Amazon's Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse | Hacker News Reader

Amazon's Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse

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146 pointsdforrestwilson126 comments

This has become a frustrating part of shopping on Amazon, to the point that I typically filter to only show things sold by Amazon themselves. Too many of the marketplace items are fake crap with paid-for reviews. Since they're mixed in together by default, the effort in trying to discern good from bad makes for a pretty crummy experience overall.

This will not always save you. If a company uses the "Fulfilled by Amazon" service they ship their stuff to amazon and it is co mingled with all of the other SKU's purporting to be the same item, including Amazons own stock

Co-mingling isn't set by default (or wasn't last I was selling a couple months ago), you have to select it, and it can be bad news for a seller (one seller got banned from amazon and had to pay to destroy or ship home 50k products because one of the items in the stack that got sold "by him" was counterfeit)

I assume you're referencing https://startupnation.com/start-your-business/plan-your-busi..., which I've seen referenced a couple times as an Amazon seller.

There are a couple of problems with his story.

First, Amazon denied it was due to comingling:

"I’m just calling to inform you that there were no other sellers of that item that were in the co-mingling program"

Second, he apparently didn't show up to the lawsuit and had a judgement by default. Never a good sign.

Third, he was moving hundreds of thousands of items, but couldn't afford a lawyer?

Fourth, he cites as evidence that his items were comingled the fact that his returns came from a different warehouse than he sent them to. As someone who regularly sends items to FBA warehouses, this is bullshit. Amazon sends your own inventory between their warehouses, and you can track this in reports. Often I send to warehouse A, and it immediately goes to my reserved inventory, and then it goes to another warehouse a few days later. Anyone who doesn't know this didn't invest enough time to learn about Amazon policies, and you should doubt their story.

He said sold by Amazon. There are two ways: Fulfilled by Amazon or Sold and Shipped by Amazon. I am pretty sure he is talking about the latter. With the latter, Amazon is actually selling the item not some 3rd party. With Fulfilled by Amazon, Amazon only ships it to you, but the 3rd party is selling. It is pretty clear on the website.

The poster you are replying to probably understands this distinction. They are referring to Amazon's co-mingling of inventory. When you buy an item on Amazon which is offered by more than one FBA merchant, Amazon does not necessarily fulfill your order out of that merchant's inventory. They will ship you an identical item from whichever inventory makes most sense for your order based on such factors as proximity of FC to you, ability to bundle other items for your order from a given FC, etc. In Amazon's fulfillment systems, Amazon itself is just another merchant so ordering "Sold and Shipped by Amazon" is no guarantee of getting an item that Amazon sourced. The only time you can have any confidence is when Amazon itself is the only offer on a given ASIN.

Oh wow. This is concerning considering I am buying flea medication from Amazon and make sure it is "sold by Amazon" so I do not get fake ones.

Grief. I've made a point of actively choosing items sold by (not fullfilled by) Amazon or other sellers I trust for certain types of product specifically to avoid the fake crap.

Surely Amazon must have some clue the damage this is doing to their brand?

Seems time has come to buy from retailers that don't have highly suspect marketplaces intermingled on their sites.

I had no idea this was the case, makes me even warier now. Seems like a fairly big gamble to take with their brand image...most of the knockoff stuff I've encountered has been pretty obviously junk.

Co-mingling refers to inventory pooling, where physical units can exchange ownership at amazon's discretion. For example, let's say that SellerA has a fake iPad for sale via FBA and it is located in Philly, and Amazon has a real iPad located in Los Angeles. If someone from New York buys an iPad from Amazon, Amazon may swap ownership of their iPads in order to ship it a shorter distance. Then, in their records, SellerA now owns a real iPad, and the Amazon-only buyer in New York just got a fake.

Oh wow. That sounds super shady.

They only do it with standardized products (like those that have registered UPC codes), so that they should be indistinguishable. They try to control the situation, but it has gotten so bad with some product types due to chinese knockoffs that they have had to shut it off for entire categories.

A particularly humorous situation has evolved from this with matchbox toy cars. With matchbox cars, any 1 car box is entirely indistinguishable electronically from another 1 car box, as all 1 car boxes share the same UPC (as well as 2 car boxes and so on). Collectors now refer to buying from amazon as 6 bullet roulette, because it is now virtually impossible to actually get what you think you bought.

> they should be indistinguishable

That seems to me to be missing the point rather badly (by Amazon, not by you). Counterfeits are designed to be indistinguishable, at least to casual inspection. Forging a UPC code is trivial.

The system was not designed to fight counterfeit, but to optimize delivery for industrialy produced goods.

Think ipod earbuds for instance, imagining they all actually Official ones, you wouldn't care which seller the one you ordered came from, as long as the product reference is the good one.

Also, categories like Health are gated to keep noobs out. So are high-counterfeit categories like clothes and fashion accessories.

Could SellerA withdraw his iPad from stock, effectively trading a fake iPad for a real one?

Let's say there was a SellerB with a real iPad for sale, located closer to the buyer. Could Amazon swap ownership in that case? Would SellerB be liable for fraud and damaged reputation if his real iPad was switched with a fake?

They'll still be liable, as the buyer will report it and Amazon will track it back to Seller A.

Maybe they're better at tracking now, but at least while I was there tracking them down was a massive problem.

You worked for Amazon, or you were a seller? My info comes from https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=..., which says commingled stuff is tracked by seller under "How Amazon Tracks Stickerless, Commingled Inventory".

While Amazon does clearly state under the heading you gave that they do track commingled inventory, they do not explain how. It is still possible that doing so presents a 'massive problem' as the previous comment, apparently from an ex-Amazon employee states.

On the face of it, I cannot see how it would present a problem, except for the obvious one of scale. It would be interesting to learn the precise details of how Amazon implements its tracking policy.

Exactly this. The article mentions that they basically take all the same products and put them together. So seller B's fake item may be sold as seller A's real item and seller A gets blamed for their fake stuff.

It's gotten so bad with certain groups of items I don't even try. Sunglasses, handbags, all the usual stuff you'd expect.

My anecdote: I like gold colored Ray-Ban aviators with a brown or dark polarized lens. The two stores near me didn't have them in stock, I couldn't find my old pair and I was leaving for a week long motorcycle ride in two days. I ordered them up and immediately knew they were fake. They were too light, the nose pads weren't right, all the usual tells. I returned them 3 different times until I just cancelled.

I understand the frustration, you can easily end up buying from a chinese seller if you aren't playing attention. But I have a hard time understanding how you were fooled three times.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B000EYP57K/ref=dp_ol...

Buy from Amazon - the second choice. Pretty sure that is the default purchase option on the main page as well.

Nope - sadly that's not always sufficient. "Star Eyewear" and "Wow Facktor" are "Fulfilled by Amazon" so there's a good chance their stock is co-mingled with Amazon's own stock in the same bin. I'm not sure exactly how you can tell which products this happens for and which it doesn't.

Amazon considers all stock of the same product to be identical and exchangeable.

If you order from Seller A on "Fulfilled by Amazon", then Amazon will ship you from the nearest warehouse that has the same product, even if it's technically stock of Seller B.

And Seller B might have handed a crate of counterfeits to Amazon. Angering both the customer and Seller A who has no way to actually enforce the quality of what they sell on Amazon.

Sellers can turn off comingling when sending items in.

Is there an additional cost to do this? I would assume there is if most sellers aren't doing it.

There are pros and cons.

Pros to comingling:

1. Makes customers happier to get their item sooner

2. You don't need to label your items, which either saves you time or saves you the 20 cents per item fee Amazon charges

3. Your items get processed quicker. If your items are in between warehouses, they can still be "shipped" to the customer.

Cons:

1. Counterfeit possibility. This varies by item. Amazon claims to track which seller inventory was sold from.

2. Bad returns, may hurt your account or require time to deal with.

Basically sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it doesn't. I use a prep center which labels for me, and when I send in items myself I have Amazon label them.

Clearly you do not understand how Amazon Warehouses work

Just because you buy someing from Seller A, even if Seller A is Amazon LLC, you may not be getting stock from Seller A

If I am A retailer selling SuperWidget 55, and I ship Amazon 100 Genuine SuperWidget's to store in their warehouse for amazon to ship to my customers (aka Amazon Fulfillment Service) . Then another competitor ship 100 Fake SuperWidgets to amazons warehouse. All Amazon records is they have 200 SuperWidgets.

When a Customer orders a SuperWidget, they will get what ever SuperWidget is closest to their location, and a random one from that location, it may not be my SuperWidget but one of the 100 fake ones, even though the customer selected to order from me.

So then the next question is why would a retailer use Amazon Fulfillment, well if you want to get any Prime buyers you must, as if you do not use Amazon Fulfillment your orders are not "Prime Eligible" which eliminates a huge number of consumers.

You can choose whether to turn on comingling when using FBA.

That only matters if you can choose to exclude comingling when buying.

"So then the next question is why would a retailer use Amazon Fulfillment"

You implied that sellers are required to use it.

Edit: it's a different user that replied to me, my mistake.

Also, Amazon tracks which order came from whose inventory, so if it's reported as fake they can punish the right seller. Any system of that size is going to have some slip through, but Amazon does a lot to vet sellers for specific products, categories, and so on. Just recently certain iPads were restricted, and I couldn't get approved with retail receipts, they wanted invoices from authorized distributors, for example.

As a buyer you can't do much about comingling, but that shouldn't be relevant except for products with an abnormally high counterfeit rate. And you will get your money back with very little hassle when buying FBA (they refund you immediately and then require you to return it), and it helps hurt the bad seller. The fact is the vast majority of purchases on Amazon are legitimate. I agree Amazon needs to do something about their image, but it doesn't seem to be hurting their sales. And who else are you going to go to? eBay is even worse, and retailers are more expensive most if the time.

Also, generally commingled is a bad option. We've never sent in commingled inventory and alot of products commingled is not allowed.

It really depends on what items you're selling and how many.

I wasn't fooled, I returned them saying they were counterfeit and they shipped out a new pair. Three different times they were fakes and then I cancelled my order. The seller was Amazon, not some weird 3rd party- but because of the co-mingling of stock you can't be sure what you're getting or where it came from.

Amazon keeps track of which seller's inventory it originally came from, so the right person will get in trouble if a fake is sent.

Actually not if the item is in commingled inventory. When the item is commingled, the seller does not place any identifying markings, such as their unique asin bar code, on the product. Nor does Amazon place seller identifying information on commingled items. They rely on the UPC at that point for automation.

No identifying labels does not mean Amazon doesn't know whose it is.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...

>Although products sent to Amazon as commingled inventory may be virtually pooled with those of other sellers, we track which seller shipped the units to our fulfillment centers from the time they enter our warehouse until they are shipped to the customer. This allows us to know who sourced the item that the customer received.

The other possibility is that they weren't fake, just the result of Ray-Ban moving production to China. You could return them 300 times and you'd still get the same cost-reduced crap.

They're not, I was worried about it being me on the third try and compared them to ones in the store. They were quite different for supposedly the same model.

Additionally I wasn't ordering ones that were too cheap to be real, this was full retail price- if they were significantly cheaper I would've expected fakes.

The Wayfarers and Aviators are all produced exclusively in Italy. It is not hard to tell fake Luxotticas.

No longer true; earlier this year I ordered a pair of aviators[1] from Ray-Ban directly (to avoid precisely what this entire thread is about), and they were made in China.

[1]: http://www.ray-ban.com/usa/sunglasses/RB8307%20MALE%20011-av...

Ray-Ban auto-redirects away from the US site because I am not in the US. Swell...

It has gotten to the point where the only stuff I buy on Amazon is stuff where I don't care about brand names.

If getting a genuine brand name item (e.g. an Apple charger) is important, I will buy it at a local retailer. And even then I'm not always sure, but I assume that places like Target have enough control in their procurement to not end up selling fakes.

Agreed. Though the article seems to be conflating bad business practices (like fake and/or paid reviews) with bad products. Counterfeit Birkenstocks are likely (though not automatically) inferior to the real deal; but the "Chinese kitchen goods shipped from Kentucky" are often the same products you could buy at your local big-box store.

I get the feeling that Chinese businesses (who are making the real products as well) are shouting to the American consumer "you are getting ripped off, here's how much these products cost without a huge profit margin."

There are plenty of low quality fakes, but as Jack Ma said, some are better than the licenced versions.

Some system of clamps and shock cords for holding down a fitted bed sheets can hardly be fake. Anyone's implementation is likely as good as anyone else's.

Though Whalley has a patent on it, the article claims, prior art for the basic idea can be seen on any truck that has a tarp tied down over a bunch of cargo.

The knockoff razor blades, however, are not nearly as sharp as the real ones.

Whose knockoffs? There are some quality ones.

... and how do you know which one is of high quality when you buy?

Since the products are copies -- how would you know you don't get ripped off next week, when Amazon sell some other copies? The packaging etc look the same, by definition...

It is just not realistic to keep up with the exact details and doing a complete quality check whenever you buy anything, from toilet paper to cars. Every time.

I predict that this is just a short phase. If the quality of products at Amazon will be a total dice throw, the consumer reaction will be to buy directly from the producers' web sites. That is not in Amazon's interests, so they will soon be more transparent. Or become irrelevant.

The way to deal with it is for consumers not to buy from individual sellers with no or bad feedback. Amazon will kick them off once they have too many complaints.

The vast majority of sales go through without any problem.

I think Amazon maybe should restrict access to the comingling program to new sellers, which would help somewhat. They already won't let you get the buy box as a Merchant Fulfilled seller when you're just starting or when you're below metrics.

I've purchased Feather and Derby blades on Amazon and they're stupid sharp. Which brands have you had bad luck with? Assuming DESR here.

I mean actual counterfeits. Like the packaging says Schick but they are much worse quality and clearly not authentic if you look closely. I got my money back easily, but still an unpleasant experience.

Short-term gain, long-term loss for the American consumers. If the Chinese will simply copy and crush many honest businesses then not many people will want to spend on R&D, on developing novel designs. The result is stagnation in innovation and the decline in business ethics in the market.

You probably have not seen how it really works in China:

https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=284

https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297

There is no "stagnation in innovation", in fact I'd say things happen much faster because there's far more competition.

There absolutely is a loss of "savoir faire" in the west in every industry China has completely taken over. Furthermore we basically exchanged real growth for credit backed one AKA fake growth, because of all the real jobs moving to China. That's why we have all these housing market crisis. It is something the west will deeply regret 20 years down the road. Business is war, globalism won't change that fact.

Heh, you should see the current housing bubble that rages through out china today. The large amounts of fraud, the huge amounts of capital flight, the government backed credit bubbles.

  > "savoir faire"

I don't understand this phrase. All the definitions i found seem to be about personal behavior. Is there an alternate definition? What are you trying to convey?

"know how" in French

In french is the term restricted to an individual? All of the definitions I found see me to relate to "know how react/behave according to prevailing social rules", eg: "the ability to behave in a correct and confident way in different situations".

OP seemed to be referring to technical competency for an entire industry.

I've only ever heard it used in the context of an individual, along the lines of "does this guy have the know-how to lead the dev team?".

Thank you for indulging my pedantry.

and because the manufacturing happens right then and there.

the proximity to people in charge of manufacturing the products also increases innovation- they see problems firsthand and can contribute to solving them.

Yes, the intense competition drives minor incremental improvements. Not capital-intensive major inventions.

We're going to have to get used to more of this sort of thing as 3D printing and CAD/CAM continue to be more accessible to the masses, as then it won't be possible to dismiss knock-offs as coming from "the Chinese".

(I think this fight is going to look a lot like the MPAA/RIAA vs. everyone-who-listens-to-music wars of the 2000s, except this time for real money.)

It sounds like the real problem here, if there is one, is that Amazon's rating system isn't good enough at preventing fake ratings.

There's no incentive for the Chinese knock-offs to have good quality. The only incentive is to produce cheap to raise the profit margin.

The book The Everything Store talks about how Amazon uses counterfeit goods to sort-of blackmail high-end goods to letting them sell.

I think the book gave the example of a high-end kitchen knife brand, maybe Wüsthof, that would not allow Amazon to sell their knives. Before you know it, cheap knockoffs appeared claiming to be Wüsthof knives. When they let Amazon sell the real deal, suddenly the knockoffs disappeared from the store.

I have a feeling the same thing is happening with the high-end perfumeries, like Creed. Everything sold on Amazon is a knockoff because the company doesn't sell there. I bet if they did, the fake stuff would magically disappear...

I don't think it's blackmail. I wonder if brands like Wüsthof got exclusive agreements as part of selling on Amazon so that nobody else is allowed to list their product, therefore eliminating the knockoffs. But without an official listing then Amazon would have to sort through every reseller to see if they are selling legitimate products or not, and what incentive would Amazon have to do that?

Amazon does make deals like that. GoPro, Sony, Samsung, Nest and tons of other brands are (for the most part, at least) locked down.

Every time I see counterfeit power adapters/chargers on Amazon I wonder why the original maker–e.g. Apple–doesn’t lean on Amazon to stop the sale of those. Additionally, if someone dies or a house burns down[0], couldn’t that open Amazon to lawsuits? [0] http://www.righto.com/2014/05/a-look-inside-ipad-chargers-pr...

Because there's no easy way of telling if they are fake. What if they bought a bunch at the Apple store and are selling them at a lower price to get rid of the inventory?

Sometimes it is very easy to tell but Amazon will ship it to customers anyway. Imagine you are looking for a "85W MagSafe 2 Power Adapter" for a MacBook Pro at Amazon.com. First link after search for "apple power adapter for macbook pro" goes to:

https://www.amazon.com/Apple-MagSafe-Adapter-MacBook-Display...

Now read this review (verified purchase):

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RNA9AYHGA5JG0/ref...

Chinese counterfeit Magic cards are a disruptor.

Wizards of the Coast, Magic's parent company, maintains a reversed list of historic cards. Listed cards can never be reprinted to protect their prices on the secondary market for collectors. Many players complain this is a bad for the game. As the counterfeits are getting better, more players buy them, pressuring Wizard to act. Maybe Wizards will abolish the reserved list.

Reserved list: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/official-reprin...

More links: http://www.starcitygames.com/article/27693_Counterfeit-Cards...

http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/how-to-dismantle-the...

The argument could be made that players are simply trying to play with cards they can't normally obtain. Obvious counterfeits have often been allowed in unofficial games "by proxy" - allowing players to construct more powerful decks than they could afford.

It would then come down to how much the counterfeit is worth to the player. So long as these aren't being passed off as legitimate cards, I don't see an issue.

Do most places allow this proxy card without owning the actual card these days? Back when I played in 93-97 you could use proxy cards, but it was usually a land card marked with an indicator of the real card, and the person had to pull out their real card (usually in a plastic case) to show they actually had it (and show the stats).

I had a friend with a color printer that tried to make counterfeit cards to use as proxies (not to try and sell, the printer he had back then was not very good), he got caught at a game night at a shop (unofficial tournament) and was actually banned from there.

Sometimes a store will hold proxy tournaments for certain formats, but not for the standard format, and they can't be officially sanctioned events.

There was a big deal about it recently with relation to counterfeiting. http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/proxies-po...

I don't play any card games, but what's honestly the big deal? Is the game about card-collecting skills, or deck-building and play strategy? It's hard to argue the latter and ban people for not having an original version of a card. I guess I don't really "get it", or I had way too much fun playing ridiculous mods (where it was fair because everyone had equally ridiculous stuff) for games (Mr. Pants Excessive Overkill for Quake 3 comes to mind). IMO it'd be fun to play some Magic tournament with all fake cards, so everyone could build their dream decks, then see who was better at building the best deck and better with play strategy.

This. In addition to card games that intentionally reward skilled counterfeiters, there should be MMO games designed to reward the best hackers and botmakers. Also, there should be an "unlimited" category in real-life events like the Olympics and Tour de France, where the team with the best drug lab wins.

I think we'll start to see more and more games like this emerge over the next few years/decades, as the possibilities of traditional sports and games (and the humans who play them) are exhausted.

Pay to Win is the evil.

Magic the Gathering is good.

Because.

How long before people won't be able to tell the difference (at least without tests that are prohibitively expensive or would destroy the card)?

> to protect their prices on the secondary market for collectors

A lot of Wizards' approach to tournaments and playable cards is designed so that the secondary market's influence on the game is minimized.[0]

They saw beanie babies and comics implode in value after waves of speculation, so they set up a schedule where they churn out new cards and retire old ones on a predictable schedule. All this means the company has to think as little about the secondary market as possible.

You're right that counterfeits are a disruptor, but I think that's more a threat for current cards, not because people will print a bunch of black lotuses and moxes.

[0] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/04/16/400140583/how-s...

Wizards needs old sets to become rare & obsolete, for many reasons. It helps them sell more cards, and it also gives them far more creative leverage with new cards. They don't have to play test & ensure balanced play across the entire catalog (some stupid good cross-decade combos have showed up on accident over the years) and they have more ability to avoid rampant power creep, which according to some has been a big part of why the game has lasted.

A coworker just spent three days debugging a new server build, and it turned out to be a fake Xeon processor purchased from Amazon. Absolutely unbelievably executed fake, but the machine wouldn't even POST.

Ironic anicdote: I order a cheap ($50) generic waterproof jacket from Amazon and got what was obviously a counterfit Northface (with branding and everything). Thankfully they sold and priced it as a generic so I knew what I was getting. Overall a reasonable coat but the detail elements (velcro and straps) were of poor quality.

You ordered a cheap jacket and the quality of the jacket you received was commensurate with the price and met your expectations. What is the irony?

the irony is that I ordered a cheap generic jacket and got a cheap counterfeit jacket.

meaning I was OK with generic Chinese merchandise, but it is more convenient for them to supply counterfeits than to produce something actually white-labeled.

Why would it be cheaper to design, make and sell two different jackets versus one?

Well Yes. That's the irony. If you had even minimal trademark enforcement, the risk ratio would encourage you to manufacture and sell white label and counterfeit jackets as separate firewalled vendors. So one could be shut down without effecting the other. Here the risk is clearly so low they don't even bother... or maybe they have firewalled vendors and the cost of setting up a generic vendor is so low that its less than the dual manufacturing pipeline... either way that's the irony.

Irony != Counter intuitive

This can be solved by requiring higher-risk merchants to put money in escrow for a while (maybe an initial amount plus some fraction of revenue). If they turn out to be selling counterfeits, amazon could use the money to set things right. Otherwise the merchant gets the money.

Don't Amazon already do this? IIRC from the few things I have sold on Amazon, I had to wait 2-4 weeks after an order for the money to be paid into my bank account.

Yes. For the first six months after you start selling there's a two week reserve (plus the standard settlement wait). Every time you have a significant increase in sales they'll apply a reserve and monitor your metrics before removing it.

I think the main problem is that Amazon is making no real effort to fight it,not that solutions don't exist.

It's infuriatingly difficult to buy anything of quality on Amazon. I really hope they improve the situation.

The books and digital videos I get have been great quality.

Do they let you download the videos or do you have to stream them?

Their EC2 servers are pretty good quality.

This reminds of something I read - apparently, for whatever reason, not all EC2 instances of the same class perform the same. So, some large AWS customers (like Netflix) keep spawning instance, run some benchmarks on them, then if the instance is in top X% as far as performance goes, they keep it; otherwise they drop it. Which means that, what a regular customer gets, is an instance that someone (or multiple someones) found not good enough and dropped ;]

Do we have reason to believe low performance is an enduring property of the instance, or could it just be that instance performance varies over time (i.e. when neighbors are hungrier)?

Regular customers can run benchmarks and drop sluggish servers, too.

My problem with Amazon is not that it sells cheap low-quality stuff, it's that the cheap products are not really cheap. I buy off-brand Chinese stuff on AliExpress and could not be more happy with them; the prices on Amazon can easily reach 10x those of Ali.

But there is more bad sellers on aliexpress... so you have to make sure that you check sellers reviews...

The biggest problem with Amazon reviews is that they'll let you post a review of something you never bought! Sure, they do add the "verified purchase" tag for things you bought; but for calculating the aggregate stats, etc. Amazon will cleverly ignore the fact that you could just be talking out your ass (or selling reviews). I find this very dirty on their part, and it's something that can be fixed with 1 line of code.

This seems like the most sensible solution and would easily weed out 99% of these fake paid for reviews. Is there a way to filter ratings by verified purchasers?

Why don't they do this by default?

They can do this but then companies will ask fake reviewers to buy the product through Amazon and then reimburse. The seller is only out the commission + price of product - it would create a small hurdle but wouldn't solve the problem.

1) It's not necessarily effective if the seller reimburses shills for purchased products (as already mentioned)

2) It marginalizes legitimate reviewers who bought the product somewhere other than Amazon

Regardless, I agree that it's a reasonable and sensible default.

This isn't automatically a good thing. Let me give you an example. I had a very persistent Amazon Marketplace seller who kept deleting and re-posting a listing for a specific mobile phone dock I was trying to find. They were selling a fake phone dock using the image and details of a hard to find one I really wanted. I ordered it several times and they shipped a completely different product - different look, color, brand, it was the cheapest garbage ever. Amazon refunded all my costs each time, and because the seller was a punk and refused to pay return shipping I threw them all away. No money out of my pocket.

The reason they would keep deleting and re-listing the item is because I would leave bad (but factually correct) reviews when I kept trying to find the phone dock and seeing their new listing in Amazon's search results. Their re-listing action caused my reviews to disappear because it was a 'new' product listing with their same fake photo every time. I flagged this repeatedly to Amazon as fraud via chat, email, and telephone and they never took any action. This went on for months, and Amazon never addressed it.

So my point is that by allowing anyone to post a review, you give consumers one more tool to warn each other about fraud and unethical sellers. Yes there are a lot of fake reviews, but there are also legit buyers out there too and we are willing to pester fake sellers for months and cost them a fair amount of losses (postage, abandoned fakes because they don't want them back).

Sellers know they can delete & re-list fakes all day long to disassociate negative feedback for an item , and they know Amazon will never ban them.

> and because the seller was a punk and refused to pay return shipping I threw them all away

That's not "punk" -- the seller doesn't want the garbage anymore than you do. Most vendors of inexpensive products don't want you to mail back returns. It's not worth it.

AliExpress is increasing serving more US customers for looking for bargain price. I guess that Amazon is aware of that so they take blind eye for the low priced counterfeits.

For some categories where Amazon sells its own brand (which keeps growing), I wonder if this benefits Amazon.

I bought a new "Sony" universal remote from Amazon. It came wrapped in a clear plastic baggie with no box or instructions. It worked and looks legit, so more likely this item was stolen or sold as new when it wasn't more so than a fake from China. But maybe it was a fake, just a very good one probably made at the same factory that makes the "real" Sony remotes.

As Brexit has shown us, there are plenty of downsides to Globalization. Amazon needs to get better at KYC, but Jeff's growth at any cost mantra just won't embrace that and his lieutenants will find it's hard to argue with results. Until this sort of stuff makes a dent in Amazon's top line, I believe they won't really crack down on this.

My anecdote: more than a few times I was asked by small Chinese sellers on Amazon and Ebay (introduced by mutual acquaintances) to help them write emails to press unhappy customers to remove their negative reviews left on Amazon or Ebay, in exchange for freebies and credit. The sellers would ask me to write all sorts of fake sad stories like some poor girl would lose her job or the company had to shut down if the negative review was not turned into a positive one. I was really disgusted and turned them down each time. The moral: in most cases don't believe those fake stories. The review system needs to be protected for everyone's benefit.

Firms should start using serial numbers for their products that can be verifiable on the web and in fact could be registered with the manufacturer.

A totally different and important problem is counterfeit drugs. There are ways to battle counterfeit drugs.

Most items aren't expensive enough to be worth it.

Its interesting how much sympathy is expected for these people who make a silly little product and have foreign competition, but would a reaction be similar if it was an Amazon Basics product?

Not sure I understand the downvoting here but fine. perhaps clarifying my question would help.

Today:

Brand 1 makes product and sells on Amazon. Files IP to try and prevent others from copying their idea.

Brand 2 (Chinese company) makes similar product and sells through amazon - results in headlines like - Amazon has a Chinese problem.

Brand 3 (Amazon Basics) - makes similar products and has Chinese supplier add logo to their generic product. Even though brand 1 has the same problem (arguably worse), because Amazon does it instead of a Chinese company it is seen as less problematic.

Are there Amazon Basics products where IP is an issue? I only know them from USB chargers, cables, rechargeable batteries, …, stuff where there is little innovation.

http://www.geek.com/news/amazonbasics-is-copying-all-the-bes...

They had a design patent (basically meaningless) and amazon just modded and started owning them.

It sounds like what the real issue is, is a lack of designers. Counterfeiting is what you do when you are great at making things, but don't know how to make something that people want to use. A good designer (and a little marketing) could fix this.

Amazon sellers could stand to look at their collective bargaining power.

And of course Jamie Whalley has nothing Made in China in her home. Just "real" stuff.

> Her patented product called BedBand consists of a set of shock cords, clamps and locks designed to keep fitted bed sheets in place.

All these parts made in USA?

People are downvoting, but if her product is manufactured in China that's pretty much the reason her product was copied in such short order.

It isn't manufactured in China, that's one of their main selling points.

The product I've seen crash and burn in quality on Amazon UK is Koss PortaPro headphones. Loved those for many years, but the last few broke inside weeks.

I am wondering if I should try to buy a last pair directly from the manufacturer. I am quite happy with my new Sennheiser, but they don't feel right...

Anyone in the US with recent experience?

I bought a small "SanDisk" branded USB-storage device, I plugged it in, and started transferring files to it while I went to lunch.

When I came back, the transfer was complete, I unplugged the device, and I burned my fingers!

So now I have a broken USB-port in my Macbook, because I trusted Amazon to not sell me a fake product. I wrote a review, and rated it poorly, but they are still selling it[0], and most reviews are positive. They even write "by Sandisk", and "Dispatched from and sold by Amazon".

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005FYNSZA/

I bought a portapro during a Black Friday sale a few years and my experience was kinda like yours: it broke after a few months of use.

I bought mine 18 months ago and I am extremely satisfied with the quality (both build and sound) for what I paid. They absolutely live up to the reputation PortaPros have.

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