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Comment by x2f10 | Hacker News Reader

I might be shunned for beating the dead horse, but while he talks about 'True Customer Obsession', he allows counterfeit goods erode his customer's trust in Amazon. I'd argue Amazon's 'process as proxy' in dealing with counterfeits is the careless return process. 'Oh, it's counterfeit? We're sorry! Here's your money back!' does not solve the issue. Sure, thanks for the $10 back, but now I must think twice (or thrice!) before ordering from Amazon. Once my Prime membership lapses, I will not renew.

The 'process' for dealing with counterfeits is broken. When the customer has to think about "the chances of counterfeit" or dealing with the return of counterfeit products, it's NOT customer obsession.

I respect Jeff, TONS, but come on. You're talking the talk, but you're not walking the walk.

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Agreed. As a long time prime user, it's been the rise in counterfeit goods that has really shook my unwavering loyalty to Amazon. I used to order everything on there, without thinking twice. Now, I'm much more careful about what I buy on there, and often just avoid purchasing on Amazon entirely.

I'm mystified by this personally. I frequently purchase from Amazon, and haven't(to my knowledge) received counterfeit goods. Generally I stick to "fufilled by Amazon" or otherwise first-party sellers, so that may have something to do with it. Maybe I'm not purchasing niche enough products to run into this issue.

Certain types of products are extremely commonly counterfeited. I would never consider ordering luxury goods like cologne/perfume/handbags, flash memory cards or sticks, or small mass-market electronics like chargers.

Due to the way Amazon commingles their stock at the SKU level, there is simply no way to guarantee that what you're getting is genuine, even if you order "sold and shipped from Amazon".

Even from an authorized retailer - the first thing I do with any flash card is fill it full of a test pattern using f3write, and then validate that it actually reads out fine. Counterfeiting of flash cards is absolutely rampant.

http://oss.digirati.com.br/f3/

I've bought lots of flash cards, flash drives, chargers, and cables from Amazon and have never had a problem (or they were great counterfeits, in which case I'm not too upset). I don't do much research either, choosing mostly based on search results, brand name, reviews, and shipping/sold by Amazon.

I'd strongly advise against high-voltage/power, questionable quality electronics, because even counterfeit charger will work fine most of the time, until one day, it fails and burns your home down. It's usually not functionality that differs between cheap/counterfeit and quality electronics, but protection, failsafe mechanisms, durability and quality control. I do order myself plenty of cheap, low quality electronics, but nothing that touches more than 12V.

> nothing that touches more than 12V.

And as a reminder since you mentioned them explicitly, a USB charger counts as 110/220V, not 5V.

As a counter anecdote, I ordered ("[s]hips from and sold by Amazon.com", not "[f]ulfilled by Amazon"; just double-checked) a branded microSD card a few months ago, and did a full device write / read on it, and it died on the read pass. I wasn't even thinking that it could be counterfeit at the time: this is just a basic smoke test I do on all new storage devices. But now that I think of it it does seem awfully suspicious.

Yeah, it's very common that rejected cards will find their way back into the supply chain, or that employees will run "ghost shifts" with rejected sub-standard wafers. Bunnie Huang did a fascinating teardown on some fake cards.

https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=918

I do the exact same smoke-test - as I mentioned I use f3write to fill it full, and the counterpart f3read to read it back and test it.

http://oss.digirati.com.br/f3/

There's no official Win32 distribution but it compiles and runs without issue on Cygwin. When I get home, I can send you a Dropbox link with a build and enough Cygwin DLLs to make it run in a standard Windows command prompt.

As mentioned on the f3write site - one of the very typical hacks is to make the controller report a larger capacity than it actually has - or a larger capacity than is actually functional/reliable. So this is the obvious test to perform - write it full and see if you can read it out.

Amazon will co-mingle their stock with third parties as long as the stocking unit (typically UPC) matches. So if some retailer sends them fake memory cards you get a fake memory card, "Sold And Shipped By Amazon.com". And of course eBay is full of this junk.

At this point I prefer to buy from camera stores. My theory is that since their customers will be making their livelihood off the memory cards that they have an additional incentive to keep their supply chain clean.

Belated but here you go with a Windows build of f3write (built on Cygwin64).

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1muc0aghqjwsso4/f3-6.0.zip?dl=0

Get the flash card from wall mart, it works just fine. (feel free to replace with whatever shop you go by on your way to work).

Or Adorama, or BH Photo Video. Or really anyone except Amazon and eBay and other hubs for cheap Chinese junk.

Newegg is probably still OK too, although they are now fronting for third-party retailers I haven't heard of them commingling their stocks yet.

Try buying an Apple charger or cable on Amazon (even sold by Amazon directly):

https://9to5mac.com/2016/10/19/amazon-fake-apple-chargers-ca...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2016/10/23/apple-n...

Apple has the clout to force Amazon clean up their listings, most manufacturers don't. Why does Apple have to coerce Amazon to do this, instead of them being proactive?

Or headphones.

Amazon is not an authorized seller of apple products.

Hopefully you don't expect the average consumer to realize this, when they are clearly selling Apple products.

Are you sure? Amazon were on Apple's official list of authorized internet resellers back in June 2016, before the page was deleted from Apple's website:

http://web.archive.org/web/20160609091210/http://salesresour...

It's not clear whether this refers to products on Amazon that claim to be made by Apple, or products on Amazon that just work with Apple products. As for the latter, I have bought a lot of Lightning cables and USB chargers and batteries from Amazon, mostly made by Anker, and I've never had an issue.

Unfortunately, Amazon does not appear to keep different sellers products separate in the warehouse. All it takes is one seller sending counterfeit products to the warehouse for their inventory to be contaminated by counterfeits. This makes "fulfilled by Amazon" more risky in some respects.

If this is true (and I suppose Amazon's the only one who really knows, absent a supplier orchestrating a test), then I can't believe there wouldn't be grounds for a class action lawsuit.

Because, crucial, Amazon also comingles reviews for the same product.

I'd assume they have boilerplate in their legal agreements that waive rights to do so. But it seems blatantly obvious that if I put a novel item on Amazon, attract great reviews for its high quality, get comingled with counterfeits, have my reviews bombed by pissed off customers, Amazon has materially injured my business through no fault of my own.

Amazon comingles _reviews_ for _different_ similar products.

This is the thing that really annoys me. It doesn't seem that technically difficult (aside from the migration pain) that recognizes product:seller as a primary key, rather than just product.

They're already swimming in reviews. So I can't see them not getting more than they're losing by empowering customers to torpedo bad sellers.

Of course, this would also mean fundamentally changing their logistic practice, which is probably why they aren't interested in doing it.

This has been discussed here in the past. If you look at the FBA program they explicitly charge extra to not co-mingle your inventory.

This is not true. They offer a service where they will add an FNSKU label to your products for .20/unit, which will mean your items will not be co-mingled. But as a seller, you can also apply the FNSKU to the items you send in and not be charged the additional .20/unit. It's up to the seller how they want to do it, but it's not a mandatory charge, just a convenience if you want Amazon to do it instead of yourself as the seller.

> If this is true (and I suppose Amazon's the only one who really knows, absent a supplier orchestrating a test)

This is true, and Amazon admits it. Co-mingling is a large part of their delivery platform.

This is not entirely true. Sellers have the option to send in items to the Amazon warehouses with the UPC as the barcode OR with an FNSKU barcode. The FNSKU is a unique barcode that identifies that particular product to you, the seller.

If you send items in to the warehouse with the UPC, they will be considered co-mingled which means anyone else sending the same product with just the UPC will all be stored together. THIS is where you have the issue of the possibility of buying counterfeit products.

If you send the items in with the FNSKU, they will be considered separate from the co-mingled inventory. Anyone that buys from a seller that has the FNSKU will get the items THAT seller sent in, and not from the co-mingled batch.

For retail items, it's really up to the seller how they want to send the items in. For the sake of seller metrics, it would be wise to send in items with an FNSKU so you avoid the issue of a customer buying from you as the seller, but possibly getting a counterfeit item.

To clarify another incorrect statement in this thread: Amazon does not charge extra to not co-mingle the items. They do offer a service where they will add the FNSKU label to your items at .20/piece, but that's only if the seller doesn't want to do it prior to sending the items in.

Source: I'm a seller on Amazon.

Is there any way for the buyer to see this difference before buying?

If not, these specifics don't really matter

Many times it's harder to tell. The counterfeits even extend to cosmetics which have huge margins if you fake the label and fill it with crap.

Buying from first-party sellers may help but even then Amazon doesn't always ship YOUR inventory. If the "same" product is physically closer to a user than yours, but they bought from you, they might ship from another seller which can be counterfeit.

The issue is that the counterfeits look extremely close to the real thing, sometimes indistinguishable. It's the quality of the components inside that's far worse. A lot of names brands are having their reputations tarnished from this. Things I bought in the last year on Amazon that were fake:

cookware, phone charger, headphones, power supply, phone battery, SD card

I once used amazon almost daily so this is only a fraction of my purchases, but the fakes tend to be on expensive stuff. The convenience is not worth the chance of getting something worthless and I've stopped using amazon for anything.

What kind of headphones did you buy that were fake?

LG wireless headphones but I've heard it happens even with expensive models like Beats

Try searching for UnderArmour clothing or other popular clothing. Generally you will find items priced 30% to 50% less than elsewhere.

So the risk of counterfeit is priced in? Market forces at work!

For me it's been shipping issues. At some point Amazon became really unreliable with their delivery date "guarantees". I've had four separate packages simply not arrive at all, and plenty more that were a few days to a week late. Confusingly, the Amazon app seems to mark a package as "delivered" when the estimated date is reached, regardless of its actual status. When you dig into the tracking information, sometimes it shows a "shipping in progress, expected delivery:" message with a date in the past, other times a note that "something seems wrong here, we're not sure where your package is". This suggests disorganization in a company that talks itself up as a logistics giant.

Upon calling support, you of course learn that their use of the word "guarantee" is meaningless. Even if you're paying $99/year for it with Prime, the best they'll do is (attempt to) send a replacement shipment.

That must be a highly local phenomenon. I had great shipping experiences in rural Missouri, then when I moved to San Francisco they became ridiculously great. I was getting packages the next day long before they started offering next day shipping.

In fact, I agree with other common complaints about Amazon (counterfeiting, higher prices) but still often go with them because I'm confident the product will show up quickly.

I've experienced it in both San Jose and San Diego. Not exactly the middle of nowhere.

I've rarely had a problem with Amazon in San Diego, but as someone who ships ~1,000 packages a month through USPS - our local postal service leaves a lot to be desired in terms of reliability and consistency.

I also have this problem ~25% of the time on 1 day items. The package comes a day later usually.

Especially annoying when, for example, the last part of my PC was set to arrive one day and I had to wait.

You may also have a package thief.

This is what I suspect. I lived in a condo that was often targeted by thieves due to the known affluence of the condo. So many packages and bikes have been stolen from that building despite being a modern building with two FOB controlled doors. If you live in a nice place or neighborhood, package theft is a fact of life.

In that case it wouldn't be showing up on Amazon's tracking.

I'm in the same boat—long-time Prime user, but the counterfeiting has made me think twice about purchasing things from Amazon. I recently made two high-ticket purchases through Best Buy instead.

It's not just electronics either. I now search comments for "fake" or "counterfeit" on nearly every Amazon purchase I make. I was about to buy cologne from Amazon and ended up just purchasing it from Macy's.

I've also run into straight-up fraud more than once, for example buying a switch at above MSRP, only to be given a fake tracking number and nothing to show up on the delivery date. It was not easy to find recourse; the process starts with "asking for a return" which emails the seller and gives them two days to respond before you can escalate to Amazon, which was not intuitive at all.

You're 1.) implying that Amazon isn't actively trying to fix it (otherwise they would be "walking the walk") and 2.) that it's a widespread issue (all I've heard about counterfeit products are from a few HNers)

Oh, it's an issue. You just may not have gone after high-value easy-to-copy products as others have.

I haven't had a problem with top products being counterfeit, but maybe because I tend to buy them directly from the manufacturer (Apple) or from brick-and-mortar stores where I have the goods in-hand before purchase (Nikon); I'm willing to pay a more those ways for the assurance that I'm getting what I think I'm getting.

The bigger problem I've found is counterfeit & knock-off accessories. Once I've paid US$X,000 for a products, I can't trust Amazon to show me suitable batteries, chargers, lenses, etc - there's so much money in selling those things, and it's so easy to make crap that ...works... but which is problematic somehow (dangerous knock-off chargers, batteries that swell or die, etc).

Amazon is great for stuff that nobody would seriously try to copy & undercut in a deceitful manner. Yes, you can get great deals on stuff people would seriously try to deceitfully copy & undercut, but with enough money riding on it working right, I'll spend a few bucks more elsewhere to be sure I'm getting the real thing.

It's absolutely a widespread issue. I know it happens repeatedly to me, and every Amazon user I know well enough to have ever discussed this issue with, but don't take our word for it:

https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=amazon+...

(I do think this is probably a hard problem, however, so I don't necessarily accept that Amazon isn't working hard on it...)

Same here -- I've seen a lot of comment sections upset about it, but I haven't encountered the issue myself yet.

I'm sure it's a problem, and I certainly hope Amazon is trying to fix it, but I don't think it's the massive company-destroying thing that people are making it out to be.

I've encountered this recently when I had price alerts set for the Nintendo Switch. Third party sellers flooded the market with below-retail offers (they soon wised up and made slightly above-retail offers).

These sellers filled up pages of the available products list and had very little feedback on their profiles. People who actually bought from these sellers never actually got their consoles and had to file an A-Z claim with Amazon to get their money back (the seller always marked it as "shipped", so the credit card payment went through, but never included a tracking ID). I would imagine they were long gone with the money by the time Amazon processed the refund.

Thankfully my BS detector went off and I stopped trusting third party listings for that product.

TRX workout sets are notoriously counterfeit on Amazon.

Example: https://www.amazon.com/TRX-PRO-Suspension-Training-Kit/produ...

More recently, I got a counterfeit fitbit charger that flat out didn't work. It got replaced, but it's still annoying.

At $199 for what looks like some elastic and metal I imagine they do pretty well on that one.

Not even any elastic. The TRX I've seen is just some nylon lashing straps, cambuckles for length adjustment, and two plastic and foam handles.

It's not just counterfeits as in IP violations, but useless goods. It's not at all rare to be burned.

Re: 1) I know for a fact they are.

Are you implying that what OP says is not true, or just pointing out the obvious?

>Are you implying that what OP says is not true

That Jeff Bezos is "allowing" counterfeit goods on Amazon to ruin the customer experience? Yes, that's untrue.

I'm sure if he could snap his fingers and fix the problem, he would. But the problem is a bit more nuanced than that, and can't be solved over night (perhaps ever, if the analogy is digital piracy).

> if he could snap his fingers and fix the problem, he would

Well, he invented the idea of losing traceability by commingling inventory "in good faith". He can reinvent traceability any time. As much as HSBC's business became moving drug money, it pretty much became Amazon's business to find gullible customers for counterfeit goods.

They're actively contributing to the problem and damaging trust in their brand by comingling inventory with third-party sellers.

My experience with Amazon support is that they won't refund 3rd party counterfeits until you've argued with the seller for weeks and come back with the documentation of the counterfeit and lack of refund.

I spend thousands on Amazon a year, if I have a well-documented counterfeit claim I want a quick and easy refund.

A little behind the scenes info, I work for a pretty good sized seller on Amazon. If a customer who purchased an item reports it as counterfeit

* All items we sell of that brand are taken down

* We are required to email a copy of an invoice of between us and that vendor. I think there is a date requirement here also

* We are not permitted to ship comingled FBA shipments for that brand until resolved

If the manufacturer is participating in the counterfeit program, they can whitelist sellers who are permitted to sell their goods and avoid the above.

If someone bought something from your listing but the item that shipped was actually commingled from another seller, who gets the ding and the report? You or the other seller?

That's an excellent question, and honestly, I am not sure. I know we have been asked to send invoices not attached to a customer order AND only one listing was taken down (as opposed to the entire brand), so perhaps it's all suppliers that have contributed qty to that pick location go through a similar different workflow? While I know they have the audit info to do this, I am ultimately guessing on this scenario.

The most frustrating part as a seller on Amazon is that they are taking severe action against sellers that receive complaints. I just got through a month long process of getting my account reopened after a suspension. All it took was a few complaints from a vindictive competitor.

While they are harrasing long time sellers with years of positive feedback, they allow Indian and Chinese sellers to open accounts way faster than they can be closed for selling counterfeits.

The model from the perspective of the counterfeiters is easy. Simply open an account, sell as much counterfeit goods as you can then get closed down due to complaints. Amazon then holds your money for 90 days in order to pay for any returns that may show up, but a good percentage of buyers will never know any better or won't bother to return.

At the end of the 90 days, you collect the money that is left. In the mean time, you can open several seller accounts to keep the process rolling.

If a part time Amazon seller can see exactly what is happening. There is no way that at least middle management at Amazon doesn't know exactly what is going on and that they are profiting immensely from it.

Many scam sellers are extremely obvious. Why would Amazon allow Indian sellers to list hundreds of American textbooks for sale that ship from Amazon?

The most frustrating part is to be harrassed incessantly by the half wits in their "seller quality" department when all this is going on.

This is an especially big problem for people buying precision tools.

I've been looking at picking up some Mitsutoyo calipers, and the overall consensus is that if you buy from Amazon, you'll likely end up with a well-executed counterfeit that has all the right markings, but for obvious reasons won't be as precise, nor will it be warrantied or serviced by Mitsutoyo.

This is a very real problem. Imagine that you wanted to buy, say, an Omega Seamaster as a special gift. For most people, myself included, three thousand dollars is a ludicrous amount to spend on a wristwatch.

Imagine how pissed off you would be to order said watch, have it delivered, give it to your significant other, and then learn a year or two down the road that what you really got was a well-executed fake that could be bought for 1/10 the price.

I once tried to purchase a pair of sunglasses from Amazon. That space is littered with counterfeits. The product page proudly proclaimed "Sold by Prada", but if you look carefully it is fulfilled by some shady company. Then you read the comments and realize that this item is not a original Prada item.

> Then you read the comments and realize that this item is not a original Prada item.

There is a very interesting discussion in Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah of how major fashion brands produce clothing:

First, the brand (e.g. "Calvin Klein") decides what they want - color, cut, material. They go to a bunch of shady Italian clothing manufacturers (the book is about the Italian mafia) and hold an auction to determine the price they'll pay for finished clothes and the amount they'll receive.

Once that auction completes, giving a price, quantity, and deadline, every manufacturer is permitted to accept the terms. Those who do are given the materials (cloth) at Calvin Klein's expense.

Every manufacturer who accepted the terms is then in a race to deliver. The first one to do so is paid. Everyone else is left with what would have been high-priced clothing if they'd finished making it a little faster; that stuff, obviously, often meets with an illegitimate branding tag and sells in counterfeit markets.

So my question to you is: suppose I go to an underground Italian market and buy a shirt made to Calvin Klein's exact specifications from material provided by Calvin Klein. Also, the branding tag on the shirt saying "Calvin Klein" is used without permission. Have I been cheated? Of what?

> Have I been cheated? Of what?

First of all, let's get things straight. A copy that matches the exact original specification with the same material is the mythological unicorn of the knock off business. Finding something genuine in an underground world that thrive on selling counterfeit goods is probably an adventure on its own.

You don't get cheated buying a stolen car if you were looking to buy a stolen car. Same thing here, you bought what you were looking for, no cheating.

More generally, you are going to pay more for a "perfect copy fake" than a basic fake, so you are in the same boat than the guy thinking he was buying the real stuff: if the vendor is lying, you were cheated out of your money.

So, this is common in clothing because, as described above, the purchasing process guarantees the production of many illegitimate copies for every one legitimately branded item of clothing. (Also common: two brands who serve different social classes contract with the same factory to purchase the exact same clothing, then sew different labels onto the identical clothing to create a large difference in retail price.)

I have no reason to believe the supply chain for sunglasses is anything like the supply chain for clothing. But I do have reason to believe that people who think sunglasses are less valuable by virtue of not being Prada are more interested in the brand than in the functionality.

If you want Prada sunglasses because you're The Right Kind Of Person and that kind of person wears Prada, getting genuine-but-discount items isn't really better than getting "fakes". Cheaply purchasing expensive sunglasses fakes a signal that you can afford them, but the fact that you can't will still be instantly apparent to the same people you were hoping to fool.

> Have I been cheated? Of what?

In theory, you've been cheated of the certainties that tend to go along with brand identity. Calvin Klein, as a brand, is associated with a certain amount of quality, of durability, of accuracy in fit, etc. You've been theoretically cheated of those assurances.

In practice, you may not have been cheated of anything. Generally speaking, the trendline for clothing manufacturers is a rise towards a peak, and then a gradual descent from there. Looping back around to the article, Bezos would refer to them as "Day 1" companies while they're still proving themselves, ensuring quality and fitness, and "Day 2" companies thereafter, once they've attained enough brand recognition that they can coast on their laurels. In many cases, quality goes down, fit and finish suffer, and, of course, margins go up.

I don't respect Jeff because of exactly the reasons you point out. He's a smart fella. He's not out of the loop about this shit unless he chooses to be. A fish rots from the head down. Even as a customer of sorts via Amazon Story Writer, I still think Jeff is essentially a Robber Baron in new clothes unless he finds humanity like Gates did and tries to use his war chest for good.

But you also want the lowest price?

Multiple sellers compete on a product page to sell you the product by being the seller in the "buy "box"--the seller with the lowest price.

The alternative solution would be to only allow the product owner or licensed seller to sell the product, but that would require a LOT of manual labor for verification. But they will do this for big, important brands.

Amazon charges sellers 8-15% per each sale in addition to FBA Fees so only way a seller can make money is by selling counterfeit. Amazon is getting greedy, sellers are cutting corner and customers are paying price.

There's also massive sales tax fraud that is at least tolerated by Amazon. I 'm pretty sure there are some (silent) investigations of this in Germany. Basically container, usually from China->Amazon warehouse; fulfilled by Amazon; sales tax never applied. To make matters worse these sellers have crowded out people that pay the sales tax in many categories because it's usually stuff that is 90% bought on price and well there's an automatic discount of 15%. I vaguely remember a report on TV of some small stores being slowly bled to death because their margins are below the sales tax percentage and the competition often just passes on 90% of the tax "savings" to dominate categories on price.

Iirc. Britain has made some sort of deal or passed some sort of law to control this explicitly.

The counterfeiters are also Bezos' customers he has to show them some true customer love too /s

Exactly. I'm not going to cancel my Prime membership, but I do make it a habit of buying certain products on other sites now.

Another pet peeve: product descriptions are frequently insufficient to inform a purchase decision. I recently had to resort to using jet.com for some under-the-sofa storage boxes and amazon just did not have sufficient product description detail to make me confident in the purchase.

I am assuming they now this and figure that the costs of fixing this problem outweigh the benefits they'll experience from fixing it.

But Amazon isn't "customer focused" when it comes to strategic threats - for example Android - and Amazon's response - the Fire phone, Their App Store.

So the question is - are low cost goods, coming pretty directly from chinese manufacturers, often counterfeited and sold at a low price a strategic threat to Amazon ?

They might, if you look at alibaba, but also on the tendency of capitalistic markets to stabilize on focusing on crap: just look at the quality of white goods, planned obsolescence, the security of the consumer IOT, etc etc.

As consumers we also have to acknowledge some complicity here. In most categories of products, time and again, American consumers have chosen price and convenience over quality.

Not so sure:

When buying something(say a white good) - how do i know how long it would last and whether it's worth the price ?

And that's information companies hold, but don't share. And it's intentional.

And if Americans could have found product with double the life and only 30% increase in costs - it's a great deal. And it's definitely techically possible, for many products.

Preferring convenience and low prices != complicity

Why would Amazon have an interest in dealing with counterfeits? It just primes the market for them moving in with their brand of the thing.

Because it erodes trust in the platform, obviously. Would you buy something from a website if you were concerned it might be counterfeit?

That being said, I've been a prime customer for years and I've never encountered this issue. I'm actually surprised to hear that's even a thing.

> Because it erodes trust in the platform, obviously. Would you buy something from a website if you were concerned it might be counterfeit?

It just seems like it'd lead to exactly this kind of effect (quoting another user from above):

> I frequently purchase from Amazon, and haven't(to my knowledge) received counterfeit goods. Generally I stick to "fufilled by Amazon" or otherwise first-party sellers, so that may have something to do with it.

Trust in the platform entails "the buttons worked as expected (i.e. didn't glitch me out of my money)". Trust in the product and sellers can be eroded, but that just makes it more likely that users would next time look for more trustworthy sellers.

I suppose you meant a trust in the ecosystem, but that wouldn't necessarily be eroded either as people would tend to assume that as long as you're smart about it you're fine. (e.g. people get mugged in shady alleys, but this doesn't erode trust in city living - people just learn not to go down those alleys.)

Because it used to be a no-brainer to buy things on Amazon, one click and done. Now I have to very carefully vet the listing before buying, inspect the product once received etc. Certain categories of items I would now never buy from Amazon in its current state (vitamins, fish oil etc.)

Amazon has built a great reputation and trust with their customers, and they're going to lose it the way they're going.

What you're essentially describing is the blind trust people think they can put in a brand name, applied to a store.

I like and use Safeway, but I would hardly fault them if they carried something I didn't thoroughly check out if it turned out to be a shitty brand.

> Now I have to very carefully vet the listing before buying, inspect the product once received etc.

Did you not research products before you bought them traditionally? That just sounds like you were happy you used to be able to 'get away with' irresponsible buying because a store 'was limited' to niche (thus generally quality) sellers, but not now now that it's open to everyone.

It's not a platform's job to do your research for you. They enable buyers, sellers, reviews and so on to do that amongst each other, as would any other storefront.

You're talking about researching a product in general, I'm talking about buying a SanDisk brand SD card and receiving a cheap knockoff with SanDisk poorly printed on it and totally different specs.

I do think it is Amazon's responsibility to not sell fake stuff. Even buying only Amazon shipped and fulfilled products does not help, as all the inventory is co-mingled by the product ID. They've taken the poor approach of not sanitizing their inputs, and now their product inventory & database is corrupt, and it's going to be really hard to fix.

> I like and use Safeway, but I would hardly fault them if they carried something I didn't thoroughly check out if it turned out to be a shitty brand.

Isn't it much easier for Safeway to answer the question, "Are we buying these earphones from Apple?" than it is for a shopper to answer, "Are these genuine Apple earphones"?

> It's not a platform's job to do your research for you

A platform can choose to do whatever job it wants. If Platform A sells significant fewer counterfeit goods than Platform B then customers will prefer Platform A.

it Primes the market?

How would you fix it?

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