
Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers - exolymph
http://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/amazon-counterfeits-no-starch.html
======
Lasher
I purchased Quickbooks Pro 2017 (PC) on Amazon last week, said it was "sold by
Intuit" so wasn't even supposed to be an FBA (fulfilled by Amazon). Figured if
it costs no more I might as well get the physical disk.

What showed up was a DVD case with a very clearly photocopied cover for a Mac
version with a Verbatim CDR inside and a hacked version of the software.

Amazon processed the refund just fine but didn't seem particularly interested
or concerned that they had just sold me pirated software. Not a big deal for
Quickbooks, I can just buy the download version. I also want to buy a new Ipod
Touch and, for the first time ever, don't feel like I can buy it on Amazon.

Long term Amazon customer since 1999, Prime since the first year, this
counterfeit issue is a real problem that's going to cost them seriously if
they don't get a handle on it.

~~~
bonestamp2
Amazon isn't going to take this seriously until a major company gets burned
and the FBI gets involved. Then Amazon will experience what every other
company does that gets burned for selling counterfeit goods... the FBI will
raid their warehouse and hold all the inventory as evidence until they
complete their investigation. Like you said, Amazon doesn't seem concerned
that they're selling counterfeit goods -- probably because they don't
understand that's a serious crime.

~~~
ninv
8 out of 10 people cannot spot counterfeit goods. I bought a major brand
perfume, Sold and fulfilled by Amazon. When i used it after 2 months i was
suspicious a. One day i was in Macy's, saw the same perfume (on same price). I
tried the tester and i realized that perfume at home is a cheap knock off.

Initially i though that Amazon did not store it properly and warehouse heat
must have destroyed the smell. Then i saw one star reviews. For last 6 months
people were complaining and getting refund for this perfume. My refund windows
was already closed. Anyway, lesson learned. Amazon is a hit or miss these days
like eBay.

Here is one example, 84$ Magpul sights. If you have never seen the original
product, you cannot spot the difference.

[https://www.amazon.com/Magpul-MBUS-Front-Backup-
Sight/produc...](https://www.amazon.com/Magpul-MBUS-Front-Backup-
Sight/product-
reviews/B00WY4QHWU/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_hist_1?ie=UTF8&filterByStar=one_star&reviewerType=avp_only_reviews)

edit: Added "Sold and fulfilled by Amazon"

~~~
zyxzkz
When I followed your link it says:

Sold by MSP Sales LLC and Fulfilled by Amazon.

~~~
cookiecaper
Amazon does not allow one to create a permanent link to a specific seller. You
can only link to the ASIN, which will determines the seller to display on-
demand.

Unless the product category or brand is "gated" (and to be fair, many are),
meaning it requires pre-approval to list on Amazon, anyone can hitch onto any
ASIN by telling Amazon they have that product in stock (if FBA, by sending in
"that product").

------
crazygringo
Is there anyone here who can shed some light as to _why_?

It's impossible for me to believe that it's part of Amazon's strategy to
encourage, or even allow, counterfeits -- it might be fine for a smaller
company, but it appears to be doing real brand damage at this point.

Yet Amazon shows no signs of stopping it -- this has been going on for years.
Is it just a really hard problem for some reason that isn't obvious? (Like you
catch one seller, and they'll immediately re-register under a different name?
Or false counterfeit claims outweigh real ones?)

I mean, I still can't wrap my head around why Amazon would comingle FBA
merchandise with merchandise Amazon bought directly from the manufacturer, and
thus unknowingly sell counterfeits directly. People say this happens, that
buying "Ships from and sold by Amazon" can still be counterfeit -- does that
happen really? People certainly say it does... is it really something common?
It's hard to believe Amazon could be so dumb to do that... why on earth
_would_ they?

I feel like this just doesn't make sense. Amazon isn't Uber. Shady practices
don't seem like their thing at all. So why is this still happening?

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
Amazon is likely stats blinded: their internal metrics say "all good", so they
ignore the stories people are telling as anecdotes without ever doing the
analysis on how often those "anecdotes" happen. Further, that their stats are
ungrounded (not tied to any hard-to-attack real world tests) and fail to
capture data which would demonstrate the issue.

I believe the FBA and FMA teams are a fundamental blunder opposed to Amazon's
core values (and the business model they espouse), and that while the people
on them are _clever_ , they're not very prudent.

I think that the idea could be salvaged with some genuine mea culpa and
revamping of FBA/FMA systems. I just don't think anyone at Amazon with the
political capital to do so understands or acknowledges the issue.

Honestly, Amazon should just send someone on the team out with $50,000 in $50
giftcards to one of the shopping centers in downtown Seattle and hand them out
to anyone who orders something on Amazon for them (on Amazon's dime; shipped
to Amazon HQ). Will you get a disproportionately high number of bad purchases?
Yep.

But that's sort of the point: isn't it a problem if a large fraction of 1,000
people know how to get bad purchases out of regular items, but you still
operate your store that way?

~~~
dreamcompiler
This is one of the most insightful comments I've read on HN and it explains
the factors at play when a big company won't respond to issues the outside
world can plainly see are problems: The stats are good, the stats measure the
wrong things, and whoever inside the company first suggests that a change is
needed will probably limit their career.

It's also a good explanation of Apple's non-response to their increasingly
poor software quality and their de-facto abandonment of the content-creator
market.

~~~
noir_lord
It's a good comment but anyone who has worked for _really_ large retailers has
experience of been on the side of "This policy is really stupid, you are
pissing customers off!" and head office standing with it's fingers in it's
ears going NerNerNer can't hear you, figures all look good from here.

------
emu
It's trivially easy to run into counterfeit products on Amazon. Here's an
example I pulled up in 2 minutes of searching:

[https://www.amazon.com/Apple-A1385-Adapter-Charger-
iPhone/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Apple-A1385-Adapter-Charger-
iPhone/dp/B06WLQW8LY/ref=sr_1_3?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1490456486&sr=1-3&keywords=apple+iphone+charger)

I see two sellers offering an iPhone charger, ostensibly genuine and new, as
low as USD 3.19.

Compare with the Apple listing for the same item for USD 19:
[http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD810LL/A/apple-5w-usb-
pow...](http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD810LL/A/apple-5w-usb-power-
adapter)

There is no way you can be selling the genuine product at that price and be
making a profit. I don't know what Apple's wholesale price for chargers is,
but it is presumably more than USD 3.19.

Amazon has lost at least two orders from me recently because I had no
confidence that I would receive a genuine product.

~~~
Jb611
This is actually a different scam that's been going on recently. These "just
launched" sellers show up for about 1/10th the actual price and when you buy
from them they just won't ever send anything. Their strategy is to delay as
long as possible and hope Amazon gives them their first payment before they
finally get shut down.

I sell on Amazon via FBA and the counterfeiting and scamming is unbelievable.
I'm glad to see these stories come out to raise some awareness because Amazon
has done nothing to fix the problem.

~~~
rwmj
Even better than that, some of them offer products at the _normal_ price and
then don't send anything, while dragging out the complaints process as long as
possible.

Had two of them in the past 3 months ...

------
ymerej
Four or five times in a row, I bought what were supposed to be genuine Samsung
batteries for my SGS4, and every single one was a counterfeit. Each time I had
a chat conversation with Amazon, explaining the situation and each time I was
told "an investigation" would be done. Ex:
[https://www.amazon.com/review/R1OV6G6YE4TXFZ/ref=cm_cr_rdp_p...](https://www.amazon.com/review/R1OV6G6YE4TXFZ/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm)

~~~
shawn-furyan
Similar story, but with 3 consecutive large capacity HGST hdds that were sold
as new (SMART told a different story), switching sellers each time. Ultimately
just went to Newegg.

~~~
webster23
The problem with the fake replacement batteries isn't new. In 2015 the german
computer magazine ct bought 12 "samsung" batteries at amazon and all were
fake. [https://www.heise.de/ct/ausgabe/2015-10-Amazon-verkauft-
nach...](https://www.heise.de/ct/ausgabe/2015-10-Amazon-verkauft-nachgebaute-
Akkus-als-Originalware-2604617.html)

------
almog
Somewhat related - I use amazon price alerting services (camelcamelcamel.com
and keepa.com) for some items that are on my wish list.

In the past few months I received much more price drops alerts than ever
before. Most of these are by new stores that have no reviews.

Knowing that I'll be covered by Amazon, and tempted to give what I guessed
would be a scum a chance, I ordered two items from different stores and as I
expected I never got the items. Eventually got a refund from Amazon.

I'm not sure why Amazon isn't putting more effort to prevent these stores from
popping up. Most of them I've noticed publish dozens if not hundreds of items
for ridiculous prices. Even a simple capping mechanism for new stores would
have made this much more difficult than it is to set up this scum.

While Ebay does not excel in that regard either, it does cap new sellers sales
volume as well as allows buyers to report suspicious activity. Ebay's
algorithm isn't especially smart - I often notice stores that were inactive
for years yet retain good feedback record, pop up back to life with new low
priced supplies and eventually turn out to be a scum (most likely hacked
accounts).

~~~
inimino
You mean _scam_ , not scum.

~~~
almog
Yes, too late for editing now.

------
justinclift
There _used_ to be plenty of counterfeit Intel network cards on Amazon.co.uk
(and .com). Unsure about other Amazon subdomains.

After receiving a chinese knock off card instead of the real thing, I
complained to Amazon. Even after rounds of communication with them, trying to
alert them to the problem all they did was tell me to contact "Trading
Standards" (the uk body). I've barely bought from Amazon since then, and I
_used to_ buy a lot from through them.

Instead I reached out to Intel Legal, who looked over things, then opened an
investigation.

Now (some months later) it seems like there are almost no counterfeit Intel
cards on Amazon. So at least some places do seem to have enough clout.

~~~
justinclift
In case it's interesting, this is what the counterfeit card looked like:

[https://justinclift.fedorapeople.org/Counterfeit%20Intel%20c...](https://justinclift.fedorapeople.org/Counterfeit%20Intel%20card/DSCN0174.JPG)

Obviously using Intel branding (there are other photo's in the same directory,
mostly just other angles though).

Amazon didn't care.

------
tyingq
The article makes a good point that aside from enforcement issues, Amazon
leaves the seller of the genuine item in a bad spot. Like one-star reviews of
the product (due to fakes) staying for months. The whole product listing being
taken down instead of just the seller with fakes being shut down. The lack of
real communication with the seller of the genuine product, and so on.

Edit: Perhaps some additional manual effort to protect good sellers would stem
the bad PR tide. The news stories all seem to start with a frustrated seller.

~~~
briffle
Our seller was pretty ticked when we kept getting copies of 'Where's Wally'
instead of 'Where's Waldo' for a friend's birthday this fall. The former is
sold outside the us. someone was finding them cheap, and damaged, and dumping
them. We were trying to purchase from legit seller, and returned 3 times and
then ran out of time....

~~~
tyingq
Ah, so not a fake, but a bad substitution. Does show, though, that sellers
can't get attention when it is needed.

~~~
DanBC
Grey market imports can be a serious problem, and they're definitely more
toward the counterfeit end.

~~~
emodendroket
Despite publisher attempts to stop it courts have ruled that it's legal to
import cheaper foreign editions of books and I personally have done so
intentionally to buy textbooks. Certainly a problem if they are not labeled
though.

------
throwawaylalala
I private label. Amazon's respose process for this is completely broken. Right
now we are having several entities jump on; as part of our process for getting
counterfieters off of our listibgs we make test buys; probably 10 buyers have
sent exactly the same email, including a weird space between a word and a
comma.

Want to know how truly bad it is?

Look at this listing: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-
listing/B00DVKJXFE/ref=dp_ol...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-
listing/B00DVKJXFE/ref=dp_olp_all_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=all)

~~~
Pyxl101
What conclusion should be drawn from that listing?

~~~
throwaway049
I'm not the OP, but I am suspicious of most of the sellers being 'just
launched' or having very few instances of feedback. Also the seller names
don't look like anything I would pick it I wanted to name my business.

~~~
zaroth
What, you mean "Cockers in Larsworld" with two 5-star reviews isn't your first
choice retailer to buy this $50 pillow from for $2.78? If that's not your
style, you could always shop with "HOLE'S HUMAN ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGISTS" and
pay $8.07.

Wow, seriously that is insane.

~~~
bambax
Wow, I hadn't noticed the sellers' names, thanks for the laugh.

Amazon's crazy to let that happen with zero oversight.

~~~
throwawaylalala
The bigger issue is that a large swath of this could be fixed easily. Many of
these fake sellers are jumping on with 97,000+ items for sale immediately.
Putting a gate in place (something similar to eBays process) could at least
increase the effort (and cost) required to scam at this level.

------
danjayh
Amazon is a cluster all-around. They can't keep counterfeits off (I just
recently got a 'samsung' battery that would only charge to 80%), and they
can't police legit products correctly either. I've seen tons of horror stories
from owners of FBA private labels who'v had their products pulled by Amazon
for being 'counterfeit' because one of their competitors reported them in an
attempt to reduce competition. Takes weeks or months to get your listing
restored. And don't even get me started on their review system. I used to
review certain subsets of items prolifically, without accepting freebies, but
I gave it up. Amazon would regularly pull down my reviews for things they
didn't like. For instance, I've had several battery reviews pulled for
including a measured capacity (mAh) divided by cost 'value' graph because it
implicitly includes pricing information. Give me a break. Know what replaced
my well-thought out & researched review? A review from a 5-star shill that
shot from 0 helpful to over +1000 overnight (to those of you that have never
reviewed on Amazon ... that does NOT happen unless you're cheating).

Amazon's reviews are crap. Amazon's inventory control is crap. Amazon's seller
support is crap. The only things they have going for them are good customer
service and a near monopoly on online sales.

Walmart, however, also has great customer service, has brick-and-mortar stores
that will help you deal with problems, and now has free 2-day shipping. I've
been making a conscious effort to do more online shopping there lately,
because Amazon needs to feel like they have a little competition.

~~~
cookiecaper
Be careful jumping on the Walmart train. Their online marketplace has recently
started including third-party sellers as well. I'm not sure how they police
them or if they're any better than Amazon, but you're not implicitly free from
these concerns just by going to Walmart.com instead of Amazon.com. I would
_guess_ that Walmart doesn't commingle stock from third-party sellers, since
it's such a bad idea, but I don't know.

Jet.com also does third-party sellers, but I hear they are very strict and
work hard to make sure that all their sellers are authentic.

Amazon has made itself the de-facto e-tail platform. We're already seeing a
Google-like effect from them, where if Amazon is not happy with you, your
business can be destroyed overnight. There are consultants similar to SEO
consultants who try to ensure that your products always "win the buy box",
some of which is certainly done through attempting to hit competitors with
false negatives as you've described, much like the negative links that
competitors try to register against one another to hurt their Google ranking.

I really hope that some of the other players in this game can get together and
do something to stop another monopolistic pre-eminence. Between Shopify,
ShopRunner, Walmart, and other brick-and-mortars who are jealous of Amazon, it
should be feasible to create an Amazon-ish experience that will at least keep
one or two other big competitors in the game. Let's do it before it's too
late!

~~~
tzakrajs
Jet seems to have very similar inventory to Amazon (even on obscure or niche
stuff, like springs for my 2015 Ford Taurus), eerily so. What is more, several
times I have been credited money to my account because Jet didn't have the
product they claimed to have (the springs...). Weird.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Can you elaborate on the actual claim you seem to be dancing around? I'm not
completely following...

~~~
phil21
I can't speak for the OP, but for me I've noticed this looking for hard-to-
find specific products as well.

You will find that what appears to be wide availability is usually 2 or 3
third-party vendors spamming the same thing multiple times to multiple sites.
This becomes especially apparent once you actually order something, and it
takes 2 weeks for the vendor to say it's not in stock. Repeat that process
across 4 or 5 major sites like amazon/jet/walmart/sears/newegg/etc. and it
gets a bit tiring. Seemingly everyone now has a "marketplace" section and
purposefully makes it difficult to filter it.

Basically it seems the "long tail" of on-line retail shares the same very few
number of marginal-at-best players who take an approach of spamming tons of
low quality listings in the hope of fulfilling even a fraction of it.

Once you look for it, you notice this pattern (e.g. a spelling mistake in a
given part listing you need) quite often and realize it might even be a single
"root" vendor after you get through the chains of middlemen.

~~~
tzakrajs
Allow me to grant phil21 the ability to speak for me retroactively. These were
exactly my thoughts.

------
rleigh
I've been uneasy at the whole "FBA" concept for a while, and I've certainly
used Amazon much less as a result.

I'm not sure what they are thinking here, to be honest. I don't want to use
another eBay; I stopped using it entirely due to scammers and paypal. I
previously had some trust that Amazon was buying and reselling genuine
products, and I no longer do.

If FBA was restricted to original manufacturers who provide their own
inventory, I'd have little to complain about. But thousands of unknown vendors
acting as yet another middle man and pushing cheap counterfeit crap add no
value at all, in my opinion. They do nothing but tarnish Amazon's reputation.

------
rebootthesystem
It's worst than that. As someone already pointed out, buying software on
Amazon is down-right dangerous. And Amazon does not care.

Yet, beyond that, counterfeits and scams are rampant on the platform. Scammers
take advantage of genuine seller's good rank, insert themselves at lower
prices, destroy the genuine seller's revenue stream and deliver cheap knock-
offs or even dangerous products to unsuspecting buyers.

And past that, Amazon does something really crazy. They allow anyone to leave
reviews on any product, whether they purchased the product or not. All you
need is an Amazon account. You don't even need to have ever purchased anything
at all. You don't even need to have a verified credit card on file. And so,
what happens is that there are scammers using fake bad reviews as weapons of
war to knock good sellers down in ranking and capture what would have been
their sales. And, again, Amazon does not care.

On Amazon's advertising platform there's a similar issue. They will charge
sellers for any click on ads. This means you don't even need to be a verified
active Amazon user to click on ads and burn seller's advertising budget with
zero ROI. Amazon does not qualify any click on their ads. Logic would say a
seller is only interested in genuine Amazon users. A simple definition of this
might be someone who has had an Amazon account for N months, has purchased an
average of N items per year/month, has a credit card on file and has had
product successfully delivered to their address. Seller's are not interested
on clicks from someone in China hired to burn through their ad budget. Again,
Amazon does not care.

Not sure where this mess is headed but these issues need to be addressed or it
will get really ugly.

~~~
Neliquat
They penalize and hide non verified reviews mostly now unless super helpful.

~~~
scurvy
"Helpful" is easy to game with enough fraudulent upvotes.

~~~
jrnichols
but lousy broken English still (fortunately) gives away these reviews as
false.

As bad as it sounds, I dismiss most reviews unless the punctuation and grammar
is correct.

------
home_boi
Have you found any alternative to online shopping?

I generally just roll the dice with Amazon on anything that is not food or
electronics. The convenience trumps the money wasted on buying a bad product.

For electronics, I've looked at Walmart and Jet.com which have shady 3rd party
sellers that are worse than Amazon sellers.

I believe BestBuy gets all its inventory from authorized sellers so I trust
them, although they have limited selection.

I haven't found a solution for food (mainly specific branded supplements like
magnesium/vitamin C/etc. that can't be found in regular grocery stores)

The ideal situation would be if Amazon didn't conmingle its "Sold by
Amazon.com" inventory with 3rd party sellers and charged a premium for it (to
make it economically feasible for them). Right now the current incentives
aren't pointing in that direction.

Most customers don't know about the conmingling. If we could spread awareness
of conmingling, the economic incentives could lean in that direction.

~~~
ikeboy
Food is not commingled, or anything with expiration dates. Buy from a seller
with good feedback and you'll be fine.

~~~
rexf
That's great to hear, but source? I've bought food from Amazon, but I'm really
hesitant to do so anymore

~~~
ikeboy
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200243180)

------
Chathamization
This is unsettling. Not only are many counterfeit goods being sold through
Amazon, but Amazon's policies (co-mingling inventory, lack of ability to
signal counterfeit goods in complaint, lack of ability to review a counterfeit
seller of a good instead of the good itself) are directly encouraging this
situation. And Amazon's response seems to be a collective shrug.

The news media's response is probably just as much to blame - they're more
interested in writing fluff pieces about Amazon's hypothetical drone delivery
than in informing the public about the current major threat to consumers posed
by Amazon's policies. I'm willing to bet a lot of customers have received
faulty counterfeit goods and don't even realize it.

This also underscores one of the problems with quasi-monopolies - once they
feel they have a captive audience, they're only more than happy to screw over
their customers in order to make a bit more money. If everyone gravitates
towards one company, we end up in a very precarious situation when the company
invariably decides that we have no where else to go and then can do whatever
they want to us.

------
new299
Counterfeit products seem to becoming a near universal problem. It's not just
amazon, but other marketplaces (eBay, taobao etc). Even seems like major
electronic component suppliers fall foul of this sometimes (digikey).

I can really only see three solutions:

1\. We just buy everything direct from the supplier. Companies like amazon
manage distribution. 2\. We provide tools to allow the consumer to track the
supply chain process. Products shipped with unique QR code, printed at the of
manufacture? Users able to verify that this product was actually manufactured
by the stated supplier. Could be an interesting startup idea? 3\. Consumers
get better at evaluating products on their own merits. Verifying battery
capacity, performance etc.

3 is basically what you have to do if you purchase anything in Shenzhen
markets. You can't just trust a particular supplier, or even that one batch
has the same performance characteristics as the last.

~~~
bambax
> _2\. We provide tools to allow the consumer to track the supply chain
> process. Products shipped with unique QR code, printed at the of
> manufacture? Users able to verify that this product was actually
> manufactured by the stated supplier. Could be an interesting startup idea?_

Yes, it does sound like a fantastic opportunity! How would it work though?
Every single instance of product would have to have its own id that would
"expire" as soon as it's verified by an end-user, to prevent counterfeiters
from copying a number and running with it?

Even then, it would be possible to copy numbers from products not yet
delivered, and use them on counterfeits. Or you have to have a destructive
process to reveal the number (like a scratch-off).

There would still be many ways to cheat: opening the boxes and replacing the
genuine product with a fake, or the used market, etc.

Still, an interesting problem!

~~~
kveykva
Because this particular cheat has happened to us and we added systems to
prevent it:

We already do serialize each unit for customers. So when cases started
appearing like this we would also apply another code to the box the unit is
placed into. Our system then associates both of them - taking photos of each
when that occurs.

This prevents the changing of what unit is in a box.

Peeling off the sticker is actually pretty easily prevented entirely by the
photo, humans aren't very good at placing stickers exactly the same way as
they're initially applied. Compounded by our use of self-destructive stickers
where possible.

------
JohnTHaller
I was looking at a Dohm sound generator on Amazon and most of the top reviews
are 1 star reviews stating that the item shipped and sold by Amazon (not
fulfilled by, sold by) was showing up as a cheap counterfeit. Made in China
(instead of the US), fan rattling within a few days, fake UL approved sticker,
etc. Amazon refunded their money but didn't appear to care about the issue,
likely due to the inventory mixing between fake sellers and Amazon that seems
rampant these days. I decided to buy it from the manufacturer's own site
directly and cancelled the order I had just placed for vitamins to buy
elsewhere.

~~~
cgriswald
It's not just fakes.

I bought a new, high-end, fulfilled-by-amazon kitchen aid mixer for my ex-
girlfriend. It looked legitimate, but it had clearly been re-boxed at some
point, was missing parts, and had grease all over it. IIRC, it wasn't sealed
in a normal way either.

Amazon accepted our return, and like you I just went straight to the
manufacturer to make the purchase again.

~~~
brazzledazzle
What is Amazon thinking? They're slowly destroying their brand.

~~~
shawn-furyan
Not even all that slowly. Their reputation has been significantly tarnished by
this in about a year.

------
trapperkeeper79
I bought some Pokemon bracelets (yeah .. I know) for some family members. I
have a big suspicion that they are counterfeit. The boxes had asian writing on
them, and it did not seem Nintendo-like. The device itself has horrible
connectivity with the game and phones - almost unusable. I'm pretty ticked
off. As a consumer, I had no good way to verify that the device is not
counterfeit. For similar situations, I actually started to go to my local best
buy to ensure I am not getting fake stuff.

~~~
deelowe
Nothing wrong with buying pokemon bracelets. This is the sort of thing Amazon
_should_ excel at. Where else would you get that product? Instead, you're left
with a frustrating experience simply because there's no reliable mechanism for
checking the authenticity of the product and/or the reputation of the seller
prior to purchase.

------
bbrazil
I've had new several hard drives turn out to be in fact refurbished (and in
one case quickly failed).

I got refunds but nothing beyond that, even with in one case offering evidence
that this looked like deliberate fraud due to half-cleared SMART stats.

~~~
rlanday
God, I had a Seagate drive that failed a few years ago, they lost track of how
long the warranty was supposed to be (5 years) and I had to fight with them to
get them to replace it, then they sent me a refurb that had bad sectors, then
they sent me a _second_ refurb with more bad sectors after I asked for a brand
new drive…

------
dforrestwilson
Amazon itself copies its sellers and customers with imitation products
constantly. The irony should not be lost here.

~~~
ceejayoz
That's an absurd comparison. Amazon clearly brands theirs as AmazonBasics.
They don't go claiming it's an Apple charger.

~~~
kalleboo
And a some of them are even just rebranded OEM products - e.g. their long-life
rechargeable NiMHs are actual eneloops with different labels.

------
hprotagonist
not just sellers.

i purchased clearly counterfeit bicycle brakes whose bolts were mystery metal.
that's a legitimate safety issue; having a bolt shear off under braking load
is very possible, and the results are pretty catastrophic.

amazon didn't especially care.

~~~
Scoundreller
Chinesium or Shitanium?

------
bnycum
I received my first counterfeit item from Amazon two years ago this summer. It
really has put a damper on ordering from Amazon as it's happened multiple
times since. There doesn't seem to be a way to stop it as the seller will just
open a new shop and continue the process.

------
rsync
As you can imagine, we (rsync.net) buy a lot of hard drives.

We use SAS drives so, unfortunately, we can't do the "buy the cheapest
external USB drives from Frys and strip them" trick.

However, it is _very, very hard_ to buy a new hard drive on Amazon if it is
more than a year out of introduction. After a year or so, all of the "new"
drives on Amazon have widely varying SMART statistics and lifetime gauges. We
very, very regularly get entire batches of "new" drives with thousands of
hours of use on them.

I would really like to name and shame specific sellers but I am traveling now
and can't dive into old email threads. I keep meaning to do a blog post, etc.

In egregious cases, we return/refund. Other times, if we get a big batch with
sub-10k hours on them and they all pass our very strict burn-in process, we
use them.

It's actually quite difficult to buy a _genuinely new_ 4TB enterprise drive
right now and in 6 months that will begin to be the case with 6-8TB drives,
etc.

~~~
nommm-nommm
This may be a really ignorant question but can I ask why you continue to use
Amazon to source hard drives then? Is there really no other place to buy hard
drives? If you are a bulk buyer I would think you'd be able to buy directly
from the manufacturer or something.

~~~
rsync
We continue to buy drives on amazon because of extremely fast and easy
sourcing, checkout, and return policy.

Basically the same reason everyone uses amazon, for everything.

If we get a really wacko batch, the return is very, very simple.

The practice of selling "new pulls" (supposedly new drives that are removed
from new servers by end users that wanted different drives installed all
along) is rampant everywhere - not just at Amazon. The problem is that a lot
of "pulls that are not new at all and are actually just used drives" drift
into that channel. And, of course, all of them are sold as "brand new".

~~~
nommm-nommm
Do you think you are in danger of being banned from Amazon for too many
returns? They have been known to do that to other buyers.

------
jacquesm
So here is my short version of this: I got burned like this (twice!) and have
stopped ordering on Amazon completely even though I got refunded both times.

Amazon excels in short term thinking on this subject, I wonder how long it
will take them before the coin drops.

------
mnm1
Then Amazon closes your account for trying to return this garbage they
illegally sold. Short of million dollar fines for every incident, this will
never change. I doubt Amazon is even trying to fix this. It's so much easier
to shut down the people that complain.

~~~
ticviking
This is why I've largely stopped buying physical stuff from them.

------
dang
We invited exolymph to repost this since it's new reporting based on a recent
HN thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924546](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924546).

------
cmrdporcupine
Quality control in their catalog has gone down generally. It used to be if you
searched for something Amazon was almost always the best deal. Now it's a wild
west of people just throwing prices against the wall and seeing what sticks.

The worst is it's actually getting harder to filter things to make it return
only things that are actually sold by Amazon itself to avoid scammers. At
least in Canada it seems they've removed options to filter it down to Amazon
as the seller. Basically have to guess-work it by filtering it to "prime" or
"free shipping."

------
empath75
This kind of thing is why I won't buy amazon stock even though I think aws is
going to take over the world. I want to own stock in a cloud platform not a
scam machine.

~~~
bamboozled
I'd probably put my money on GCE in the long run ;)

------
mtreis86
Counterfeiting is an old problem. Straight razors were being counterfeited in
the 1800's. They had a number of interesting patterns to counter it. Stamping
of the company logo could be changed regularly. Certain groups were the only
ones allowed to sell under specific companies. Some razors (GW Pipes for
instance) were so well made that counterfeits were fairly obvious. But, some
counterfeits were just about as well made as the real product. This is still
an issue with those razors, as so many thousands of counterfeits were
produced, that determining the authenticity is quite a process.

To link this back in to the original comment, I bought what was clearly a
counterfeited Spyderco directly from amazon. They didn't seem to care, but did
refund me. (The knife sharpened extremely easily - VG10 is a tough stringy
steel that takes more than normal effort to hone)

I won't buy new knives from anyone but the manufacturer anymore.

Edit for clarity: Most fakes were unstamped or generic Solingen/Sheffield
stamps. Most branded razors pre1900 are authentic. Only a percent or two of
those produced were fake. Still makes authentication difficult. And to make it
even weirder, some fakes were actually better made than the brand they were
being sold as!

------
greenwalls
The scary part of this problem is buying medications or things you ingest. I
no longer buy any kind of food or health products on Amazon because I worry
they may be fake.

Buying fake food and health products is dangerous.

I don't buy pet food from Amazon either for the same reason.

------
0xcde4c3db
Is this a big opportunity for a class-action lawsuit by sellers whose
reputations were damaged by Amazon fulfilling their orders with counterfeit
goods, or is there some kind of genuinely binding "shit happens" clause in the
FBA contract?

~~~
nommm-nommm
Cant, Amazon has forced arbitration with their sellers.

------
grandalf
Amazon makes massive profit from counterfeits. I've been the unwitting
purchaser of several counterfeit products and it's rarely worth the hassle of
returning them.

I just realized the other day that some wifi cameras I purchased in 2010 are
knock offs!

~~~
Neliquat
Its worth the hassle if you care about the next guy.

------
cauterized
Solution: take your money elsewhere. It's not even that difficult or
inconvenient.

~~~
cookiecaper
Yep. While Amazon is certainly the 800-pound gorilla in online retail, they,
unlike Google, have massive, serious brick-and-mortar competitors who are
capable and very jealous of the online retail market (Walmart especially).
Many of these are now offering free 2-day shipping, which was what really gave
Amazon a huge edge vs. all other online retailers.

As usual in retail, there are a lot of resourceful people gunning for Amazon.
I'm optimistic that we won't have another Google-like situation for the long-
term here.

------
throaway2137582
Throwaway for various reasons.

Amazon seller / vendor here with over $5MM in annual sales.

We sell to both Amazon directly and fulfill via FBA when PO's are delayed due
to their archaic purchasing system.

Let me tell you guys what the real problem is, you ready for it? CHINA

When Bezos opened up the platform to Chinese sellers in 2015, they FLOODED the
market with not only counterfeit items but straight illegal business practices
(the notion of piggybacking on listings and selling an item for 50-90% less
than normal and never actually shipping a product until they get banned. Rinse
and repeat).

The other side of the problem is the American consumer: I want it fast and for
as cheap as possible. Some of the _worst_ customers are in the US; they "rent"
products and return them used and incomplete before the 30-day return window.
Even worse, during Q4 when Amazon gives them 90-days to rent something for
free. The American consumer is a big part of the problem and Bezos and friends
simply know how to take advantage of this and bump up their bottom line for
shareholders.

Amazon DOES NOT CARE because they take fees on each purchase sold by the
Chinese trolls.

And like someone previously stated, before a major tier-1 brand gets burned
hard, nothing will change.

Apple doesn't sell to Amazon, they don't need to. They have their own channels
which are incredibly successful.

The small brands suffer and they suffer simply and purely because of the
Chinese.

Most (>95%) Chinese sellers are cancer to the platform. But the consumer is
seldom damaged because of Amazon's (still great) customer service.

Get rid of the Chinese and most of this will be resolved. Joe Blow isn't
counterfeiting products and selling them on Amazon. At least 9/10 times.

The solution is two-fold:

1) Severely limit anyone without a legitimate US-based company (registered
entity, taxed, EIN, etc) to sell on Amazon. Further, require bonds, throttle
traffic, limit the number of ASINs "new sellers" can list on, initiate tariffs
for non-US sellers (government can only do this).

2\. Consumers simply need education that buying on Amazon today is a different
game. Their risk is high and the reward low. PR and articles like this help
but more consumers need to educate themselves on what is happening. But this
is not easy - when you want the cheapest possible price, you're going to the
new Amazon Bazaar.

So the mindset of the American consumer is flawed and Amazon plays into this
beautifully. They're not stupid and they know exactly what's going on.

There are many technical comments here and they are all righteous. But the
problem is a very top-level problem. It is simply the Chinese. Period.

Limit the Chinese and Amazon will be the Amazon of old.

Chinese (or any non-US) sellers should absolutely NOT be allowed to sell
anything on Amazon.com. They don't pay income tax and this is simply another
loophole Amazon has found in their domination of cheap e-commerce.

This doesn't happen anywhere else in the world. If you sell a product in
Europe, you're on the hook for VAT, import taxes, etc.

Not the case in the US of A.

Big systemwide changes are needed.

As an aside: Shit will definitely hit the fan soon and Amazon will start to
feel it. But it will take time. Their brand is already suffering due to this
counterfeiting mess and it's not getting any better. As someone who used to
buy everything on Amazon, I don't buy much anymore. I'd rather go to the
brand's site and purchase directly or a brick and mortar.

~~~
exolymph
Hey there, I'm the author of this article. If you are willing to talk about
your experience — it can be off-the-record if you want — please email me:
smann@inc.com

~~~
throwaywgsid
Hopefully a sick write-up comes outta this!

------
hackuser
The author of the article in a prior HN discussion on this issue:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13928322](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13928322)

------
Pxtl
Amazon is now just AliExpress but with faster shipping and higher prices.

------
Sephr
I was recently trying to buy AKG K712 headphones on Amazon last week and many
of the units sold as "New" and fulfilled by Amazon were actually used or
refurbished. I literally went through 4 different units from different FBA
merchants before I gave up and bought it on the official Harmon audio store
instead.

One-day delivery is nice, but I'd rather wait a couple weeks and pay extra if
it means getting an authentic unit.

------
losteverything
Although not the point of the article, I find it upsetting that someone could
link my HN comments to an article, as was done here to another HNer.

~~~
justinpombrio
Really? They're pretty clearly public. Would you be upset if someone (who
didn't know you personally) linked a friend of theirs to your comment? How
about a radio broadcaster announcing "I saw a comment on Hacker News
yesterday... here, let me read it to you..."? (Trying to pin down exactly what
bothers you.)

Or is it that news articles seem official, while HN comments are off-the-cuff?
It _does_ seem strange to me that journalists treat internet comments and
tweets as worthy of publication, but it seems to be a well established
practice now...

~~~
losteverything
The latter.

I don't post on FB because it's me. But I am not cautious on HN and write more
freely. I always knew it could get in the public but once I saw this article I
knew it could - did - happen.

------
sitkack
I bough a counterfeit copy of Horowitz and Hill's, "The Art Of Electronics". I
didn't realize a) I bought from a 3rd party b) that it was counterfeit until
outside of the 30 day window? I called Amazon about it, asking for a refund
and they were pretty flat about the "No, we won't take it back, you have to
talk to the seller."

~~~
Finnucane
A counterfeit Horowitz and Hill? Is nothing sacred?

But srsly, I was just eyeing the new third edition. Thanks for the warning!

~~~
sitkack
Huge warning on their homepage now,
[http://artofelectronics.net/](http://artofelectronics.net/) I saved $20 and
got a totally poop copy.

Amazon even shows that I purchased this version, [https://www.amazon.com/Art-
Electronics-Paul-Horowitz/dp/0521...](https://www.amazon.com/Art-Electronics-
Paul-Horowitz/dp/0521809266) for this price, but mine was sloppy copy.

------
lexalizer
This is starting to be a big problem for me. The time I lose figuring out if a
seller is listing counterfeit products or not(not always possible), is costing
me too much. I don't think Amazon Prime is worth it anymore. The risk of
paying for a fake, then having to spend time returning, for every single
product that I buy is just too much.

------
animex
Not a surprising response from a company who itself participates in knocking
off it's own customer's bestsellers.

------
syphilis2
Not necessarily counterfeit, but I purchased paints off of Amazon within the
last year and the paints that arrived were expired. Amazon had no problem
giving me a refund, but I suspect many people just buy the product and don't
care, which is fine for them but makes it difficult for me to buy quality
items from Amazon.

------
Steeeve
Interesting as this article is trending, so is the fact that they will be
collecting sales tax nationwide starting 4/1\. I wonder if this is going to
start a bit of a resurgence of specialty sites.

------
norea-armozel
More often than not I'm trying to buy things not on Amazon anymore. Like my
most recent (and expense) purchase was a telescope from Orion. I just don't
trust Amazon to vet their sellers. If they can't be bothered to make sure
what's sold is the real thing then I'm not going to buy from them. It might
cost me a bit more in the retail price but at least when I buy from decent
online stores or reputable bricks and mortars I know I'm getting what I
expected to buy (even if it's not top of the line).

------
jinushaun
I've pretty much learned to buy nothing of value from Amazon any more. Got
burned too many times. Read the reviews! This problem is endemic! People are
buying new items and either getting used or wrong items. The site has gone to
shit since they moved to rely heavily on affiliates.

I now buy direct from manufacturer or brick and mortar.

~~~
Arizhel
>I now buy direct from manufacturer or brick and mortar.

Is this really necessary though? Lots of manufacturers don't sell directly to
the public anyway, and more importantly, Amazon is not the only internet
retailer out there. There's tons of them. It seems like it's really better, in
fact, if Amazon goes belly-up and we get more competition and more strong
internet retailers to choose from, instead of having one giant one dominating
everything.

Just one anecdote: my (now-ex) wife really liked some kind of sea salt from
Sardinia. (Yeah, I know, how different is sea salt from Sardinia from sea salt
from any place else?) Anyway, she uses a lot of salt, relatively, and we had
moved so she couldn't buy it from her regular little Italian market, so I
looked online. Amazon had it, but it was rather expensive per jar, and that
was from some 3rd party seller. (This was probably around 3 years ago, before
Amazon really went down the tubes.) So I did some Googling and Froogling, and
found a website that sold nothing but imported Italian foods, and a lot of it.
I bought a couple cases of this salt (both fine and coarse grain) for dirt-
cheap prices, less than half the price on Amazon, and much cheaper than she
used to get it for locally. She also added in a bunch of other items that were
also very cheap because this retailer was the importer and was cutting out
middlemen and not having to pay for an expensive storefront. To me, this
exemplifies what internet shopping should be like: specialty retailers that
cut out unnecessary middlemen, have excellent selection, and don't have all
the problems that B&M stores have (location, limited hours, having to travel
there, high rents, etc.), and are able to pass these savings to end-users.
Amazon, by contrast, seems to exemplify the worst of capitalism: one single
company able to take advantage of efficiencies of scale and brand-name
recognition in order to capture the majority of the market, not specializing
in anything, and providing a mediocre-to-bad experience overall, but no one
else being able to compete because the barrier to entry is too high.

------
woodandsteel
I am guessing one reason for the FBA program is it allows them to scale up
their logistics operation larger than it would otherwise be, and that helps
them lower the cost per item and out-compete other companies.

Remember, Amazon's long-term goal is to take over the world, and it needs to
do all sorts of things to get there.

------
97s
We canceled prime for this very problem.

~~~
lotsofpulp
I also canceled my prime due to this and them intentionally making it hard to
purchase only ships and sold by Amazon.com items. That and commingling their
inventory means I have more to worry about, and I'd rather just use
Costco/Target/Walmart/Apple for whatever I need, or just go straight to
manufacturer's website.

~~~
97s
Yep. Yesterday my wife asked me to order something off amazon for her. I
ordered it off Target. Amazon is going to eventually have to fix this issue.

~~~
Arizhel
No, they really don't have to fix this issue at all. Has Sears fixed their
issues? Has Yahoo! fixed their issues? Did Circuit City fix their issues? Is
h.h.gregg going to fix their issues?

~~~
97s
I like this reply.

------
dkarapetyan
Isn't the obvious solution to have some kind of registration process? Or am I
missing something?

If I'm publishing a book then anyone else that wants to sell that book in
large quantities must register with me and get my sign-off. Large quantities
being somewhat vaguely defined.

------
xmichael99
If I get one more bullshit Apple magsafe charger I am cancelling my amazon
account.

~~~
nommm-nommm
I doubt you'll be able to find an authentic one on Amazon. Order directly from
Apple.

------
faragon
I guess Amazon has a software problem: when sorting by price instead of
"relevance", both off-topic items and scammer/counterfeit stuff appear. Hint:
filter novel sellers selling below market price.

------
nkrisc
I've been considering a $100 dashcam on Amazon. I think I'll just buy it
somewhere else now. I have no idea what the actual risk is of receiving a fake
but I'd rather not find out.

------
jakasto
I used to regularly buy from Amazon but stopped a while back. The final straw
was some razor blades that were noticeably duller and inferior to previous
units of the same product.

------
intrasight
At their growth rate, they can afford to have a small fraction of counterfeit
items. The costs to Amazon are minuscule. However, they could and should do
more to prevent it.

------
rdudek
Is this all based on chance at this point? Im looking to buy a set of
headphones, Beyerdynamics DT-990. How should I buy them to make sure they're
not counterfeit?

------
ikeboy
One quibble: anyone can sign up for vendor express and sell to Amazon
directly, even if they aren't the manufacturer.

------
qj4714
Why can't Amazon withhold payment from these sellers? They should have all the
leverage

------
godzulu
When Bezos gets the same treatment or worse than Kim dotcom, I'll be
interested...until then, beware.

------
johansch
I feel like there's so much idiocy going on with Amazon sites. How can such a
successful company make something so idiotic such as the current Amazon.com?
It's beyond belief.

People visiting Amazon.com intending to buy various items:

a) want the shipment and customer care to be handled by Amazon. (Since they
have showed that they area really good at that kind of thing)

b) want to have the goods vetted for basic safety etc etc.

Basically, Amazon needs to rewind/rebrand/remove its second-supplier Bazaar
style listings from its main index.

Maybe the could display a two column search result page? Most people have wide
screens now. Amazon-handled to the left, rest of the world to the right.

~~~
danjayh
A lot of the bazaar style stuff _is_ handled by Amazon through the Fulfilled
by Amazon (FBA) program. For instance, this rather nice ratcheting wrench set:

[https://smile.amazon.com/GearWrench-Metric-Flex-Head-
Combina...](https://smile.amazon.com/GearWrench-Metric-Flex-Head-Combination-
Ratcheting/dp/B0002U2ODE/)

is fulfilled by Amazon.com, but sold by tooldeals. Tooldeals ships the product
to an Amazon warehouse, and Amazon handles all of the selling and logistics.

If Amazon were to eliminate the FBA program, their vast product selection
would be greatly curtailed.

~~~
evilduck
But is a vast product selection valuable if everything is assumed to be
counterfeit junk?

------
senior_james
It's a real problem. I have been buying and selling used products from Amazon
to other marketplaces for the last 8 years. I used to get counterfeits once a
month. Now, I get them 3 or 4 times a week.

Even when I bring it to Amazon's attention, I only get my money back half the
time. When I tried to file a claim with my credit card company, my buying
account was temporarily banned until I paid back the money (for counterfeit
goods that I actually got inspected by the manufacturer and had the paperwork
to prove it). The big problem is that Amazon will only give you your money
back if you can prove it. It can sometimes take 5 months to get it actually
inspected (if you are lucky) and by that time, you are well past the time to
return it.

The worst part is that it nearly destroyed my business. I got two cease-and-
desists in 8 months because I wasn't able to catch all of the counterfeits in
time. Myself and my staff are well versed in catching these counterfeits, but
it's still a very difficult task.

I had to hire an attorney, and I sent all of the sellers' info to the attorney
of the manufacturer. I was lucky it ended here.

To this day, I still can't sign up with an Amazon seller account because 5
years ago, a single customer complained about an item I sold them. I returned
their money promptly and even paid for a return shipping label. Amazon support
didn't care. My account was closed, and I was out $500, because the buyer
never sent it back to me. They no longer will even talk to me about it (all
emails go into a black hole as if I never sent them) and I can't even manage
another person/companies account without getting it permanently banned.

This is why it's so dangerous to allow a few companies to control so much of
the Internet. They can potentially ban you from even making a living and there
is really no appeals process. At the time, they had a few automated prompts
that claim it's an 'appeals process', but I could tell it was just a bot.

I still don't understand how so many of these sellers can sell counterfeits,
which is illegal in the US, and make multiple accounts, with almost no issues.

It has to be some sort of collusion with employees. It really doesn't make any
other sense.

------
jaleel28
As an aside, there is a Chrome extension that can filter out scammy sellers
plaguing the site lately - [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/amazon-
shop-safe/g...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/amazon-shop-
safe/gbgkdkbafkopcojbipbkidgihakcopce)

~~~
Arizhel
Won't that basically just cause amazon.com to look like a blank page?

------
aisofteng
You know those electronics stores littered around Manhattan that sell flip
cell phones for like $10, calling cards, and $15 digital cameras that nobody
shops at because it's so obvious what you're getting?

Why does it seem like people lose their sense online? If you're not buying
from the manufacturer or a seller you're familiar with, do some research.

And don't buy from anywhere outside the Western world. The rest of the world
is rife with liars and counterfeiters. There are still some here, but they are
much fewer and are almost always trivial to distinguish.

~~~
p49k
I was under the impression that items "Sold and shipped by Amazon" were
actually purchased by Amazon as well, which would imply quality control (for
example, I don't expect Amazon to buy Apple products from anyone other than
Apple). I don't think that's an unreasonable expectation, yet I learned from
this thread that it's not the case.

