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Comment by grandalf | Hacker News Reader

I'm still a loyal Amazon shopper but I've been victimized by this many times. The worst part is that some of the counterfeit items will actually cause property damage when they malfunction (chargers, batteries, etc.)

Others are so inexpensive that it's not really worth the hassle to return them.

Now I'm reluctant to order any electronics product that doesn't have at least 500 reviews, as the scammers have become good at getting 50-100 fake reviews for counterfeit items.

Amazon needs to step up and fully insure all purchases against counterfeiting. The worst part is that this kind of stuff is ammunition for the Trump supporter view that Amazon is doing harm to the American economy by promoting goods manufactured by cheap labor abroad.

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> The worst part is that this kind of stuff is ammunition for the Trump supporter view that Amazon is doing harm to the American economy by promoting goods manufactured by cheap labor abroad.

So you're saying the worst part isn't that people are getting ripped off with fire-hazard chargers and lead-paint baby toys, but that a Trump supporter might be able to make a point because of it?

I think that the ideological shift toward hating/resenting foreign people is a bigger problem than the fraud inflicted on some consumers due to the practice, yes.

The other day I was shopping for tooth whitening strips and the top result was a sketchy no-name product with 400 5 star reviews and only 2 verified purchases. I left a review warning people that the reviews are fake and amazon rejected it. Apparently fake reviews are fine, and thousands of prank reviews from redditors are fine, but calling out fakes is against the TOS. It was so infuriating and made me feel like amazon is intentionally allowing their customers to be defrauded.

Amazon makes tremendous profit on all of the counterfeit goods, so unless customers resort do doing credit card chargebacks Amazon is unlikely to notice. Chances are chargebacks would result in account termination, so Amazon's market power is sort of obvious in this case.

I started figuring in the cost of toxic landfills, and the pollution (manufacturing + transport) for items to come to my door. So I do mind throwing away cheap electronics, because they’re anything but cheap.

True. Countries with lax emissions laws arbitrage environmental damage in exchange for short-term profits.

When we import goods from these countries, we too arbitrage environmental damage for short-term profits.

Since the environment is global, a filthy and polluted river or smokestack in China is harmful to all of us in the US, even if we are not directly drinking out of it or breathing it in.

I think all products made from imported parts should contain disclosure about what environmental harm was created in the manufacture of the parts. I'm not loyal to American manufacturing in the least, but it's silly to pretend that there is fair competition when a product manufactured in the US must comply with extensive environmental regs that the Chinese product does not.

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