Amazon Merchants Continue to Find Ways to Cheat | Hacker News Reader

Amazon Merchants Continue to Find Ways to Cheat

bloomberg.com

171 pointsnon_sequitur80 comments

fake/dangerous products are the bigger issue with Amazon. I have seen prenatal fish oil supplements that are supposed to retail for $50, on Amazon fulfillment for $40 and on Alibaba for $18. Who's to say 3rd party merchants aren't reselling the fake Alibaba ones on Amazon for tidy profits? Odds are the fake ones are just repackaged low quality supplements, chock full of mercury.

With the breakneck pace of scams can anyone really trust Amazon fulfilled Merchants for items with very specific safety tolerances? (medication/supplements, hepa air filters, electrical components, just to name a few things) I have just started ordering more things direct from manufacturers web-stores rather than deal with the stress.

Going on previous stories I understand that you can't even trust trustworthy sellers... since Amazon will mix inventory up unless they pay extra?

And you can't tell if they are paying extra?

This is not entirely true. You can opt out of commingling. It's true that you cannot tell if they are commingling or not as a shopper. It depends on the seller's setup but commingling has lighter labeling requirements. Depending on the product type that can either be an insignificant added cost or a significant one. For higher priced products the benefits of commingling aren't worth the risks.

Since purchasers can't tell this is basically worthless.

I always opt out of comingled but have still had products get comingled. Which makes me think that they are pretty loose with their processes and procedures when it comes to some products.

yeah you can, if the barcode of the product has been covered over with a new barcode starting with X it's seller specific inventory

That's useful, but if you don't know until it arrives, it's hard to pick the right one.

Shampoo & conditioner is another big area that's easily scammed. Very easy to fake product, very hard for customers to detect, and the costs are so low that getting caught isn't much of a deterrent.

To be fair: that's largely because shampoo and conditioner are largely fake products to begin with, differentiating themselves on the basis of color and scent instead of performance.

You should still know what you are getting. If you are purchasing a specific product, it may because of (for example) a skin disorder and you know that specific brand does not cause you any problems. There's also the question of how many corners are being cut - you can cut some and still get a safe, working (if inauthentic) product, but cutting too many (which a manufacturer of fake products is more likely to do) may result in a product which either doesn't work or is actively dangerous.

Wouldn't perfumes be much more juicy targets for counterfeiters? Or do the perfume companies actually try to protect their brands?

Shampoos are probably $10 a bottle while peefumes are at least 5 times that.

(Also you can buy Alberto brand shampoos for $1 at a dollar store. Hopefuly nobody counterfeits $1 shampoos!)

Some shampoos are at least 5 times that. But more importantly, most people buy at least 5 times as much shampoo and conditioner as they do perfume.

Haven't seen this at all, even in the $100+ shampoos. Much more likely you will get a product that is past its shelf life with shampoos than a fake.

Fakes are more likely in fragrances, and mid to high value but still high volume makeups and skincare.

> Haven't seen this at all

How exactly would you know? Are you testing the chemical composition of shampoo samples off of Amazon?

I submit that shampoo & conditioner are a lot easier to fake than fragrances. Perfumes are delicate and average consumers can compare and contrast fragrance samples to see if they smell the same. But shampoo & conditioner fragrances are not as delicate, so it's easier to fake based just on texture and color. And there are plenty of high-end "salon" brands with high profit margins... and sell a LOT more volume than perfume.

I've bought fake makeup on Amazon 3x. One was a fake urban decay eyeshadow box, another was fake Ben Nye powder that was supposed to be "banana powder" but was really just baby powder with yellow dye. And last week they sent me fake face cream. It's so annoying.

Now I only use sephora.com. Sucks.

Wish Amazon cared enough about customers to fix this.

If it goes inside or is applied directly onto our bodies, or our pet's body, we generally no longer shop for it at Amazon, because Amazon will not take responsibility for authenticating the product. Other retailers will, without much of a price difference.

Maybe it's just my old school expectations and ethics but to me you've just made an arguement for not buying anything at all from Amazon. If they don't care about me and mine, why should I show them any love at all?

I also won't shop for a lot of electrical-related products on Amazon ever since Apple bought a bunch of (sold and fulfilled by Amazon) counterfeit "Apple" macbook power adapters.

Apple bought a bunch?

Amazon sourced charging cables from a third-party (Mobile Star) and listed them as 'by Apple' and 'shipped and sold by Amazon'. Apple then purchased them, probably realizing they didn't sell them to Amazon or people were having problems like fires. In the end, Apple sued Mobile Star for counterfeiting.

http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2016/10/apple-su...

Amazon is doing something about this. It has become very hard to get approved for "Topicals" now unless you are at least selling some brands where you have authorisation direct from the brands.

As of the past few weeks Amazon are also going to existing sellers and requesting the same documentation:

  Certificate of Analysis (COA) or
  FDA orange book application number or
  Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) certificate

It is still unknown as to how much of a sellers range Amazon will expect this documentation for.

And how am I supposed to know or keep track of this? I just want to buy something and forget about it, not keep track of Amazon's logistics.

>Who's to say 3rd party merchants aren't reselling the fake Alibaba ones on Amazon for tidy profits?

Hmmm. Have you looked at Amazon? A lot - or most IMHO - of the products ARE Chinese (So you get the famous "Made in China Quality Control"). Sellers usually add $10-$20 markup over Alibaba/Aliexpress.

(Don't know how Aliexpress is so profitable since their website is worse than Amazon (yes, that is possible); they couldn't even hire a native English speaker to copyedit it.)

Depending on the product $10 markup is probably a good deal, since you get Amazon-quality shipping as opposed to the Chinese sellers stuffing your purchase into a trashbag with zero padding.

They run taobao, whoch operates primarily in China.

Dropshippers front for aliexpress so their website doesn’t matter.

> Don't know how Aliexpress is so profitable since their website is worse than Amazon (yes, that is possible); they couldn't even hire a native English speaker to copyedit it.

Aliexpress sells to Chinese people which makes it profitable, but also to drophippers and reseller which makes it even more profitable but also to international buyers across the world and (with alibaba) sells bulk. All at affordable prices and with a glitch in the matrix in shipping fees. They also charge you in your local currency to avoid additional currency exchange fees.

This beats amazon.com not selling their products outside the US and having to contract a US reshipper and adding customs fees and international shipping on top of it.

I'm not sure why the bad mouthing of aliexpress and Chinese sellers, I've been doing business on aliexpress for several years and I'd say 95% of my orders went flawlessly and maybe 2-3% were not up to par in term of shipping. I got 99% refund for those.

Also yes amazons and ebays have a lot of Chinese sellers and resellers of Chinese stuff, most of the time with a hefty markup but sometimes cheaper than aliexpress, go figure.

anecdote: I just gave up trying to find 2 items on Amazon: Waterproof LED Lanterns that take AA batteries, and Teeth-grinding night guards.

Re Lanterns, everything sold on there is basically the same chinese design with variations on features. They are all collapsable and all feature a battery compartment that gets flooded. Hard to call a product waterproof if your batteries are literally submerged. I decided to buy Ozark lanterns from Walmart instead.

Re night guards: All the "two size" products are literally the same product that's been white-labeled. At least 10 different brandings. Not good because the product pictures are extremely misleading. Unfortunately since amazon doesn't allow returning oral products I'm stuck with 2 of these.

Cutting out the middle man.

Lots of people in my country are bypassing Amazon and other Western web retailers now.

I know Americans think Amazon is god but they're not the cheapest or even the fastest. Certainly not were I live.

There are caveats: customer service can be... lacking. And the tax man doesn't like undeclared imports.

Hopefully in the US women taking prenatal vitamins are getting them through a pharmacy or via planned parenthood or a state run program. Given all of those options there’s no reason to buy medications from amazon.

For products like that I do two things:

1) Ask Amazon support if they use commingled inventory

2) Only buy from "Shipped and Sold by Amazon"

> I have just started ordering more things direct from manufacturers web-stores rather than deal with the stress.

In many ways ordering from Amazon used to be a no-brainer for convenience. But now I have to wade through competing suppliers merely to find the best price. WTF? I'll just go to the store, or order from a manufacturer like you, or some other supplier like New Egg (yay patent-troll warriors!) where available.

But I do still use Amazon to find products and reviews, I just don't order from Amazon.

fwiw Newegg is also going down the path of turning into a "third-party marketplace".

The only people that should be able to leave reviews for a product are people that have purchased it from that listing. I’ve found that the only reviews worth reading are the ones that are from verified purchasers.

The article mentions the way they're even able to abuse that: giving gift cards to users who can then buy the product and leave a fake review as a verified purchaser.

well the next step is to have a required number of unrelated purchase from other vendors/etc. all sorts of ways to put a brake on it.

give buyers history similar to how ebay does, once you pass a number of unrelated purchases your rating actually affects the items score. another method is that before the score is counted your account has to be XXX days old.

There are review programs that act as a middleman between the buyers/reviewers and sellers that aggregate multiple items to review from many sellers. They could easily circumvent something like that (for example, if you want to participate, you get to buy 5 cheap shit items with a 90% discount from different sellers and have to leave 5-star reviews.)

I think the first step would be not accepting reviews, or downranking them, similarly to unverified purchases, if the purchase was discounted with a promo code given by the seller.

Merchants and their friends can buy their own products...

Still helps with the problem of downvoting competitor products, which seems more insidious.

> The only people that should be able to leave reviews for a product are people that have purchased it from that listing.

That might make sense for electronics and other items, though even here sellers have found ways to get around it by offering to reimburse their shills who bought the product just for a 5-star shill review.

However, Amazon's introduction of the Verified Purchase tag on reviews and recent changes that make non-VP reviews difficult to view, has had a deleterious effect on reviews for books, films and music. There were a lot of great well-written and insightful reviews written by people who got the media in question from the library (or a filesharing community). For books and films, that reviewing culture lives on at Goodreads and IMDB, but both are now owned by Amazon and who knows how long those reviews might last. There is however no analogue for reviews of music (Allmusic has strict character count limits and few ever go there, Discogs reviews seem mainly meant for vinyl enthusiasts).

Yes, in retrospect it was silly for fans of music, books and films to create a rather non-commercial community of enthusiasts on the basis of a site whose sole aim is to make lots of money, but I still regret what has been lost.

As long as there is a profit interest to game the reviews people will try. At least with Goodreads there is some, but less, interest.

> That might make sense for electronics and other items [...] Amazon's introduction of the Verified Purchase tag on reviews and recent changes that make non-VP reviews difficult to view, has had a deleterious effect on reviews for books, films and music.

Surely Amazon could control this on a category-by-category level...

> it was silly for fans of music, books and films to create a rather non-commercial community of enthusiasts on the basis of a site whose sole aim is to make lots of money

Nothing silly about it at all. I've written many such reviews and I'm well aware that I'm giving my work for free to a profit making entity. The thing is, I also benefit a lot from reviews on Amazon, even for things I'd never buy. Amazon is my go-to site for reviews on books and music. (Not so for films, I use IMDB for that.) I enjoy writing and posting the reviews, and enjoy getting "likes" on them from others that find them useful.

> who knows how long those reviews might last.

One point in Goodreads's favor: they make it easy to export your entire library to a CSV which you can reprocess. (For example, I have a Haskell script which reads my Goodreads export and turns it into a Markdown table.) So even if they go down or start to disappear, people can get their reviews out.

That's why you should always save your writings and post it on your blog, etc.

Keep it in 3 places: review site, your blog, local storage (and backups).

I am still pissed about the IMDB Forums.

There was a music recommendation thread there that I forgot to read before it was nuked by Amazon.

That few kilobytes of knowledge are gone from the history forever... like tears in...

Music reviews: Sputnikmusic.com (primarily new releases), metal-archives.com (Metal, obviously).

Neither of those are comparable to Amazon, which offers the possibility of reviewing the whole scope of recordings available for sale.

> I’ve found that the only reviews worth reading

Losing the useful reviews in the noise is a definite problem. Even if you filter those from fake accounts, you end up with some reviews like this one, which is of basically no use to anyone (yet 3 people marked it as helpful...):

> Delivery status is still pending. This laptop has decent specs but a lack of SsD really makes me sad. I will update this review when i receive the product

If you poke around, you can easily find newly launched listing with hundreds of reviews ranking on the first page of popular keywords. E.g. search "earbuds". There will be a handful of results on the first page from no name brands, with all reviews within the last month, many unverified. That first page placement gets them thousands of sales before it falls off and they go launch a new product.

I don't know the methods but it's more than just reviews.

reddit found that some Adidas Ultra Boost sneakers sold on Amazon were replicas (fake). The authentic and replica sneakers are co-mingled. It's crap shoot what you get; even some "ships from and sold by Amazon.com" sneakers were fakes.

Amazon's response is to issue a refund if you receive reps. However replicas are often quite convincing, and most customers won't know how to tell the difference. The carelessness here is just astounding: it seems like they're begging for a lawsuit.

1: https://www.reddit.com/r/frugalmalefashion/comments/685wca/u...

As the topic has been discussed on HN over the years, I've often thought it might be cool to create a browser extension that only shows reviews from HN users with the option of specifying a minimal karma threshold. Perhaps the HN community is too small, so substitute reddit where appropriate. Anyone have thoughts on such a thing?

That's a neat idea, how would you confirm identity, though? Could be challenging to reach critical mass.

Why tie it to only HN and/or reddit? It could be a choice for users to make, about which sites to correlate with which review sites.

In any case, interesting idea, thanks for sharing!

Something like what keybase does with e.g. reddit should work.

As def_true_false mentioned, the way keybase handles things would be what I was thinking, but the crypto doesn't have to be as strong, nor the workflow so elaborate.

And for those mentioning gaming, HN does pretty well against all but the most sophisticated and motivated. Browse with 'show dead' on you can see there are plenty of attempts. A link to their profiles on HN and reddit would allow for review of their comment histories in order to determine authenticity/ how closely tastes align.

Even Amazon could allow us to filter reviewers by review history, or other such criteria.

Edit: You are probably right about allowing other identity providers, but the idea was to minimize the addressable market in order to study the dynamics of such a platform. Your comment definitely made me think of it as a possibly viable idea, thanks!

>That's a neat idea, how would you confirm identity, though?

I am surprised there is not a Bitcoin-inspired "solution" to the problem of fake reviews.

Are sites like fakespot not sufficient (or any other popular meta review sites)? HN/reddit review writers would be such a tiny subset of purchasers that you probably wouldnt get much relevant data.

The goal would be to seek out the signal instead of trying to identify the noise.

reddit is constantly being gamed, too.

That would just destroy HN , :-)

"I'm a bit reluctant to buy this because from what I've heard, Levi makes these specifically for amazon and they are of much lesser quality. They had a similar deal a few months ago (where a certain pair was available for pre-order) and I can tell you first hand that those were much lesser quality than the other 511's I have."

Recently gleaned from a user of /r/frugalmalefashion on reddit. I think it adds to this discussion quite a bit. Ironically I'm still perusing amazon hard today as part of Black Friday sales.

This is normal business. Black Friday, and low price retailers are sourced from the worst bins and suppliers while having the same exterior.

This is also common for outlet stores.

direct link to source: https://www.reddit.com/r/frugalmalefashion/comments/7f779z/l...

With regards to Levi's specifically, I've found that their highest quality jeans are made in Turkey. I can't speak to any "Made in the USA" Levi's, they cost more than I've been willing to pay. Made in Mexico Levi's have, in my experience, been the next tier down, and made anywhere else tends to be lower quality fabrics and workmanship. I haven't been to an outlet, but I have landed some really good deals on quality jeans on the clearance rack at the Levi's store in King Of Prussia, knowing that their online promotions are matched in-store.

While you can't look at those tags online, the MSRP on the Levi's website is typically a decent indicator of the quality you're looking at. Jeans marked down to $49.98 from $69.50 are a cheaper grade (e.g. cardboard patch on the back instead of leather, lower quality fabric used in the pockets) than $49.98 jeans marked down from $89.50 or $128. All that said, stick to 12oz denim and higher and you're looking at diminishing returns going upward from an MSRP of $89.50. I've snagged some of the higher dollar stuff during the summer "Take 50% off sale prices" seasonal blowouts, and aside from one positive comment about a pair of Made & Crafted, no one else has ever noticed if I'm wearing a $20 pair or a $120 pair.

I'll just pitch in on this - I've noticed that textiles made in Turkey are really great quality, unlike many of their other exports.

Same goes for tableware, good quality for cheap.

It's a systemic problem with Amazon's marketplace, but their stock has been performing well, so until they start taking multi-quarter financial hits, their executives don't have a huge incentive to care about these marketplace problems.

The FBA aspect of Amazon has created many of the problems, such as fake reviews, merchant scamming, and counterfeit products, but FBA sellers are also a huge money maker for Amazon, so they are in a very precarious situation of managing expectations across their customers, sellers, and themselves.

I use https://www.fakespot.com to filter out fake product reviews and I found to match my gut feelings most of the time.

One time, I was contacted by someone who wanted to open up a community forum for Amazon sellers. I told him that's about the worst idea I've ever heard.

The online selling community is so cut throat and fractured that it goes well beyond healing at this point. It's a game of win at costs.

This absolutely nothing new. Sellers will leave bad reviews, flag legitimate listings for fraud, sue each other, and myriad other things.

To give an idea of how old this is, look at the origin story of Nast Gal clothing.

That was one of the reasons why I decided to completely ditch Amazon. And I don't regret it.

Where do you shop for things? Direct business websites, or only physical stores?

I haven't had this issue with Amazon myself, but the threat of it does weigh on my mind. Nonetheless, what pushed me over the edge of not buying from them anymore is they really just don't care what happens once a package leaves the warehouse.

Amazon insists on regularly using a specific carrier to get product to me which alters altogether the concept of what it means to get product to someone. There's a whole story behind this, but Amazon is a big company and clearly is shooting to satisfy the lowest common denominator. I've tried to resolve my issues with them but just get whatever script their corporate spokeshole gives to customer support to parrot. I get it, I'm not their common problem... but since I'm their edge case... I'm done with them.

I will shop Amazon chiefly as a sort of search engine when necessary and buy direct or from some other seller once I know the product exists; maybe use them for price check. In fact, given the unreliability of Amazon actually getting product to me in any predictable fashion, it's usually just more convenient to drive to a B&M store and make the purchase (I do check inventory before I leave the house ;-) ).

If Facebook is concerned about fake news, why isn't Amazon concerned about fake products?

They are both equally "concerned". They can see their metrics and they know when bad reputation is hurting more than increased hits/throughput is helping

Facebook isn't concerned about fake news, it's concerned about bad press and possibly facing regulation. Make the bad press about Facebook fake news go away and Facebook will stop caring about fake news on their platform.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/opinion/facebook-regulati...

I'm not saying FB's concern is sincere, just that it exists. They are aware there's an issue. They are aware it could hurt them.

Jeff \ Amazon seem to be taking the head in the sand approach.

Maybe they could form a partnership with Consumer Reports? Like, if you're a prime member, you could see related Consumer Reports reviews? Maybe Consumer Reports could review Amazon's practices?

In some categories, Amazon is putting more weight onto editorial reviews. It'd be a good thing for Amazon and a good thing for product oriented media companies for those reviewers and reviews to regain some of the clout and influence that they have lost to easily manipulated user reviews.

On the flip side I think media companies have to do more to deserve the trust of shoppers. More Consumer Reports style product evaluations and less clickbait trolling, more investment into respectable writers/video reviewers who have integrity and earn a real salary to make them resistant to PR bribery.

I don't think most shoppers fully understand how extreme the review manipulation is on the brand and merchant side of things. One issue is that the Federal government does not enforce the laws on the books against many of the worst types of manipulation. I'm not a particularly pro-regulation type of guy, but this is one of the consequences of zero law enforcement in a particular area of business: you become a sucker if you abide by the law when none of your competitors are.

The Yelps and Amazons of the world are kind of split on this because they both want to restore/retain the trust that users have in these reviews without drawing attention to how absurd the level of manipulation is.

Another issue is the entirely legitimate manipulation of reviews that nonetheless confers a competitive advantage. One local car dealership that did some service on my car has earned thousands of positive five star reviews by being extremely aggressive with e-mail followup to people who show up for even minor service interactions. I gave them five stars out of bemusement and because we legitimately received good service on a free interaction paid for by the car manufacturer with a rebate. But I would have been much less generous with my five star review had I had to pay for the service, as everyone is. That's why Amazon as of last year bans that practice.

I have myself counseled clients in ecommerce and written email sequence scripts to do just this kind of manipulation. But in the case of this dealership and of most people, is the dealership that is the most efficient at running an email marketing program really the best car dealership in the area by an order of magnitude? While it may be an indicator of the overall professionalism of the company and a signal of business health, it's pretty unrelated to the business of selling cars and servicing them. As a rather clueless car owner, I'm not even really qualified to give an intelligent opinion about the quality of a dealership apart from how I feel about it and whether or not I (rather clueless) think that I was ripped off or not.

Why is my unqualified opinion based on that minor interaction worth more than that of someone who really knows a lot about cars, bought a car from that dealership, and has had dozens of service appointments with the mechanic? Why is my dumb 5 star rating worth the same amount as that guy's? It makes no sense.

Consumer Reports is expensive. Media company reviews are free.

It's not that expensive considering what you get (essentially saving me, collectively, tons of hours researching products like toaster ovens and leaf blowers I don't necessarily want to learn that much about).

Buying an inferior product or a dysfunctional product is much more expensive than the subscription and it's even more expensive if you factor in wasted time.

Lying for money is fraud. It's a crime, bad like physical assualt is a crime, and using force to suppress it is one of the core obligations of glvernt.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com