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Comment by jakelarkin | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

> 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".

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"

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.

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