeiters, my expectation of good engineering when buying
from established brands is eroded. It diminishes my safety. If you don't use
crappy PSUs, then crappy PSUs are not a problem.

------
SreejitS
Well at least it is following the Sturgeon's law :)

------
infodroid
There is a more interesting conclusion we can draw from the data, which is
that 90% of people who bought Apple-branded chargers & cables sold on Amazon
either:

\- didn't care that the products were fake, or

\- couldn't tell the difference between the two

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
They perhaps didn't notice or care, but counterfeit chargers and cables can be
very dangerous, as they usually have a complete disregard for electrical
safety. It could kill you, or kill your device, or burst into flames.

~~~
infodroid
Surely the problem isn't counterfeit goods but the fact that there is no
practical way to guarantee the electrical safety of goods purchased from
Amazon. Why isn't it easier to test electrical safety, or why aren't all
cables and chargers spot-check tested for safety?

~~~
st3v3r
The problem IS counterfeit goods, as when they fail, which they will, the
consumer thinks that it's from the brand themselves, which causes them undue
hardship.

~~~
infodroid
Why is it "undue hardship" for a brand to face competition from imitators?

~~~
st3v3r
Because it's not fair competition. If you competed against a brand with your
own brand, and made it clear that you were not associated with that brand,
then it'd be ok. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about
jackasses that imitate the brand, so the consumer thinks it is the brand that
they're dealing with. So when things go wrong, they don't blame the rando
counterfeiter, they blame the brand itself.

