U.S. Blacklists Alibaba Unit Over Counterfeit Sales

I should also mention that when I received the package, the USB drive was inside of Kingston USB drive packaging, which surprised me because they didn't describe it as a Kingston product on the listing page.

I can suppose the rationale for Kingston packaging was that Kingston was the only provider of 512GBs at the time, and its addition was a way to sell the fraud's narrative should any doubt later arise, such as after getting mysteriously corrupted data whenever more than 32GB was used.

I had live chats about the case with different customer service agents over a period of months. However, every time I spoke about the issue, it was like the previous hour-long conversations had never happened. Each time, I had to get the agent up to speed on the situation from the ground up, resending the images of evidence, re-explaining that I would be happy to return the item but only to the police or to Taobao corporate instead of resupplying and becoming the accomplice of a suspected criminal.

As far as I could tell, there was no internal procedure for investigating the possibility of fraud or counterfeit. The customer service agents only ever viewed the case through a general return heuristic. The first and final recommendation was always to "return the product to the seller."

Because come on, it's blitheringly obvious to anyone who's casually browsed Alibaba for more than three minutes that some of the goods are counterfeit. It's like saying "you can find pictures of naked people on Google". That's not much of a blow to Google, is it?

To each their own, but I wouldn't be thinking about buying industrial equipment that doesn't have safety checks attached.

Looks like they are not going to be around for much longer.

https://www.icann.org/uploads/compliance_notice/attachment/8...

You probably won't find anything brand new, but I've bought bridgeports and other machining equipment through this.

Taobao listings are peer to peer (somewhat anyway; it's also partly like Amazon retailers). So it's other users that are intentionally duping buyers, not Taobao directly. It's possible (likely?) that Taobao is complicit and turning a blind eye. But it's also difficult for them to address in any meaningful way; how are they supposed to obtain the necessary expertise...?

We know for a fact that other P2P marketplaces (eg. eBay) do care and have spent an insane amount of resources to combat the problem (or been litigated by brands) -- and yet they haven't been able to crack authentication at scale. Our tool addresses that problem.

It is relevant... because it is part of the solution to this problem: How can you authenticate brand-name items in a resale market.

(Worth noting: The brands aren't motivated to help in the resale market. They want everyone to buy new and reap 1000% markup... which is why they crack down on counterfeits.)

There's some clueless people on the internet who get knowingly defrauded, but a lot of this is just preventing the sale even from two parties who know all the details. E.g. like preventing someone from selling DVD movies copied to obvious blanks.

I'd encourage you to look at the frontpage of Lollipuff or in the eBay fashion sections -- you can absolutely find items that retail for $900 new for purchase in a resale market for $90 used. It's sort of like going to GoodWill.

If people want to buy "replicas", that's fine. In some jurisdictions it's even legally permissible to sell replicas without running afoul of laws, so long as they are marketed accordingly (though stamps & logos tend to be strongly protected).

But if Taobao / Alibaba would like to sell in the US, they must make the distinction between replicas and original brands clear -- and must enforce it. That's not an easy task.

Another category I know of are Arduinos. It has often been noted that, since Amazon warehouses commingle stock of "identical" products from different vendors, the reputation of the marketplace vendor won't even protect you, since the vendors have no control whether you got a genuine item or a counterfeit off the pile (Not sure whether that is an ongoing practice, but it was widely reported a few years ago).

taobao is only targeting China.

aliexpress.com is an international and consumer facing.

Expect considerably cheaper prices, and delivery times from 2-6 weeks.

Then on Aliexpress, the consumer level one, you might find the same thing for $15 for each one shipped.

Source: Christmas shopping. Ended up having to go with Amazon because of shipping times and waiting too late, but its worth the wait for some things.

I live in Romania and around these parts Aliexpress already has a big presence among your "everyday consumer". I visit the Postal office closest to my workplace every week and during the last or so year I've started seeing more and more young people (under 25, mostly women) who had come to collect the stuff they had ordered from China (most probably from Aliexpress). Around these parts Amazon is only known and partially used for purchasing books.

And have a look around for a month. Bookmark Aliexpress, and every time you look something up on Amazon, see if you can find a comparable product on Aliexpress.

Let's just say someone I know is a big NBA fan, and he purchased 4 jerseys off of Aliexpress for the price of one authentic jersey, with no discernable difference in quality or production, even while wearing one to a game and comparing the stitching to those on the rack in the gift shop.

I don't think jerseys are listed on Aliexpress anymore, though. At least not the last time I looked.

The clothing is cheap for a reason not just licensing costs.

There are many items sold on Amazon that the manufacturer doesn't sell direct nor sell to sellers to sell direct, but somehow people still manage to get stock.

Amazon isn't going to take down a listing unless the manufacturer can prove that it's infringing. They will block specific sellers if you can show they're selling fakes, and it's not that hard to do (place a test order, then report).

This is what it looks like when a trademark is in the process of becoming genericized. People search "kleenex" but what they actually want is "facial tissue", so you give fuzzy search results for it and people put it in their titles and so on.

Why should Amazon be the front line of protecting this company's trademark? Isn't their job to sell products, and the company's job to protect their trademark? If they think Amazon themselves are unfairly demeaning their trademark then go ahead and sue. Easy as that.

If you still have problems, try using an incognito window.