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Comment by CWuestefeld | Hacker News Reader

I think folks misunderstand the Amazon data model. It appears that Product represents a thing that can be sold. But beneath that there's something like a SellerItem, which represents a given Product as sourced from a particular Seller.

If Amazon is notified of a counterfeit Product, the correct action is NOT to remove the Product. There's no reason to think that there's anything wrong with that SKU (it's got the right description, part#, media assets, reviews, and everything).

The problem is the SellerItem - they ought to do something about the naughty seller who's trying to pass off the counterfeit item as if it's the actual Product.

Thus, even if Amazon nukes the offending Seller, the Product will still appear on the site. But one would hope that the offending seller is not listed as one of the choices for fulfilling the order.

Now, Amazon's apparent willingness to treat on-hand inventory from all Sellers as fungible is another problem...

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Why should I even care about their data model as a costumer? If any other seller would pull a trick like this: "sorry, my supplier provided counterfeit items - I have nothing to do with it", they would be f-cked anyway. If Amazon stores, Amazon sells, Amazon ships then Amazon is responsible. Try to order some counterfeit iPhones from China and sell them on local market. When authorities come, give them an excuse: "look, it's an Apple logo on it and supplier told it's really iPhone, it's not my fault this item is counterfeit" and tell us how it went.

Yes, of course. What I'm trying to explain is why it doesn't make sense to expect Amazon to completely expunge all references to a given Product simply because one Seller has been shown to offer counterfeit instances of it.

I do understand what you mean, I just don't understand how Amazon avoids responsibility for not filtering their suppliers whereas all other retailers are enforced to that and face hefty fines for failing to do so. There's no use of removing one individual seller when 10 comes in its place instantly.

If they lack the ability to isolate inventory originating from untrustworthy sources or adequately manage its supplier relationships, then yes.

This will blow up in their face when a bunch of preschoolers die when a fake iPad charger or battery burns the school down.

So if you go to the mall, and in the mall a seller sold a counterfeit item, then you believe the Mall will be shutdown, not just the individual store in the mall?

Really?

because that is what Amazon is, an online shopping mall

This analogy is false, because mall doesn't handle goods directly, while Amazon does. It's not uncommon to get counterfeit item even in orders "fulfilled by Amazon". Amazon is more like supermarket imho, where you can "rent" shelf space and I'm pretty sure such supermarket would get into trouble if some of their renters would fill the shelves with counterfeit goods.

If the company who own the mall have their name over the shop door, have their workers inside it, process the transaction, have their name on the receipt, have their name as the receiver on the bank statement ... then yes, that company should not escape penalty just because they own the mall too.

Another issue of letting sellers glom on to the main product SKU listing is that the reviews are all over the map, and there's no way for a customer to tell which review came from which seller.

I bought some tripod mounts for a VR rig - some of the reviews said they were plastic, some said metal, some said the quality was good or bad, etc. I rolled the dice, and got metal ones that smelled so badly of gasoline that I couldn't keep them in the house. Ended up buying some name brand, that at least had predictable quality.

There are lots of things that Amazon could do to counter these issues. Just look at what they are doing for Prime and 'sold by Amazon' - there is a big checkbox when searching to only show prime-eligible items, and when looking at the list of sellers, amazon is shown prominently with different graphics. They could easily do the same things for verified owners of products, so that OEMs could sell on Amazon and customers could be sure they're buying a genuine article.

If it were truly an insoluble problem, why are there no 'Amazon Basics' counterfeits on the market?

That's technically true yet also irrelevant. Amazon fully controls all aspects of sale.

With other categories that Amazon decided to care about, like toys during Christmas, they put controls on who can sell them and has qualifications to make it harder for a bad seller to just reappear.

In a major category like headphones and power supplies, the company takes a Casablanca style "we're shocked that there is counterfeiting going on here!", although it's not credible that genuine product could be sold at the price points they are selling for.

>they ought to do something about the naughty seller who's trying to pass off the counterfeit item as if it's the actual Product.

Which is a problem because how can they hold the seller accountable when they co-mingle items?! They need to barcode and track every item sent in for co-mingling so they know exactly who to punish.

ADD: If the items are co-mingled and I send in a legit item, another seller sends in counterfeits, a buyer chooses my offering because I sell it for less or because I get better reviews, but the item is fulfilled by Amazon, and Amazon just grabs a random item from the SKU bin and sends the buyer the counterfeit item, there's a possibility that I get punished and blamed for something out of my control. Yes, I could pay more to not co-mingle but why should I have to pay to solve Amazon's problem? They either need to track all items sent in or require non co-mingling for everyone.

Amazon keeps commingled items in separate bins. They know where problematic inventory comes from.

As of now there's no extra charge to not commingle. There was a bonus offered last year to commingle, but not currently.

When did this change?

I know it's been like that at least a year, I don't know for sure if they've tracked it since they launched the program.

But basically they keep different inventory in different bins so they know who to blame if there's an issue. Just because they're shipping my goods for your sales doesn't mean they can't track whose goods it was.

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