Counterfeits on Amazon cost Warren bird feeder business $1.5M(wpri.com)
wpri.com
Counterfeits on Amazon cost Warren bird feeder business $1.5M
https://www.wpri.com/news/call-12-for-action/counterfeits-on-amazon-cost-warren-bird-feeder-business-1-5m/
251 comments
This also makes me laugh out loud.
If Amazon gave two craps about some of this stuff it would be cut WAY back.
For a few years at least every Apple branded product on amazon I bought was 100% fake - lazy fakes too. I ended up having to buy from Apple directly to get something legit. You are telling me brands haven't complained about this? I find that totally hard to believe.
The crap amazon sells is going to bring them down.
I've got used stuff sold as new (complete with debries from previous owner).
If they cared they would.
Have sellers post $1,000 bond to sell, scaled up based on sales volume.
Enforce clear fraud issues with account bans and forfeit the deposit (ie, the whole changed 5 star listing selling a totally different product).
Segregate inventory by seller, and enforce consequences on seller for product quality issues.
Have a QC team sample 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 100,000 items and 1 item per seller each year. If it claims USB 3- test to spec, claims waterproof test to spec, claims safe for kids - test for lead. Whoever does this will win in long run. Who wants lead in the product they give to their kids.
This reputation issue could bleed into AWS. Why trust a company that CANNOT get control over its marketplace. The fakes are horrible.
If Amazon gave two craps about some of this stuff it would be cut WAY back.
For a few years at least every Apple branded product on amazon I bought was 100% fake - lazy fakes too. I ended up having to buy from Apple directly to get something legit. You are telling me brands haven't complained about this? I find that totally hard to believe.
The crap amazon sells is going to bring them down.
I've got used stuff sold as new (complete with debries from previous owner).
If they cared they would.
Have sellers post $1,000 bond to sell, scaled up based on sales volume.
Enforce clear fraud issues with account bans and forfeit the deposit (ie, the whole changed 5 star listing selling a totally different product).
Segregate inventory by seller, and enforce consequences on seller for product quality issues.
Have a QC team sample 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 100,000 items and 1 item per seller each year. If it claims USB 3- test to spec, claims waterproof test to spec, claims safe for kids - test for lead. Whoever does this will win in long run. Who wants lead in the product they give to their kids.
This reputation issue could bleed into AWS. Why trust a company that CANNOT get control over its marketplace. The fakes are horrible.
The only way Amazon is going to fix it is if it costs more to leave it as a problem than it will cost to fix it.
Let's hope that Amazon recognizes the seriousness of this problem before it manifests itself financially. By then it could be too late. If we think about this as a "reputational security" problem then Amazon is already vulnerable. If the idea that buying from Amazon means you will get a fake gains traction--either organically or through an information campaign by a competitor--then it seems likely that their sales will decline. And, once their reputation is damaged in this way it will be difficult to repair.
I'm suggesting that reputation has a delayed effect on sales, it may not have a significant financial impact until the reputational attack hits a certain threshold; at which point that impact could be very significant. It's easy to imagine the hyberbolic, clickbait articles that might arise: "The Amazon Fake Crisis: What you need to know" or "Amazon fakes: Read this before you buy another thing on Amazon" (or better clickbait headlines than I can write but you get the idea).
I'm suggesting that reputation has a delayed effect on sales, it may not have a significant financial impact until the reputational attack hits a certain threshold; at which point that impact could be very significant. It's easy to imagine the hyberbolic, clickbait articles that might arise: "The Amazon Fake Crisis: What you need to know" or "Amazon fakes: Read this before you buy another thing on Amazon" (or better clickbait headlines than I can write but you get the idea).
If Amazon retail imploded, it would affect their revenue greatly, but not their profitability. 75% of their profit comes from AWS.
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Have sellers post $1,000 bond to sell, scaled up based on sales volume.
This is interesting. I've looked over various pages, starting at https://services.amazon.com/fulfillment-by-amazon/pricing.ht... and I can't find anything where FBA stores need to do anything like this (post bond).
Compare this to Chinese stores tmall.com (operated by Alibaba) and jd.com. Both tmall.com and jd.com are focused on trying to ensure that customers can trust the authenticity of their products and similarly can host 3rd party stores. Their corresponding webpages say:
https://about.tmall.com/tmall/fee_schedule
This one-time fee (frozen on Merchant's Alipay account) is used as collateral in the case of any damages incurred by Tmall.com or any customer, unfrozen upon termination of the Tmall.com Service Agreement.
Correspondingly, for jd.com, I couldn't find a similar official company URL, but I found this one.
https://www.tmogroup.asia/how-to-sell-using-jd-com/
Although companies who are registered inside mainland China are eligible to sell on the JD Marketplace platform, it is important to take into account the costs associated with operating a store. Roughly the costs can be divided into the security deposit, service see, and commission.
I am surprised that to date, Amazon has not done something similar to weed out all the bad sellers.
This is interesting. I've looked over various pages, starting at https://services.amazon.com/fulfillment-by-amazon/pricing.ht... and I can't find anything where FBA stores need to do anything like this (post bond).
Compare this to Chinese stores tmall.com (operated by Alibaba) and jd.com. Both tmall.com and jd.com are focused on trying to ensure that customers can trust the authenticity of their products and similarly can host 3rd party stores. Their corresponding webpages say:
https://about.tmall.com/tmall/fee_schedule
This one-time fee (frozen on Merchant's Alipay account) is used as collateral in the case of any damages incurred by Tmall.com or any customer, unfrozen upon termination of the Tmall.com Service Agreement.
- Flagship Store, Franchise Store:™100,000RMB; ® 50,000RMB
- Specialty Store: ™ 150,000RMB; ®: 100,000RMB
- Specialty Categories:
Flagship Store of a multi-brand marketplace - 150,000RMB
Specialty stores sell merchandises produced outside of Mainland China and the trademarks of those merchandises are not registered in China(Fruit, import products, etc) - 150,000RMB
"Book/Audiovisual" primary category operators: Flagship store and franchise store - 50,000RMB; Specialty store - 100,000RMB
"Service" and "E-tickets" primary category operators - 10,000RMB
"Online Gaming and QQ", "Mobile Fees", and "Travel" primary category operators - 10,000RMB
"Medicine/Medical Service" primary category merchants - 300,000RMB
"Cars and Car accessories" and below 1st class "New and Used Cars" primary category merchants - 100,000RMB
For information on first-class categories, please consult: //a.taobao.com/detail/2011/11/10/533509/1.php
Correspondingly, for jd.com, I couldn't find a similar official company URL, but I found this one.
https://www.tmogroup.asia/how-to-sell-using-jd-com/
Although companies who are registered inside mainland China are eligible to sell on the JD Marketplace platform, it is important to take into account the costs associated with operating a store. Roughly the costs can be divided into the security deposit, service see, and commission.
First, the security deposit ranges between 10.000 and 100.000 RMB depending on the product category. This deposit is refundable if you decided to leave the JD Marketplace.
Second, the service fee is a monthly payment between 500 and 1.000 RMB depending on the chosen product category.
Lastly, JD will charge a commission based on your sales. This commission ranges between 1% and 8% varying with the shop type and product category.
I am surprised that to date, Amazon has not done something similar to weed out all the bad sellers.
It seems to be less of an issue in Germany. But it is bad enough that for certain products I insist on sold and shipped by Amazon. Do, my impression is that over here it is more like a marketplace problem, for now. Also, customer service for marketplace orders is just crap.
Insofar as I've understood, buying products that are sold and shipped by Amazon doesn't protect you anymore because inventories are no longer segregated.
That would be bad for all kind of reasons, I don't like that kind of lack of transparency.
Not would. Is. Speaking personally I haven't bought anything from Amazon for that reason.
It may be related to the german legal concept of „Mitstörerhaftung“ which basically means that anyone who is contributing to a rights violation (like selling counterfeit goods) is liable for this. This can be a bit absurd (a shipping company transporting a sealed container which contains counterfeit goods they know nothing of is liable to at least stop doing so), but it may keep amazon on it‘s toes.
This strikes me as very idealistic.
They are selling more than double the amount of stuff they were 5 years ago, and are over half of US ecommerece. You might care about getting a fake charger, but 90% of people don't give a crap if it's 30% cheaper than the real thing and magically appears at their house the next day.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/revenu...
I think AWS and retail/AFT are basically two different companies. I don't think what happens in one reflects on or affects the other, at all.
They are selling more than double the amount of stuff they were 5 years ago, and are over half of US ecommerece. You might care about getting a fake charger, but 90% of people don't give a crap if it's 30% cheaper than the real thing and magically appears at their house the next day.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/revenu...
I think AWS and retail/AFT are basically two different companies. I don't think what happens in one reflects on or affects the other, at all.
You’re not getting a fake for 30% off... because then it is not a fake.. that’s just some off brand crap
It’s a fake when you get a counterfeit item that is sold to you at full price under the listing for the real thing. I think most people that seek out a particular brand and then find out it is a fake are pretty pissed off.
It’s a fake when you get a counterfeit item that is sold to you at full price under the listing for the real thing. I think most people that seek out a particular brand and then find out it is a fake are pretty pissed off.
> but 90% of people don't give a crap if it's 30% cheaper than the real thing and magically appears at their house the next day
...until it burns their house down.
...until it burns their house down.
People do care about fake chargers when they make their phone explode or their house burn down.
and fake batteries! - for laptops, cameras and cell phones - I have seen some really bad stuff come from the smiling boxes - and read nightmares from others.
It's to the point that I do not buy any batteries from Amazon and tell others to be wary, fire to save a few bucks is not worth it.
Sometimes it's easy to spot knockoffs, other times the sellers have the name of the OEM as their store it seems - and it's crazy bad.
It's to the point that I do not buy any batteries from Amazon and tell others to be wary, fire to save a few bucks is not worth it.
Sometimes it's easy to spot knockoffs, other times the sellers have the name of the OEM as their store it seems - and it's crazy bad.
Genuine Samsung premium phones can do that too.
Just saying...
Just saying...
Sometimes yes, but if it happens there will be a very public recall, and they will replace the device for free. A crappy charger someone bulk- ordered white-label is not going to have either of those things.
Replacing a phone isn't going to help someone who's house burned down
You can plausibly sue Samsung for it. Does AMZ have the same accountability?
When Samsung phones had a well publicized issue. Airlines prohibited their phones and called them out by name before every flight. You bet that's going to encourage them to never make that mistake again.
I bought a product on Amazon this Christmas that was completely fake. It was "sold by Amazon" but didn't even have the same label as the brand I had ordered. I complained to Amazon and they just gave me a refund without requiring that I return the product (I ended up just throwing it out).
I suspect that they knew the inventory was tainted but figured the cost of dealing with noisy customers like me is less than the amount of money they make selling a cheaply made ripoff of a $15 product.
I suspect that they knew the inventory was tainted but figured the cost of dealing with noisy customers like me is less than the amount of money they make selling a cheaply made ripoff of a $15 product.
If multiple suppliers ship same product to Amazon warehouses Amazon will ship closest one to buyer regardless who supplied it. In fact if the seller requests their goods back they won't get the same ones they sent to Amazon - they are mixed together with others sharing ASIN
There must have been an Amazon marketplace seller using same listing but shipping fakes. Or Amazon got duped.
There must have been an Amazon marketplace seller using same listing but shipping fakes. Or Amazon got duped.
What bothers me most is the fake was incredibly lazy. It came in a plain white box with the brand I ordered stamped on one corner. The product inside looked completely different and was from a "brand" that I can't find sold on any legitimate site. I suspect it didn't even include a functioning battery, I couldn't get it to hold a charge for more than a few seconds.
If Amazon got "duped" by this they could have gotten duped just as easily by a guy selling a box of old newspapers. I don't understand how it's not fraud to label it as "Sold by Amazon" when they don't have the slightest idea what they're shipping to me.
If Amazon got "duped" by this they could have gotten duped just as easily by a guy selling a box of old newspapers. I don't understand how it's not fraud to label it as "Sold by Amazon" when they don't have the slightest idea what they're shipping to me.
Please tell us the product name so we are aware.
This is very common. For example I was recently shopping for a popular brand of silverware and it was crystal clear from reviews that lots of people were getting fakes - some terrible, some subtle, like rusting after a couple washes.
The product name won't help. This could happen with almost any item Amazon sells because of how they commingle inventory.
So if you are selling the absolute lowest-quality stuff, you may increase the quality of your inventory by simply giving it to amazon and request them back? Now I sympathize with Amazon, knowing how shady some merchants could be.
If it's true that they do not track products by suppliers, this could be a scalable fraud. Send in absolute garbage and take it back/buy it to enrich your metarial.
If it's true that they do not track products by suppliers, this could be a scalable fraud. Send in absolute garbage and take it back/buy it to enrich your metarial.
What are you going to do with your "enriched" inventory? Sit on it?
Sell it on eBay as a merchant, or in a physical store.?
You can sell it on Amazon because they don't care if you send them counterfeits or stolen goods.
In that case you wouldn't bother trying to get "real" inventory back, you'd just send them the inventory and be done with it.
But you will have competition, instead, you might be able to sell it somewhere with quality standards - like a real shop - and have ticker margins given that you bought your inventory for dirt cheap and revitalized it in Amazon.
I still don't get how this commingled inventory happens. I know that Amazon has different inventory owners for FBA and AMZN stock. So technically they should be able to separate between different FBA owners, too. So at the very least AMZN and FBA inventory shouldn't be mixed.
Only explanation I can think of is returns, issues in the return reception could add FBA returns to AMZN stock. Which should trigger some kind of investigation. I don't like the fact that this stuff keeps happening as it points yo bad processes and, IMHO, some WMS issues as well.
Only explanation I can think of is returns, issues in the return reception could add FBA returns to AMZN stock. Which should trigger some kind of investigation. I don't like the fact that this stuff keeps happening as it points yo bad processes and, IMHO, some WMS issues as well.
It's to save on shipping. They got quite a bit of warehouse nowadays. They just share all the same inventory, thus have to move less stock in between warehouse and you get your stuff faster. It fail when their FBA inventory is fake though, and they weirdly don't care enough about it to stop doing that. I guess the cost of refunding theses cases is less than the cost of shipping.
I buy so much stuff on amazon, and have never had a fake anything. Can you give more detail? I’d love to know at least what kind of product it was.
We bought a PlayStation 3 controller on Amazon many years back. It was a pretty good fake, the buttons felt slightly different, but we thought it is just a different production run. After six months or so, Sony disabled this range of counterfeits (IIRC because the built-in battery was a fire hazard). So, we had a useless controller.
Luckily, we got a refund.
Luckily, we got a refund.
Just over Christmas I heard a story from my Aunt who had their basement flooded because of a fake replacement water filter she bought on Amazon. The entire filter unit exploded and water just poured out of the pipe.
It's a lot worse. I bought an RCA minifridge, "sold by amazon." 10 months later the compressor starts clicking. I check the "RCA" manual - it's clearly written by a non-native speaker in broken engrish. Nor does RCA make this model apparently. The listing now has the same fridge with a different logo on it.
I complain to Amazon that it's counterfeit, and need a refund despite it being 10 months later. I ship it back, get a refund less than purchase price. They charged me a restocking fee. They're now going to sell it used.
They know it's fake - they knowingly sell fake things.
I just use walmart.com now. I spent ~80k on Amazon over the last decade, and they will never get another penny from me, even if they fix this. My two brothers stopped using amazon too. And my wife. Walmart has most things Amazon does, as a first seller. Their 3rd party sellers are the same as amazon - just less of them. Because walmart actually investigates and kicks people off for selling fakes. Amazon literally knowingly sells fakes themselves. Prices are same or less. If I want aliexpress, I'll buy there. But I don't.
I complain to Amazon that it's counterfeit, and need a refund despite it being 10 months later. I ship it back, get a refund less than purchase price. They charged me a restocking fee. They're now going to sell it used.
They know it's fake - they knowingly sell fake things.
I just use walmart.com now. I spent ~80k on Amazon over the last decade, and they will never get another penny from me, even if they fix this. My two brothers stopped using amazon too. And my wife. Walmart has most things Amazon does, as a first seller. Their 3rd party sellers are the same as amazon - just less of them. Because walmart actually investigates and kicks people off for selling fakes. Amazon literally knowingly sells fakes themselves. Prices are same or less. If I want aliexpress, I'll buy there. But I don't.
On that one I'd suspect RCA, actually. They've become a meaningless sticker on so much generic Chinese lowest-bidder trash that I would not be surprised if they'd lost track of several SKUs they supposedly sell.
I tried to file a claim about a fraudulent purchase (filing complaints is intentionally obscure and arduous on Amazon) I made and I got an email back that told me I didn't have a claim because I wasn't a seller. So they do enforce a policy, their policy is to make money on whatever legal grey area they can get away with.
This is the thing about corporate statements.
Amazon has a hundred thousand employees? If they have 5 people working on this then it's absolutely true that "[their] employees work hard every day to help ensure all products offered in [their] store are safe and authentic".
Employees working on something has weight when you have a handful of employees total. You can measure the effort expended as a whole number percentage of the overall budget. When you've invested almost nothing as a percentage of your entire labor budget, it's just lying with facts.
Amazon has a hundred thousand employees? If they have 5 people working on this then it's absolutely true that "[their] employees work hard every day to help ensure all products offered in [their] store are safe and authentic".
Employees working on something has weight when you have a handful of employees total. You can measure the effort expended as a whole number percentage of the overall budget. When you've invested almost nothing as a percentage of your entire labor budget, it's just lying with facts.
I am surprised Amazon has not run into Food safety issues / lawsuits by now.
As frequently as I've seen BBQ sauce in glass containers, for instance, 1 starred as shattered on delivery, I am too. To be fair, these items should not have been placed within FBA in the first place, according to "policy". Inbound employees are supposed to filter products for policy violations (specifically in this instance liquid in glass containers over 4ozs). Not the employees fault..?, they are overwhelmed.
Just 1 of many examples we run into as a fulfillment service.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Just 1 of many examples we run into as a fulfillment service.
Merry Christmas everyone!
>As frequently as I've seen BBQ sauce in glass containers, for instance, 1 starred as shattered on delivery,
Last week I had a package show up with six 5lb weight plates, a book and toothpaste in the same big box.
Even if the toothpaste hadn't been crushed to the point of failing and getting everywhere, the book was completely mangled by 30 pounds of weight plates sliding around in an oversized box for God only knows how long.
I ordered some sea salt scrub earlier this year and same kinda thing, they just tossed it in an oversized box with a bunch of other stuff... by the time it got to me the lid had cracked and come off and oil/salt was all over everything.
It doesn't surprise me they do similar with food.
Last week I had a package show up with six 5lb weight plates, a book and toothpaste in the same big box.
Even if the toothpaste hadn't been crushed to the point of failing and getting everywhere, the book was completely mangled by 30 pounds of weight plates sliding around in an oversized box for God only knows how long.
I ordered some sea salt scrub earlier this year and same kinda thing, they just tossed it in an oversized box with a bunch of other stuff... by the time it got to me the lid had cracked and come off and oil/salt was all over everything.
It doesn't surprise me they do similar with food.
Hard to ship fake perishable goods via Amazon. Food fraud is way more lucrative on bigger scales.
You'd be surprised how much 3rd party grocery is sold via FBA... It's a nice income stream done correctly.
Doesnt have to be perishable. Things like Biscuits, Cereals, Nuts, Dates, ground items of various kinds etc.
Dabbled in FBA before. I stopped when I realized the game can be won by volume shipment and pricing wars. Brand registry is also a way to own your listing. Would buy a 30$ ebook if you write all the ins and outs.
The phrasing is a deviously clever way to try to foist some degree of blame on employees rather than policy.
Repeating myself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19199343
> The classic "control fraud" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_fraud strategy is to incentivise your subordinates to maximise revenues while "neglecting" to check that they aren't engaging in fraud to do it. Then you can protest your innocence when the fraud comes to light.
> The classic "control fraud" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_fraud strategy is to incentivise your subordinates to maximise revenues while "neglecting" to check that they aren't engaging in fraud to do it. Then you can protest your innocence when the fraud comes to light.
I'm glad we are all in agreement about the smell coming from that statement.
Along with counterfeits, another issue that makes shopping unpleasant is that many products are superfically different but underneath are the same thing. You can see this most clearly in a retail store when the products are side by side. Walmart might have 30 kinds of wall clocks with wood vs plastic frame, with or without Roman numerals, but the actual clock mechanism on the back is the same cheap black box. Home Depot has dozens of kitchen exhaust hoods with well-known brand names, but it looks to me like the internals (fan/filter/exhaust parts) are all made by the same company. A pharmacy gives the illusion of hundreds of different cold medicines, painkillers, and antacids, but it's the same few drugs packaged in hundreds of different ways.
I don't know the solution to this. I wish there were some way to signal when stuff is 90% to 99% identical to cut down on pointless duplicate products and/or to make comparisons easier.
I don't know the solution to this. I wish there were some way to signal when stuff is 90% to 99% identical to cut down on pointless duplicate products and/or to make comparisons easier.
Fun aside, if you buy a cheap wall clock from a big box store, you can often swap out the clock movement with a vastly superior one for very little money. A nice Seiko movement with a sweep second hand can be had for under $20.
But why would you want a nice movement on a cardboard clock? At that point you spend another few dollars for a nicer package.
But how do you that Seiko movement you're buying isn't counterfeit?
Is the cheap quartz movement that it comes with insufficiently accurate?
Accuracy is mostly fine in my experience, but the battery life is often poor and they tend to be relatively loud. I like quiet, so the noise is more than enough reason to swap the movement when easy imho.
I have a $12 Ikea clock that looks rather like a Swiss train clock (not exactly of course) and which keeps nearly perfect time and runs for over a year on one battery.
It is miles better than the $5 Ikea clock, but I see no reason to pay more since the $12 one looks good and runs perfectly well.
It is miles better than the $5 Ikea clock, but I see no reason to pay more since the $12 one looks good and runs perfectly well.
Not trying to be snarky, genuinely interested: what are the advantages of the superior movement?
It lasts forever
Reading the sales data: no tick sounds. Presumably less drift as well.
That most people do not care about the quality of the movement is why Wal-Mart has lots of shells with the same movements.
That most people do not care about the quality of the movement is why Wal-Mart has lots of shells with the same movements.
The gears are manufactured to better tolerances. This means they make a lot less noise. A cheap movement can be heard across the room, a Seiko is silent.
Because the parts fit better, there is less friction. Less of a load on the motor means the battery lasts much longer in a Seiko.
They also keep time better.
Because the parts fit better, there is less friction. Less of a load on the motor means the battery lasts much longer in a Seiko.
They also keep time better.
A great deal of their reputation is based on their ability to produce precise quartz movements, ostensibly resistant to temperature changes, etc.
>This means they make a lot less noise. A cheap movement can be heard across the room,
I laughed out loud as I can hear my alarm clock ticking 8ft away thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk quite loudly. You can actually hear it from the living room if the TV is off, perhaps I should look into something made a bit better.
I laughed out loud as I can hear my alarm clock ticking 8ft away thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk quite loudly. You can actually hear it from the living room if the TV is off, perhaps I should look into something made a bit better.
The solution is to buy local. That gives the Home Depot guy an opportunity to tell you, “you know, the internals are all the same”, and the pharmacists lady can say “the generic Tylenol/Advil is called this”.
What town do you live in where big chain store employees are knowledgeable and have worked there for longer than a few months?
I live in Canada and all the old guys working at Home Depot seem like they know their crap, although their knowledge is often dated - I get the impression they're ex-contractors.
The solution starts with manually verifying products. I'm not convinced that it's impossible for Amazon or other stores to have a quality verification system where they have people hired specifically for this purpose. Maybe even a third party could specifically do this. You don't have to do it for every single item, just do it once whenever someone wants to list a product on the platform. Whenever reviews start complain about bogus products, investigate, and if they changed the product from the last time you verified it, remove them from the platform for a period of time.
I work for a company that produces ingestible goods. Having worked for Amazon previously, I knew select brands were allowed to be “gated”, that is, only be sold by authorized resellers. Imagine my surprise when Amazon repeatedly denied us the ability to gate our brand. As a consumer, I’d like to know that an ingestible good comes from a reputable source - more so than a Coach purse. The whole experience really shot Bezos’ “customer centricity” principle in the rear for me.
Amazon could greatly improve its counterfeit issue by giving manufacturers more control over their brand. That, to me, is the root of the issue.
Amazon could greatly improve its counterfeit issue by giving manufacturers more control over their brand. That, to me, is the root of the issue.
[deleted]
That's currently what they do I'm pretty sure. It seems they'd need something more, because sellers appear to be too ingenious.
This isn't the best source, but the claims are there: https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/product-safety-and...
Only difference from what OP suggested is it doesn't seem they manually look at all initial listing. Apart from that it seems they claim having exactly the described system by OP in place.
Only difference from what OP suggested is it doesn't seem they manually look at all initial listing. Apart from that it seems they claim having exactly the described system by OP in place.
Almost every water heater sold at big box home improvement retailers is manufactured by the same company in Tennessee.
There is some truth to this sentiment. I think part of it comes from the "race to the bottom" for low prices which fosters disposable consumables (even for durable goods) and leaves you with monopolies / oligopolies after the dust settles.
There is some truth to this sentiment. I think part of it comes from the "race to the bottom" for low prices which fosters disposable consumables (even for durable goods) and leaves you with monopolies / oligopolies after the dust settles.
> A pharmacy gives the illusion of hundreds of different cold medicines, painkillers, and antacids, but it's the same few drugs packaged in hundreds of different ways.
Technically no. Event generics have different excipients and excipients give them a slightly different profile.
Technically no. Event generics have different excipients and excipients give them a slightly different profile.
I’ve compared them a few times. They rarely differ in more than a couple ingredients. Even so CVS for example sells what as far as I can tell is identical, generic cough syrup in a green or orange box depending if you prefer Delsym or Robitussin.
It's that competition that brings down prices. If there was only one unique brand per product, they'd charge much more.
This isn't about the number of brands, but about confusing marketing, which in many ways is bad for true competition, because it confuses the buyer.
What kind of confusing marketing? Clocks are decorative products, having several different designs with same mechanism isn't just logical but also market working as it should. This way you can choose the clock that fits your preference and fits into your living space.
I don't quite understand this rant - it's like complaining there's toomany different paintings to choose to put on the wall.
I don't quite understand this rant - it's like complaining there's toomany different paintings to choose to put on the wall.
An analogy would be not being able to browse by painter.
This is basically a rant against industry standardization.
More like rant against dressing standardized components a thousand different ways to make it seem there's more options than there are.
What standardization could enable, in a better world, is customizability - the ability to cheaply compose standard parts and some dressing on top to match a particular demand of an individual customer. Instead, we get common customizations prebaked and deployed on the market in a shotgun fashion. It's extremely wasteful, and a reflection of the fact that matter is too cheap these days.
What standardization could enable, in a better world, is customizability - the ability to cheaply compose standard parts and some dressing on top to match a particular demand of an individual customer. Instead, we get common customizations prebaked and deployed on the market in a shotgun fashion. It's extremely wasteful, and a reflection of the fact that matter is too cheap these days.
Amazon has caused this to itself in order to maximize its own short-term profits. In the past 1-3 years their goal has been to reduce their own inventory by shifting it to 3rd party sellers and let them deal with the overhead of inventory. This is why counterfeits and crappy products have been proliferating on Amazon and why I have started to avoid purchasing from Amazon all-together. I wonder if they realize how much damage this is costing them in reputation or if they don't care because it still results in more profit for themselves.
In a few years, Alibaba will have a better reputation than Amazon.
Based on what? No name brands, just loads and loads of direct from factory crapware and knock offs in all shapes and sizes.
Unless you only buy hand-crafted goods (do hand-crafted laptops exist?), most of what we consume is direct from factory crapware anyway. I'd rather get it straight from the factory...
Well, for a start, you can choose your supplier (yes, just like Ebay).
When it comes to electronics and plastic wares, most of the stuff on Amazon is just white label products from Alibaba suppliers. Most of the time the same stock photos are used in both the Amazon and AliExpress listings.
The stock photos are a major clue for me. As soon as I see a picture of the product badly photoshopped into some stock images, with poor copy pasted over it, then I close the tab. I don’t care how many stars or reviews it has.
> No name brands, just loads and loads of direct from factory crapware and knock offs in all shapes and sizes.
But Alibaba at least doesn't pretend to be anything else.
And, to be fair, if you know what you want, a cheap Chinese piece of crap may be just fine. A lot of my electronics lab is from Alibaba--the rest is from people like Metcal/Oki, Agilent, etc. that I paid a premium for once I knew that I would use it enough to warrant spending the money.
The problem occurs in that I used to go to Amazon when I didn't quite know exactly what I want and could browse, read some reviews, etc. I no longer do that anymore.
But Alibaba at least doesn't pretend to be anything else.
And, to be fair, if you know what you want, a cheap Chinese piece of crap may be just fine. A lot of my electronics lab is from Alibaba--the rest is from people like Metcal/Oki, Agilent, etc. that I paid a premium for once I knew that I would use it enough to warrant spending the money.
The problem occurs in that I used to go to Amazon when I didn't quite know exactly what I want and could browse, read some reviews, etc. I no longer do that anymore.
It already does for me at least
It's gotten to the point where you have to put a brand name into a search if you ever want to see traditional 'quality' manufacturers. Put a search term in now for something like 'waterproof gloves' and have a laugh at all the auto-generated names that pop up.
Likewise, the search results are optimised for sales and not discovery. Most of what you'll see is cheaper brands, lower prices and consequently worse quality.
In many ways I'm thankful for this as it's pushed me to many independant sellers own welsites that I otherwise would have been too lazy to seek out and buy from.
Likewise, the search results are optimised for sales and not discovery. Most of what you'll see is cheaper brands, lower prices and consequently worse quality.
In many ways I'm thankful for this as it's pushed me to many independant sellers own welsites that I otherwise would have been too lazy to seek out and buy from.
I don't know a whole lot about Amazon internals, but from what I've heard teams tend to be independent and, in a sense, in competition with one another.
It seems like this would create the classic tragedy of the commons situation we are seing where increased sales are chalked up as a win for some teams, but the whole company pays in negative sentiment.
It seems like this would create the classic tragedy of the commons situation we are seing where increased sales are chalked up as a win for some teams, but the whole company pays in negative sentiment.
They’re too being being customer obsessed to fix these sorts of problems, now that businesses are the customer.
I do 99% of my shopping in person. Curious where you do your online shopping now.
Cold medicine as art?
I am curious about the advice at the end:
> Torres said she encourages customers to verify the seller is legitimate before placing any orders.
How? Is there some way to verify that a seller on amazon is legitimate among the slew of fake reviews and stock mingling in warehouses?
> Torres said she encourages customers to verify the seller is legitimate before placing any orders.
How? Is there some way to verify that a seller on amazon is legitimate among the slew of fake reviews and stock mingling in warehouses?
I was just asking this to myself today when browsing safety-razor blades on Amazon. (I was not able to buy them directly from the manufacturer’s website.) When I tried to start filtering by who sells it, I just got a bunch of names that meant nothing. I eventually bought them on Walmart’s site because, I guess I trust it more? Some of the comments on Amazon had the dreaded “this has changed recently,” and the last thing I want to do is scrape my face with counterfeit razor blades.
>and stock mingling in warehouses?
That is the problem if you are getting Prime Shipping Fulfilled by amazon on a bird feeder, it does not matter which seller you buy from, Amazon will ship you the one that have that is the cheapest to get to you in 2 days or less
That is the problem if you are getting Prime Shipping Fulfilled by amazon on a bird feeder, it does not matter which seller you buy from, Amazon will ship you the one that have that is the cheapest to get to you in 2 days or less
Customers saying "this has changed recently" means little. For example, I found such reviews for a pet flea product. When I investigated further I found similar reviews both very recent and going back 4, 6 and up to 8 years. Perhaps there are random bad batches but I suspect that part of the problem is the perception that a product is different. People often fail to recognize other factors such as changes in their own usage patterns, or in this case, changes in their local flea population.
the flipside is also true - sometimes the product changes but the listing stays similar with the same URL. I buy why protein isolate and the listing on amazon changed to a blend of isolate and hydrolysate without any change in brand or product name - just a slight change in the packaging.
It's possible the product did change every 2 years or so.
It's possible the product did change every 2 years or so.
It might mean little for a flea circus or bags to pick up my dog's poop, but for something I'm using on or in my body, it gives me pause.
> verify the seller is legitimate before placing any orders
This is pointless, and Amazon knows it. Inventory co-mingling means that the product I receive might have come from anyone selling that product.
If there's one counterfeiter or unethical seller shipping that SKU to Amazon's FBA service, then I'll end up blaming the seller -- not Amazon, and definitely not the original supplier of that faulty product.
This is pointless, and Amazon knows it. Inventory co-mingling means that the product I receive might have come from anyone selling that product.
If there's one counterfeiter or unethical seller shipping that SKU to Amazon's FBA service, then I'll end up blaming the seller -- not Amazon, and definitely not the original supplier of that faulty product.
How do you know you have to blame the seler when you can't know that it was the seller's fault?
I meant hypothetically. Like the typical shopper blames their seller when no one (including Amazon) knows whom to blame.
In this case the manufacturer is also an Amazon seller, so buying through them instead of a third party could help.
As you note, due to stock mingling that doesn't ensure that you won't get a counterfeit, but it probably does at least give you better options to deal with it if you do.
If you buy from Aspects, and Amazon's mingling means you get a cheap counterfeit, I'd expect you'd be able to get an exchange from Aspects.
If you buy what purports to be an Aspects feeder from "Sneed's Feed and Seed" [1] and you get sent a cheap counterfeit, you might be out of luck.
[1] formerly Chuck's
As you note, due to stock mingling that doesn't ensure that you won't get a counterfeit, but it probably does at least give you better options to deal with it if you do.
If you buy from Aspects, and Amazon's mingling means you get a cheap counterfeit, I'd expect you'd be able to get an exchange from Aspects.
If you buy what purports to be an Aspects feeder from "Sneed's Feed and Seed" [1] and you get sent a cheap counterfeit, you might be out of luck.
[1] formerly Chuck's
"Our European visitors are important to us.
This site is currently unavailable to visitors from the European Economic Area while we work to ensure your data is protected in accordance with applicable EU laws."
-> Well, not that important that you can just stop the tracking for a second for us apparently :S.
This site is currently unavailable to visitors from the European Economic Area while we work to ensure your data is protected in accordance with applicable EU laws."
-> Well, not that important that you can just stop the tracking for a second for us apparently :S.
Funnily enough, I was just thinking exactly that - and wondering just how much tracking that site does that it's not straightforward for them to stop doing it (and/or deal with data they had previously collected).
Or is it just a knee-jerk reaction to GDPR that some non-EU companies have adopted and has now stuck?
Or is it just a knee-jerk reaction to GDPR that some non-EU companies have adopted and has now stuck?
Both options are indeed plausible. I'd also add the "we don't get enough of those visitors that we care even taking the five minutes it would take to stop the tracking for those" or the "wow, stop tracking for a given crowd sounds diificult to achieve".
uBlock Origin blocked 15 items on the page for me (20%) when I bypassed their geoblock. Not great, not terrible.
I didn't see anything out of the ordinary in what was filtered so it's probably just knee-jerk.
I didn't see anything out of the ordinary in what was filtered so it's probably just knee-jerk.
Through a friend I met a solicitor working at a firm that had a temporary endeavour with an acturial/accounting firm during peak GDPR advice.
As a British firm they specialised in advising non-European firms on whether to and from where to get GDPR advice.
In essence their process was to woo client with quick turnaround, get whatever books they could, determine how much money the client was making in the EU + a super rough estimate of likely growth, and return one of roughly a dozen canned answers.
Whole thing was taking them less than half a days work per client per two person team.
The kind of company that takes advice like that isn't likely to review the policy anytime soon.
As a British firm they specialised in advising non-European firms on whether to and from where to get GDPR advice.
In essence their process was to woo client with quick turnaround, get whatever books they could, determine how much money the client was making in the EU + a super rough estimate of likely growth, and return one of roughly a dozen canned answers.
Whole thing was taking them less than half a days work per client per two person team.
The kind of company that takes advice like that isn't likely to review the policy anytime soon.
How much does it cost to implement GDPR (for a company that isn't in tech)? How much many visits from the EU does a local TV station from Providence get?
It's probably not worth it for them.
It's probably not worth it for them.
Their quality control, or lack thereof, also extends into Prime Now. It is now a game when I get a Prime Now delivery: what did they replace without telling me, what products did they get wrong, and most critically: what did they overbill me for?
It's now to a point I weigh everything coming in, and over half of the items are off weight, some egregiously so (0.2 oz of jalapeno, but billed for 1 pound; .5 pound of chicken but billed for 3; a sliver of broccoli but billed for 2 pounds; the list is endless).
It's now to a point I weigh everything coming in, and over half of the items are off weight, some egregiously so (0.2 oz of jalapeno, but billed for 1 pound; .5 pound of chicken but billed for 3; a sliver of broccoli but billed for 2 pounds; the list is endless).
I don't get groceries by mail order, but I generally don't look very carefully at prices at a grocery store - until one time recently that I was charged the wrong price for something. I complained, and was refunded like 20 cents at the customer service desk. I kind of did a double take because I could swear they used to have a policy of giving you anything that came up with the wrong price for free. It's not that the money matters, but where's the deterrent for making mistakes? I also saw once where the unit price was obviously wrong (comparing it with a similar product of a different size) and it felt so pointless to complain. Quite likely a random error, but what's preventing them from doing it systematically if there isn't vigorous enforcement?
Automation initially provides accuracy, but then it provides the potential to systematically conceal inaccuracy.
Automation initially provides accuracy, but then it provides the potential to systematically conceal inaccuracy.
> It's now to a point I weigh everything coming in
Instead of just not using the service? If it's not bad enough for you to stop then Amazon seems to be making a good business decision.
Instead of just not using the service? If it's not bad enough for you to stop then Amazon seems to be making a good business decision.
Time investment to weigh and verify incoming items (did they mistakenly buy green cabbage instead of romaine?) is still significantly less, even when factoring in the 5 or 6 taps to refund orders via my phone.
I've tried the other services (Instacart, local stores) but they are even _worse_.
I've tried the other services (Instacart, local stores) but they are even _worse_.
Why are you buying food on Amazon? It’s kind of weird.
Agreed.
The site is always trying to get me to buy groceries and I'm like "no thanks, I like to see what I'm buying". When I buy potatoes weekly I might look at 10 bags before I find one that doesn't look like crap, spinach/kale/greens I look at the best buy dates because they need to last me a week until the next visit, peppers I don't want to see a single wrinkle on because I want them to be good for more than a day or two, if some green onions are already wilting I don't want them, bananas I want a bunch that is all green and a bunch that the bananas still have a decent amount of green so that I have bananas for the entire week. The bread I care about the date and the smell because sometimes bags fail at a seam or get cut and a good date can mean bread that is already starting to mold.
If I still ate meat regularly, it'd be the same sort of thing there. You can tell a lot by looking at a piece of chicken or red meat.
The site is always trying to get me to buy groceries and I'm like "no thanks, I like to see what I'm buying". When I buy potatoes weekly I might look at 10 bags before I find one that doesn't look like crap, spinach/kale/greens I look at the best buy dates because they need to last me a week until the next visit, peppers I don't want to see a single wrinkle on because I want them to be good for more than a day or two, if some green onions are already wilting I don't want them, bananas I want a bunch that is all green and a bunch that the bananas still have a decent amount of green so that I have bananas for the entire week. The bread I care about the date and the smell because sometimes bags fail at a seam or get cut and a good date can mean bread that is already starting to mold.
If I still ate meat regularly, it'd be the same sort of thing there. You can tell a lot by looking at a piece of chicken or red meat.
Amazon has Prime Now, a grocery delivery service mostly via Whole Foods and a few other stores in major metro areas. Grocery delivery isn't anything new in big cities, but their UI and selection is far above anyone else.
(Unfortunately.)
(Unfortunately.)
Most major grocery stores allow you to order delivery directly through their website now. There's no need to involve a 3rd party and their markup.
Link for EU
https://outline.com/zCuTHm
https://outline.com/zCuTHm
”Our European visitors are important to us.” I’m trying to imagine how they decided to go with this headline for the screen that tells European visitors to get lost.
It sounds better than "we don't like your kind here, piss off".
Compare this parodic press release: http://chainsawsuit.com/comic/2017/12/07/improvements/
> In our quest to improve our service for you, the user, we're making it worse.
If you're doing something good, you announce that you're doing something good. If you're doing something bad, you announce you're doing something good.
Compare this parodic press release: http://chainsawsuit.com/comic/2017/12/07/improvements/
> In our quest to improve our service for you, the user, we're making it worse.
If you're doing something good, you announce that you're doing something good. If you're doing something bad, you announce you're doing something good.
The message is that they are not good enough in handling privacy to serve EU customers.
Or more accurately that they don't make enough from the EU to justify dealing with the GDPR mess.
Or just because the US doesn't have good privacy laws doesn't mean you should then decide to suck up as much data on everyone as possible. Just because they can be a dick doesn't mean they have to.
It's only a mess if you can't be bothered to respect people's privacy.
It appears that "respecting peoples' privacy" currently equates to having an overlay with a button to accept cookies, and a message stating that using the website means accepting <whatever>. So I haven't figured out what the button means, but to preserve maximum uncertainty, I try not to click it.
It's true because they want to make sure they follow European laws, even if they don't understand them fully.
Is this relevant to the EU? I see lots of complaints about amazon on the HN frontpage but they mostly focus on the US. I assume tighter regulation and import tariffs on the other side of the atlantic would result in amazon's product selection looking different and perhaps getting counterfeits in is more onerous.
I haven't had any issues in the UK, and I suspect it's just the same effort to list on US and UK websites so why not go for the bigger site.
I was browsing for bird feed recently on Amazon DE and FR sold by Amazon themselves as I mostly don’t trust third parties. Some reviewers said they received just a transparent plastic bag with different seeds in it.
All those reviews were from 2019. So my guess is that they’ve started to commingle in Europe too.
All those reviews were from 2019. So my guess is that they’ve started to commingle in Europe too.
I'm thinking this will be one of the ways that Amazon can be "disrupted." If Walmart (for example) re-tooled their online platform such that they kept counterfeits out and rapidly identified bad actors, the trust in their platform could grow against the name recognition of Amazon. At that point Amazon would be stuck playing catch up and that makes it hard to innovate. Also, its possible a completely new brand could be born, sort of the 'Angies List' of online retail.
Ironically, it looks like Walmart tries to out-amazon Amazon. They allow third-party sellers, etc.
I stopped shopping at Newegg quite some time ago because the explicit reason I was coming to them is not to buy from third-party sellers.
I stopped shopping at Newegg quite some time ago because the explicit reason I was coming to them is not to buy from third-party sellers.
I think they should be disrupted with a decentralized solution where people buy and produce locally. None of this garbage sold en masse
Decentralized has become the de facto nonsense solution advocated on HN to any problem, it seems.
You just called that person’s comment “nonsense” and lumped it in with a vague category of other supposedly nonsense comments. That’s not a useful contribution to the conversation.
If you don’t understand what they are proposing, ask a question. I know exactly what they’re talking about and I agree that decentralized services underpinning markets of local goods will play an increasingly important role in the economy.
If you don’t understand what they are proposing, ask a question. I know exactly what they’re talking about and I agree that decentralized services underpinning markets of local goods will play an increasingly important role in the economy.
I agree that they should be be replaced by something like what you describe, but could they be disrupted that way in reality?
Yes, they just need one feature which Amazon could never have in order to disrupt it. They also need feature/price parity.
I wonder if, to reach price parity, you would have to anti-sell as much as you sell. So people’s overall bills go down because they have less stuff but everything they have they really need.
The un-match-able feature could be personal attention from people in your local economy. That also increases the price so there would have to be excellent marketing to help keep your dollars in that economy: you’d get your beer from a local distributor, and they would also market other local products to you. This is extremely difficult to manage now, so part of the decentralized system would have to be helping make that easier.
Essentially, the killer feature is anti-McDonaldsificstion. McDonalds isn’t actually the best possible food in most people, but it is the best possible food you could sell most people and still channel the profits through one bank account.
Decentralized platforms, by not having that requirement, can offer something better.
I wonder if, to reach price parity, you would have to anti-sell as much as you sell. So people’s overall bills go down because they have less stuff but everything they have they really need.
The un-match-able feature could be personal attention from people in your local economy. That also increases the price so there would have to be excellent marketing to help keep your dollars in that economy: you’d get your beer from a local distributor, and they would also market other local products to you. This is extremely difficult to manage now, so part of the decentralized system would have to be helping make that easier.
Essentially, the killer feature is anti-McDonaldsificstion. McDonalds isn’t actually the best possible food in most people, but it is the best possible food you could sell most people and still channel the profits through one bank account.
Decentralized platforms, by not having that requirement, can offer something better.
I guess someone should produce the GPU I want “locally” as well? Or maybe my vaccines? It seems like you have a computer to post this (in which 0% of the parts are made “locally”) so maybe you should practice what you preach.
Why aren't these counterfeits and/or Amazon getting sued by the original companies?
Isn't this just a market competition if other company's able to make cheaper product out of original idea and does not violate the law?
I was under impression that any product without an IP (copyright, patent, etc) is subject to "counterfeits" case like this.
p.s. I'm not a lawyer
Isn't this just a market competition if other company's able to make cheaper product out of original idea and does not violate the law?
I was under impression that any product without an IP (copyright, patent, etc) is subject to "counterfeits" case like this.
p.s. I'm not a lawyer
I couldn't read the article due to EU regulations.
The counterfeits are probably from China and China doesn't respect foreign IP, and they can probably open hundreds of shell businesses anyway so suing one or Amazon removing one will not help. Amazon has armies of lawyers and will argue they acted whenever they knew something was counterfeit, but as the website is automated they did not know ahead of time.
Counterfeit means it is violating trademark IP, meaning riding on the quality reputation of the brand while not meeting it.
The counterfeits are probably from China and China doesn't respect foreign IP, and they can probably open hundreds of shell businesses anyway so suing one or Amazon removing one will not help. Amazon has armies of lawyers and will argue they acted whenever they knew something was counterfeit, but as the website is automated they did not know ahead of time.
Counterfeit means it is violating trademark IP, meaning riding on the quality reputation of the brand while not meeting it.
LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton) is one of the clients of the company where I work.
LVMH fights hard against counterfeits.
Amazon is so bad at handling counterfeits that LVMH decided to never give even one penny to Amazon, so you cannot find their products on Amazon.
And the funny thing is that we cannot use AWS because of this rule!
Amazon is so bad at handling counterfeits that LVMH decided to never give even one penny to Amazon, so you cannot find their products on Amazon.
And the funny thing is that we cannot use AWS because of this rule!
> Amazon is so bad at handling counterfeits that LVMH decided to never give even one penny to Amazon, so you cannot find their products on Amazon.
I bet I can find plenty of counterfeit ones, though
I bet I can find plenty of counterfeit ones, though
Interesting - if you search for "Louis Vuitton" on Amazon, a lot of stuff which is superficially similar appears.
Has there been any ruling on the applicability of trademark law to situations like this?
Has there been any ruling on the applicability of trademark law to situations like this?
> Why aren't these counterfeits and/or Amazon getting sued by the original companies?
They need to know the counterfeits exist in the first place. Amazon doesn't even give the customer the option to mark their returns as counterfeits. This is why I suggest that if you encounter a counterfeit product on Amazon, you should document it and report it to the company whose product was counterfeited.
They need to know the counterfeits exist in the first place. Amazon doesn't even give the customer the option to mark their returns as counterfeits. This is why I suggest that if you encounter a counterfeit product on Amazon, you should document it and report it to the company whose product was counterfeited.
The underlying problem, it seems to me, is that Amazon made a decision early on to do very little curation of the products they sell. During the years when they were mostly selling books from established publishers, this wasn't a big issue.
When Amazon began selling everything under the sun, the number of vendors exploded. In retrospect, Amazon should have made a big effort to carefully curate all these vendors and their products before listing them on Amazon.com. But that would have been very expensive and no one was telling Amazon they had do that.
The Amazon approach is to move fast and capture market share, without much regard for product quality or ethical concerns. Unfortunately, the rest of the tech industry seems to be following their lead.
When Amazon began selling everything under the sun, the number of vendors exploded. In retrospect, Amazon should have made a big effort to carefully curate all these vendors and their products before listing them on Amazon.com. But that would have been very expensive and no one was telling Amazon they had do that.
The Amazon approach is to move fast and capture market share, without much regard for product quality or ethical concerns. Unfortunately, the rest of the tech industry seems to be following their lead.
[deleted]
I wonder if this is an oversight by Amazon on failing to scale its anti-counterfeit measures. Maybe they didn't appropriately evaluate how large the issue would become and they're stuck with trying to amend a system that wasn't designed to combat the issue at the scale they are operating at.
I'm interested in what sort of solution will eventually be effective at stopping this. Hopefully for Amazon it won't be inspecting every single item that passes through its doors.
I'm interested in what sort of solution will eventually be effective at stopping this. Hopefully for Amazon it won't be inspecting every single item that passes through its doors.
The problem is the long tail of sellers operating on the marketplace. With a long tail of sellers, you get a long tail of fraud and bullshit too.
When you search on Amazon for random basic goods, you'll get thousands of results from insane numbers of gibberish sounding sellers. But there might be only a few dozen unique results. It's going to be basically impossible to combat fraud when this is allowed.
I'd even consider the "legitimate" case of this (an OEM selling the same product to hundreds/thousands of sellers to resell) to be borderline fraud as well. It's basically reputation/review laundering.
When you search on Amazon for random basic goods, you'll get thousands of results from insane numbers of gibberish sounding sellers. But there might be only a few dozen unique results. It's going to be basically impossible to combat fraud when this is allowed.
I'd even consider the "legitimate" case of this (an OEM selling the same product to hundreds/thousands of sellers to resell) to be borderline fraud as well. It's basically reputation/review laundering.
These days when I end up on one of those Amazon search results filled with obviously-identical no-name goods it’s my cue to head over to Aliexpress instead. The product I’m getting is the same garbage, but at least I recalibrate my expectations and even save a few bucks by cutting out one layer of middleman.
I have never understood this argument. I have seen lots of American/Japanese high quality brands that manufacture in China and they often cost an insignificantly higher amount than the chinese equivalent The difference is that I don't have to wait months for the product to arrive and the trusted brand is massively reducing the risk of poor quality because they actually have to follow the QC standards of the developing wolrd. Meanwhile on Aliexpress the truly cheap stuff is often just garbage. No savings there.
We aren't disagreeing. I'm not talking about high-quality brands who happen to manufacture in China. I can't think of an example off the top of my head, but have you ever landed on a search result page where multiple items from different brands were visibly identical products? Sometimes down to using the exact same photo. Those are the situations I'm talking about.
Lots of Ali Express experience here, some of the Chinese stuff can be great, it's just hard to know which is which amongst tge sea of good knows what
This. As a buyer I only ever want Amazon sending me stock they got directly from the OEM, because they're so often better at fulfillment and defect returns.
Exactly this, I dread having to shop for something that's caught on as a popular cheap to produce product that Chinese companies have focused in upon. There is so much noise to wade through its really really annoying. Sometimes I just give up shopping that day because its so time consuming to wade through a bunch of online shopping land mines. Offline shopping is growing in importance to is in the face of this counterfeit noise. Its actually raised our perceptions of Costco for us because they do a great job making selections.
For goods we can't risk counterfeit we go Walmart and Vitacost. Vitacost is really great.
For goods we can't risk counterfeit we go Walmart and Vitacost. Vitacost is really great.
I don't think they care.
There was a story about a guy who self publishes his own book and on Amazon there are cheap fakes with identical title, cover and etc... Amazon just doesn't do anything.
There was a story about a guy who self publishes his own book and on Amazon there are cheap fakes with identical title, cover and etc... Amazon just doesn't do anything.
Well, once in a blue moon they'll take action and ban you and your original products for 'copying' the counterfeits.
Probably after the original competitor hired someone, probably an examz employee, to backchannel the takedown for a princely sum.
I seem to recall an author complaining about some random on Amazon "selling" a book that the author hadn't finished writing yet.
Doesn’t that make Amazon liable for commercial copyright infringement?
Cynical person might say that the copyright law is only applicable when people torrent or upload stuff to youtube.
Cynical person might say that the copyright law is only applicable when people torrent or upload stuff to youtube.
They know what they’re doing and don’t care because it’s working.
I think the viewpoint that Amazon doesn't care is too cynical. They probably do care but are stuck with the issue of looking at effective counter measures that are too expensive to consider.
What is more realistic is that they are just stumped at this point.
What is more realistic is that they are just stumped at this point.
If they cared, they would let you filter for items only sold by Amazon.com and not commingle inventory. What they really want is for others to take all the inventory risk and liability and take a 15% cut of all purchases.
They used to let you filter for items sold by Amazon.com, but they removed it, so I think that clearly proves their goal of being a platform rather than a retailer one can rely on for quality goods, as presumably the former has nice profit margins whereas the latter is famous for barely having profit margins.
They used to let you filter for items sold by Amazon.com, but they removed it, so I think that clearly proves their goal of being a platform rather than a retailer one can rely on for quality goods, as presumably the former has nice profit margins whereas the latter is famous for barely having profit margins.
I can still filter by vendor, at least on the European websites.
> I can still filter by vendor, at least on the European websites.
At least in the US, Amazon comingles new products unless the seller requests them not to. So if you buy something shipped and sold by Amazon.com, you may be getting the one vendor ABC had shipped to Amazon's warehouses.
Agree with GP. If they cared, they wouldn't comingle. Comingling saves Amazon money, though, as they don't have to track whose goods are in which warehouses.
At least in the US, Amazon comingles new products unless the seller requests them not to. So if you buy something shipped and sold by Amazon.com, you may be getting the one vendor ABC had shipped to Amazon's warehouses.
Agree with GP. If they cared, they wouldn't comingle. Comingling saves Amazon money, though, as they don't have to track whose goods are in which warehouses.
It doesn't. Even when commingling, they individually track each good. The only advantage is that comingling is faster and cheaper deliveries, because they can just and you the item nearest to your house.
Most goods aren't individually tracked. If I send three, and you send four of some ASIN to some distribution center, and it is a comingled SKU, to all indications, all seven items are in one bin, and can't be distinguished afterward. Having one bin instead of two saves space (and therefore cost) in the distribution center. If the goods were stored separately, even if they still did buy from any vendor and ship from the most cost effective inventory, they would be able to track down counterfeit goods much more effectively.
I don't know, I'm just going off based on their documentation: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/200141480?...
It says:
> For inventory tracked with the manufacturer barcode, each seller’s sourced inventory of the same ASIN is stored separately in our fulfillment centers. We can also track the original seller of each unit.
So at least their documentation clearly says that each seller's items are stored grouped by seller.
It says:
> For inventory tracked with the manufacturer barcode, each seller’s sourced inventory of the same ASIN is stored separately in our fulfillment centers. We can also track the original seller of each unit.
So at least their documentation clearly says that each seller's items are stored grouped by seller.
I've heard this claim before, and I've never been shown evidence of this. Certainly Amazon didn't disclose this to me when I used to sell stuff on FBA.
Does not mean anything because of commingling. If you have 500 merchants selling the same item you have no way to control whose inventory you get things from. No filtering by merchant doesnt help, I wish it did. As a result I have mostly stopped buying from Amazon after running into a few obvious fakes.
They let you filter by vendor, but they don’t let you choose Amazon.com.
I just searched for an item and had no trouble selecting a "seller" filter for Amazon.com; on what basis are you making this claim?
I just searched for "toyota oil filter", "logitech mouse", and "play yard", and I never got an option on the left side to restrict the search results to a specific seller.
Filtering by seller doesn't show up consistently-- I've yet to identify what exactly the pattern is, but, once you've drilled down far enough into their search results, it usually shows up for me.
It very rarely shows up for me after a general search (from the search bar on the Amazon homepage), though-- for example, if I search for "T-shirt" from the homepage, I can't filter by seller, but, if I drill down to the "Men's Shirts" category in the left-hand bar on that search results page, I can filter those results by seller (and select "Amazon.com" to see things they claim they're selling themselves).
It very rarely shows up for me after a general search (from the search bar on the Amazon homepage), though-- for example, if I search for "T-shirt" from the homepage, I can't filter by seller, but, if I drill down to the "Men's Shirts" category in the left-hand bar on that search results page, I can filter those results by seller (and select "Amazon.com" to see things they claim they're selling themselves).
I think they intentionally hide it depending on what the product is. Intentional or not, it doesn’t meet my use case, and when I go shopping, I’m willing to pay a premium to not have to worry about quality of the product.
I'm in the camp they just don't care.
There was a point in time not too long ago where amazon refused to sell Google Chromecasts, but they would sell knock-offs including those that were marked with a "G" in an apparent trademark violation.
Some retailers are selling repackaged medical equipment -- in this case cpap masks -- in ziploc bags. There may or may not be anything wrong with the mask itself, but the real bags are high quality packaging and factory sealed -- not a ziploc bag with a sticker on it.
There was a point in time not too long ago where amazon refused to sell Google Chromecasts, but they would sell knock-offs including those that were marked with a "G" in an apparent trademark violation.
Some retailers are selling repackaged medical equipment -- in this case cpap masks -- in ziploc bags. There may or may not be anything wrong with the mask itself, but the real bags are high quality packaging and factory sealed -- not a ziploc bag with a sticker on it.
The amount to which they care is proportional to their apparent ability to fix the problem. You'd be amazed how quickly something can get fixed if their company is burning down over it.
In this case I expect their response will be just enough to avoid any truly damaging outcomes while not spending any resources beyond that.
In this case I expect their response will be just enough to avoid any truly damaging outcomes while not spending any resources beyond that.
I have seen it many times that companies can fix things rapidly
if they really want to.
I think they don't care enough, as far as their revenues are going, things are fine, and there is is no easy way to fix this without making less money.
I think they don't care enough, as far as their revenues are going, things are fine, and there is is no easy way to fix this without making less money.
Personal, expensive, and hard to evade, liability is the solution. Make Amazon liable for the products they sell and in turn Amazon will move mountains to make their sellers more liable.
> This site is currently unavailable to visitors from the European Economic Area while we work to ensure your data is protected in accordance with applicable EU laws.
The access is limited since May 2017?
The access is limited since May 2017?
Can't imagine Euro visitors are...at all...cared about by a US local news outlet.
It's because they don't want to give anyone an option to opt out of data collection - easier to lock out all EU than actually stop/reduce/give choice for data collection.
It really isn't. I used to work in IT for a newspaper. They _really_ are hyper-local. They don't went to spend a cent on even out-of-state visitors, much less out-of-continent.
Resources are tight, and the ROI is non-existent.
Resources are tight, and the ROI is non-existent.
But if a law came in to effect that requires them to not abuse customer data in their local area as well, there suddenly would be a 'ROI' on that?
Seems to me they chose to simply not care about what data they collect on who from the start and it will bite them in the ass eventually.
Seems to me they chose to simply not care about what data they collect on who from the start and it will bite them in the ass eventually.
Eventually is not today.
They don't care because EU visitors don't bring enough ad revenue.
It's an RI news station. Under slightly different circumstances, I'm sure they'd be mystified as to why they should adjust their privacy policy for visitors from Massachusetts, let alone exotic destinations like Oz, Narnia, Westeros or Europe.
Maybe not in general but the issues with Amazon isn’t limited to .com. We get all the same problems with .co.uk, so I’d be interested in reading what happened
Archive to the rescue: https://archive.is/TR6HX
I'm not being hyperbolic when I say that Jeff Bezo's online store should be forced to compensate Warren for all their lost business now and into the future, and to make sure that everyone knows they've been enabling the knock-off business. It's outrageous that Bezos enables this sort of "collateral damage." If he can't stop this sort of thing, he should be shut down.
Simply put, it is not in Amazon’s interest to police counterfeits as it is not in Facebook’s interest to police speech.
Not sure about that number - they give no details on how it's calculated and anyways it's presented as being sales, not profits.
Edit: https://www.marketplace.org/2019/11/18/how-amazons-counterfe... has more details and is where OP ironically appears to be ripping off from. Says 1.5 million is 4% of sales, so they did around 37 million in sales.
Edit: https://www.marketplace.org/2019/11/18/how-amazons-counterfe... has more details and is where OP ironically appears to be ripping off from. Says 1.5 million is 4% of sales, so they did around 37 million in sales.
> Not sure about that number
Based on what? Why would your gut reaction to this entire story be "I'm suspicious of that dollar amount" [1]?. The fact that it's revenue and not sales doesn't somehow make the headline false. It's still a loss of revenue.
The broader point of this story and others is that Amazon has a rampant counterfeit goods problem and they do little to nothing to ensure authenticity for consumers.
> where OP ironically appears to be ripping off from
It's a local news station. Watch the video. They interviewed the manufacturer. They likely read the original story and decided to bring additional attention to a local business.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality
Based on what? Why would your gut reaction to this entire story be "I'm suspicious of that dollar amount" [1]?. The fact that it's revenue and not sales doesn't somehow make the headline false. It's still a loss of revenue.
The broader point of this story and others is that Amazon has a rampant counterfeit goods problem and they do little to nothing to ensure authenticity for consumers.
> where OP ironically appears to be ripping off from
It's a local news station. Watch the video. They interviewed the manufacturer. They likely read the original story and decided to bring additional attention to a local business.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality
>Why would your gut reaction to this entire story be "I'm suspicious of that dollar amount"
Because it's presented without any explanation or context, and it's difficult to see how it could be reasonably estimated. The headline is literally false. Losing revenue, even if that estimate is accurate, is not correctly described as losing money. It's kind of how cops inaccurately report "street value" of confiscated drugs - see e.g. https://www.cjr.org/analysis/drug_bust.php
>The broader point of this story and others is that Amazon has a rampant counterfeit goods problem and they do little to nothing to ensure authenticity for consumers.
And this point is wrong, of course. If anything, they go too far - I've seen many victims of their overzealous enforcement and am one myself. There's been many lawsuits by companies that have been blocked from selling despite selling only authentic products. That's hardly consistent with them doing little to nothing.
Because it's presented without any explanation or context, and it's difficult to see how it could be reasonably estimated. The headline is literally false. Losing revenue, even if that estimate is accurate, is not correctly described as losing money. It's kind of how cops inaccurately report "street value" of confiscated drugs - see e.g. https://www.cjr.org/analysis/drug_bust.php
>The broader point of this story and others is that Amazon has a rampant counterfeit goods problem and they do little to nothing to ensure authenticity for consumers.
And this point is wrong, of course. If anything, they go too far - I've seen many victims of their overzealous enforcement and am one myself. There's been many lawsuits by companies that have been blocked from selling despite selling only authentic products. That's hardly consistent with them doing little to nothing.
Yes I'm aware of your case [1]. You sold non-retail unpackaged electronics on Amazon, you are not an authorized reseller, and were accused of selling counterfeit goods. TP-Link got you banned from Amazon. Now you're suing TP-Link for $5M-10M because you lost ~$100k/mo profit.
But the story above is about actual counterfeit goods. Not people reselling wholesale goods for below MAPs to retail customers.
[1] https://pdfhost.io/v/zU6v@9u0_Microsoft_Word_TSI_complaint6d...
But the story above is about actual counterfeit goods. Not people reselling wholesale goods for below MAPs to retail customers.
[1] https://pdfhost.io/v/zU6v@9u0_Microsoft_Word_TSI_complaint6d...
I'm responding to your point that Amazon does "little to nothing to ensure authenticity for consumers."
I disagree, and I'd imagine the plaintiffs in the following cases would as well:
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16620676/v-fjallraven-u... https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16601182/ems-imports-ll... https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16462329/ly-berditchev-... https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16139905/eng-sales-llc-... https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16610999/big-birds-llc-... https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16440121/oj-commerce-ll... https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16438724/oj-commerce-ll... https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/15028460/dj-direct-inc-... https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6846972/starke-v-tp-lin... https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/13477612/johnson-v-inco...
Or for that matter, the 12,000+ people who've signed a petition complaining about Amazon's overzealous enforcement at https://www.change.org/p/jeff-bezos-amazon-com-should-only-s.... Read through a few of the comments there.
False positives rates go up when trying to minimize the false negative rate. As such, evidence that the false positive rate is high shows that actual counterfeits are being enforced heavily as well.
Anyway, OP doesn't mention any specific actions they expected Amazon to take that weren't taken. It doesn't say, for example, that they asked Amazon to take down counterfeits and were refused.
I disagree, and I'd imagine the plaintiffs in the following cases would as well:
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16620676/v-fjallraven-u... https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16601182/ems-imports-ll... https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16462329/ly-berditchev-... https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16139905/eng-sales-llc-... https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16610999/big-birds-llc-... https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16440121/oj-commerce-ll... https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16438724/oj-commerce-ll... https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/15028460/dj-direct-inc-... https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6846972/starke-v-tp-lin... https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/13477612/johnson-v-inco...
Or for that matter, the 12,000+ people who've signed a petition complaining about Amazon's overzealous enforcement at https://www.change.org/p/jeff-bezos-amazon-com-should-only-s.... Read through a few of the comments there.
False positives rates go up when trying to minimize the false negative rate. As such, evidence that the false positive rate is high shows that actual counterfeits are being enforced heavily as well.
Anyway, OP doesn't mention any specific actions they expected Amazon to take that weren't taken. It doesn't say, for example, that they asked Amazon to take down counterfeits and were refused.
I think we're in agreement regarding Amazon: They don't take an active role in policing their marketplace. They have a "report this listing" mechanism that essentially bans a seller outright, with no effort to validate the claim. They just assume it's legit by default and the seller is always in the wrong. But to be clear, the brands are the ones taking action (and thus the defendant in these lawsuits), Amazon has essentially no role.
It's my view that Amazon themselves should be taking action on behalf of both consumers and sellers to ensure that: 1) products are authentic, and 2) consumers can get the best prices possible even if that's from an "unauthorized reseller"
It's my view that Amazon themselves should be taking action on behalf of both consumers and sellers to ensure that: 1) products are authentic, and 2) consumers can get the best prices possible even if that's from an "unauthorized reseller"
I'd mostly agree with that, with the caveat that they will often restrict particular listings or brands that got a high volume of complaints, and require proof of purchase to sell. They also flag sellers that have large sales increases in a short period of time.
>It's my view that Amazon themselves should be taking action on behalf of both consumers and sellers to ensure that: 1) products are authentic, and b) consumers can get the best prices possible even if that's from an "unauthorized reseller"
This is reasonable. They could require proof of purchase for all products, or perhaps for all products where more than 10 units are being sold.
I also think there should be a higher bar for foreign sellers, or perhaps a bond that must be posted.
>It's my view that Amazon themselves should be taking action on behalf of both consumers and sellers to ensure that: 1) products are authentic, and b) consumers can get the best prices possible even if that's from an "unauthorized reseller"
This is reasonable. They could require proof of purchase for all products, or perhaps for all products where more than 10 units are being sold.
I also think there should be a higher bar for foreign sellers, or perhaps a bond that must be posted.
I don't see why they don't require proof of purchase for every single item in their supply chain by a third party reseller, with valid, verifiable invoices issued only by the OEM.
1. The cost to verify all of those would be extreme. They ship billions of units in a year, that's tens of millions of invoices at a minimum.
2. "issued only by the OEM" but there are many valid suppliers that are not the brand owner. Even Amazon themselves buy from many vendors that are not the brand owner. Amazon wants those suppliers and third party sellers because they bring down pricing and have a wider selection than they'd get if they only allowed sellers buying direct.
2. "issued only by the OEM" but there are many valid suppliers that are not the brand owner. Even Amazon themselves buy from many vendors that are not the brand owner. Amazon wants those suppliers and third party sellers because they bring down pricing and have a wider selection than they'd get if they only allowed sellers buying direct.
Sellers have complained that this opens up their supply chain to be courted by Amazon.
Ex: if i sell a trendy product on amazon, then they ask me for proof of purchase, they then know who to approach to make the amazon basics version, and take the wind out of my sails.
Ex: if i sell a trendy product on amazon, then they ask me for proof of purchase, they then know who to approach to make the amazon basics version, and take the wind out of my sails.
>You sold non-retail unpackaged electronics on Amazon
Just to clarify: some goods were repacked in polybags, and labeled as such. This is explicitly permitted by Amazon's ToS for the cell phone category:
"Amazon product detail page requirements: All non-retail packaging requires a separate detail page. All non-retail packaging requires either "[Non-Retail Packaging]" or "[Carrier Packaging]" in the title. For example: Motorola H12 Bluetooth Headset [Non-Retail Packaging] Motorola H12 Bluetooth Headset [Carrier Packaging]"
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/200785030?...
This was for other products, not the tp-link products, which were all in retail packaging.
Just to clarify: some goods were repacked in polybags, and labeled as such. This is explicitly permitted by Amazon's ToS for the cell phone category:
"Amazon product detail page requirements: All non-retail packaging requires a separate detail page. All non-retail packaging requires either "[Non-Retail Packaging]" or "[Carrier Packaging]" in the title. For example: Motorola H12 Bluetooth Headset [Non-Retail Packaging] Motorola H12 Bluetooth Headset [Carrier Packaging]"
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/200785030?...
This was for other products, not the tp-link products, which were all in retail packaging.
I remember reading about Birkenstock having the same issue at a much larger scale.
Web Archive link for EU citizens (the site blocks access from EU to avoid having to comply with data protection laws):
https://web.archive.org/web/20191226100007/https://www.wpri....
https://web.archive.org/web/20191226100007/https://www.wpri....
Another company that will drop Amazon due to heavy losses and open another area where Amazon can sell its own product or chosen son in its place.
Amazon is like Youtube. It's a great place to establish your brand and gain popularity but you better have a private site to fall back on to host your content and store.
Amazon is like Youtube. It's a great place to establish your brand and gain popularity but you better have a private site to fall back on to host your content and store.
see lots of reviews lately on amazon for various products where people are complaining about counterfeits. stuff you wouldn't think would be worth counterfeiting
In my simple understanding of the law isn't Amazon liable to pay damages?
I would enjoy a Netflix documentary on this whole topic.
Sadly the site is blocked in the EU :(
Start reporting counterfeits at https://www.stopfakes.gov/article?id=Report-Fake-Goods
The following was taken from the DOJ's "Reporting Intellectual Property Crime: A Guide for Victims of Counterfeiting, Copyright Infringement, and Theft of Trade Secrets":
"Counterfeit Trademarks: The Trademark Counterfeiting Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2320(a), provides penalties of up to ten years imprisonment and a $2 million fine for a defendant who “intentionally traffics or attempts to traffic in goods or services and knowingly uses a counterfeit mark on or in connection with such goods or services.”
The key word there is "traffic".
"Counterfeit Labeling: The counterfeit labeling provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 2318 prohibit trafficking in counterfeit labels designed to be affixed to phono records, copies of computer programs, motion pictures and audiovisual works, as well as trafficking in counterfeit documentation or packaging for computer programs. Violations are punishable by up to 5 years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine."
Again, "trafficking". Just need to prove the "knowingly" part, which can't be done without establishing a clear pattern of trafficking in counterfeits.
"Why Should You Report Intellectual Property Crime? Intellectual property is an increasingly important part of the United States' economy, representing its fastest growing sector. For example, in 2002 copyright industries alone contributed approximately 6%, or $626 billion, to America’s gross domestic product, and employed 4% of America’s workforce, according to an economic study commissioned by the International Intellectual Property Alliance. As the nation continues to shift from an industrial economy to an information-based economy, the assets of the country are increasingly based in intellectual property. In recognition of this trend, the Department of Justice is waging the most aggressive campaign against the theft and counterfeiting of intellectual property in its history. The priority of criminal intellectual property investigations and prosecutions nationwide has been increased, and additional resources on both the prosecutive and investigative levels have been brought to bear on the growing problem of intellectual property theft. Effective prosecution of intellectual property crime, however, also requires substantial assistance from its victims.."
https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olp/docs/ip_task...
From:
https://www.stopfakes.gov/welcome
The following was taken from the DOJ's "Reporting Intellectual Property Crime: A Guide for Victims of Counterfeiting, Copyright Infringement, and Theft of Trade Secrets":
"Counterfeit Trademarks: The Trademark Counterfeiting Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2320(a), provides penalties of up to ten years imprisonment and a $2 million fine for a defendant who “intentionally traffics or attempts to traffic in goods or services and knowingly uses a counterfeit mark on or in connection with such goods or services.”
The key word there is "traffic".
"Counterfeit Labeling: The counterfeit labeling provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 2318 prohibit trafficking in counterfeit labels designed to be affixed to phono records, copies of computer programs, motion pictures and audiovisual works, as well as trafficking in counterfeit documentation or packaging for computer programs. Violations are punishable by up to 5 years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine."
Again, "trafficking". Just need to prove the "knowingly" part, which can't be done without establishing a clear pattern of trafficking in counterfeits.
"Why Should You Report Intellectual Property Crime? Intellectual property is an increasingly important part of the United States' economy, representing its fastest growing sector. For example, in 2002 copyright industries alone contributed approximately 6%, or $626 billion, to America’s gross domestic product, and employed 4% of America’s workforce, according to an economic study commissioned by the International Intellectual Property Alliance. As the nation continues to shift from an industrial economy to an information-based economy, the assets of the country are increasingly based in intellectual property. In recognition of this trend, the Department of Justice is waging the most aggressive campaign against the theft and counterfeiting of intellectual property in its history. The priority of criminal intellectual property investigations and prosecutions nationwide has been increased, and additional resources on both the prosecutive and investigative levels have been brought to bear on the growing problem of intellectual property theft. Effective prosecution of intellectual property crime, however, also requires substantial assistance from its victims.."
https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olp/docs/ip_task...
From:
https://www.stopfakes.gov/welcome
I wonder how much Trump really hates Bezos.
If Trump really does hate Bezos, he could go on TV and give a national address stating that Amazon has repeatedly been facilitating the illegal import of dangerous products from China. In addition, this has persisted despite repeated complaints. Therefore to protect innocent Americans, US Customs has seized all Amazon inventory at all warehouses and will be examining each item to check if it is authentic and passes the relevant safety standards.
If Trump really does hate Bezos, he could go on TV and give a national address stating that Amazon has repeatedly been facilitating the illegal import of dangerous products from China. In addition, this has persisted despite repeated complaints. Therefore to protect innocent Americans, US Customs has seized all Amazon inventory at all warehouses and will be examining each item to check if it is authentic and passes the relevant safety standards.
can we not make everything about trump and fantasizing about him going on tv/twitter etc to bash a specific company for a specific problem?
Doesn't seem realistic or useful.
Doesn't seem realistic or useful.
[deleted]
warren buffett's startup ?
Warren...the smallest town in the smallest county in the smallest state. I think Aspects is still in the same little brick building on Child Street across from the drycleaners.
Reading the headline I was thinking.... no wonder Elizabeth Warren REALLY HATES Amazon.
She's determined to break up Amazon because they cost her $1.5 million!
She's determined to break up Amazon because they cost her $1.5 million!
She could've had a nice dinner with that money.
The most surprising part of this story to me is that someone manages to make millions of dollars on bird feeders.
Revenue, not profit.
You can make millions on just about anything. It’s not hard. Making a healthy margin is something else entirely.
3P sellers don’t really care. If they make $5,000 on $1.5m in revenue it’s fine. They don’t do any real work. They are just middle men. They just try to do as much as possible. The item doesn’t matter, the customer doesn’t matter. If their is a listing and they can sell against it and make a few cents per sale that’s good enough.
Amazon has created a horrible race to the bottom model and they don’t care either because they benefit as well.
You can make millions on just about anything. It’s not hard. Making a healthy margin is something else entirely.
3P sellers don’t really care. If they make $5,000 on $1.5m in revenue it’s fine. They don’t do any real work. They are just middle men. They just try to do as much as possible. The item doesn’t matter, the customer doesn’t matter. If their is a listing and they can sell against it and make a few cents per sale that’s good enough.
Amazon has created a horrible race to the bottom model and they don’t care either because they benefit as well.
I got my folks a bird feeder a few years ago when they bought a new house. I grew up a few miles from there, remembering only sparrows, blackbirds, robins, etc and on rare occasions a yellow bird, or a brown bird, or red-wing blackbird. But with a bird feeder, it was amazing to see the number of unique birds that show up now every few minutes, birds of all colors that I didn't even know lived in the area.
I was in a home improvement store and noticed that a sparrow had found its way to the aisle with the bird seed.
why does a home improvement store have bird seed/
Because these stores usually have a garden section, and bird feeders and bird seed are usually stocked in a garden section of a store. Presumably, the people who solve the optimization problem "given the amount of space available and the buying habits of our customers, how do we optimize our sales volume" have concluded that bird seed is one of the thousands of items they should stock.
Yes, and I thought it was interesting that the birds (or at least some of them) had solved the problem of "how do we optimize our bird seed consumption" by going to the source instead of a backyard bird feeder.
Fakes/copies have always been an issue for companies, but with the move towards digital platforms, we find we have this odd situation in which we have a legit company umbrellaring fake/copy sellers and able to profit from such sales and yet appear totally immune from any repercussions.
But more so, all these transactions are documented, not cash in hand style transactions.
So, will we see some company who sells a branded product taking Amazon seems not like a case of if, but when and what angle. Meanwhile, such issues in the digital era get dealt with by politicians grumberling fashionably and such digital domains offing some token informal(non legally binding law) compromise that enables politicians to be seen to be doing there job but the digital companies doing it for them in a way that suits them far better than is appreciated.
But thanks to the digital age, all those sales of fake/copy products will be logged and are just a growing liability that Amazon is not completely immune from.
But more so, all these transactions are documented, not cash in hand style transactions.
So, will we see some company who sells a branded product taking Amazon seems not like a case of if, but when and what angle. Meanwhile, such issues in the digital era get dealt with by politicians grumberling fashionably and such digital domains offing some token informal(non legally binding law) compromise that enables politicians to be seen to be doing there job but the digital companies doing it for them in a way that suits them far better than is appreciated.
But thanks to the digital age, all those sales of fake/copy products will be logged and are just a growing liability that Amazon is not completely immune from.
we find we have this odd situation in which we have a legit company umbrellaring fake/copy sellers and able to profit from such sales and yet appear totally immune from any repercussions.
I've known of many small apparel maker/distributor/seller based out of Los Angeles. Over the years, I heard/read/saw so many Police/Marshall personnel raid these businesses to confiscate fake merchandise as if raiding an illegal drug dealer and treat the owner/workers as if they were drug dealers. Ok, well it doesn't happen every week/month but still a regular occurrence.
They were breaking the law and so yes police was sent in. But these law enforcement resource was basically acting on the behest of large businesses like Nike/Gucci/etc.
And now, we have Amazon (even bigger than all other businesses) basically enabling fake merchandise sellers to sell fake merchandise (hurting other legitimate businesses) while Amazon gets a cut.
But there is no business more powerful than Amazon to force law enforcement to act and raid warehouses and HQ of Amazon.
Isn't capitalism wonderful?
I've known of many small apparel maker/distributor/seller based out of Los Angeles. Over the years, I heard/read/saw so many Police/Marshall personnel raid these businesses to confiscate fake merchandise as if raiding an illegal drug dealer and treat the owner/workers as if they were drug dealers. Ok, well it doesn't happen every week/month but still a regular occurrence.
They were breaking the law and so yes police was sent in. But these law enforcement resource was basically acting on the behest of large businesses like Nike/Gucci/etc.
And now, we have Amazon (even bigger than all other businesses) basically enabling fake merchandise sellers to sell fake merchandise (hurting other legitimate businesses) while Amazon gets a cut.
But there is no business more powerful than Amazon to force law enforcement to act and raid warehouses and HQ of Amazon.
Isn't capitalism wonderful?
Yes, whilst we have trading standards who have mystery shoppers to track down and then close down retailers and/or leverage large fines. The transition into the digital age has seen the model of enforcement fail to keep pace and whilst the Amazons and Ebay's have made some effort, the incentive and drives are lacking in clout to make any effort just scratch the surface. Which has like most, fallen to become consumer driven in a review standard open to all and with that, equally abused.
It is not until there is some major court case or other financial impacting precedent being set, that the current state will only carry on playing out.
Do we see more fake products on the high street than we do online, oh yes. It's small things like that in which fall into the additional costs of a bricks and mortar store over an online shop and also does entail more rules and regulations as well as checks. How many stores route there POS system thru another country/state to lower taxes - none without breaking the law and yet online stores, there is always a way.
It is not until there is some major court case or other financial impacting precedent being set, that the current state will only carry on playing out.
Do we see more fake products on the high street than we do online, oh yes. It's small things like that in which fall into the additional costs of a bricks and mortar store over an online shop and also does entail more rules and regulations as well as checks. How many stores route there POS system thru another country/state to lower taxes - none without breaking the law and yet online stores, there is always a way.
Hey, this title could be easily misconstrued given the prominent US politician.
Assuming this is an innocent accident and only pointing it out because I’d misinterpreted it to be a conflict of interest expose.
Assuming this is an innocent accident and only pointing it out because I’d misinterpreted it to be a conflict of interest expose.
The title is pretty descriptive, you're only seeing this because your mind wants to. It's a sign.
Fixed spelling
Fixed spelling
Warren is a small city in the Northeast part of Rhode island. This is a local news site.
Warren is a pretty common name. Not everything is about politics.
The title comes directly from the article, which begins with:
WARREN, R.I. (WPRI) — Aspects has been in business for decades, manufacturing bird feeders that come with a lifetime guarantee.
So in 2016, when a customer called about a defective hummingbird feeder, the Warren-based company took the complaint seriously.
WARREN, R.I. (WPRI) — Aspects has been in business for decades, manufacturing bird feeders that come with a lifetime guarantee.
So in 2016, when a customer called about a defective hummingbird feeder, the Warren-based company took the complaint seriously.
Bullshit. The front line employees that receive inbound product don't enforce any policy and actually Amazon encourages to deal with disputes only after a product is sold, shipped and a customer complains. That's the Bezos way. Fact. Let's discuss grocery products in glass containers real quick if anyone wants to argue...
I admit, we'd sell counterfeit products if I didn't have morals. We push all the AMZ limits we can. I could write a book on this subject.