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Comment by swozey | Hacker News Reader

I buy nearly everything on Amazon but they have a serious counterfeit problem with stuff like hair supplies, cologne, batteries, etc. I'll only buy that sort of stuff from a vendor I know (if its third party Amazon). 99% of the stuff I buy off Amazon is completely fine, though.

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That's not as good as you might think. If Amazon is handling the fulfillment, Amazon commingles the goods provided by the vendor with any other vendor selling the same product. Amazon figures 1 package of gillette razor blades is the same as every other package claiming to be Gillette Razor Blades ( picking a random brand I can remember at the moment)

See this for more explanation: https://www1.avalara.com/trustfile/en/blog/commingle-not-com...

As a seller you can opt out of commingling and still have Amazon fulfill it, and a lot of sellers do specifically because of these quality issues.

But yeah, some people do it and it's a big part of the counterfeit problem. As a seller you have to have to weigh dealing with counterfeits vs shipping logistics. "Your products take an extra week to get to me? Forget it, I'll buy from that guy."

I don't think there's a way for a buyer to know without messaging the seller.

Is there any way for me, as a buyer, to see if a particular item is being commingled or not? (But still fulfilled by Amazon?)

I'm not sure, but I think it's denoted by the "also sold by these 433 sellers" line (or similar) below the price.

Can you find a page that has that? If you're talking about this:

> Used & new (28) from $19.99 & FREE shipping on orders over $25.00. Details

it's not really indicative of anything other than that someone else is selling it.

There is no way to tell from the listings page unfortunately. Once you receive the product non-commingled items will have a sticker over the EAN/UPC/Barcode which includes the sellers own SKU, barcode, item condition (New, Used) and item name. If the product doesn't have one of these stickers and the EAN/UPC is uncovered it is most likely commingled.

You can always contact the seller, who has to maintain a 24h response time average to maintain their selling privileges.

As a seller, I would much rather you contacted me before buying. My average response time is 8 minutes and most big sellers I know are <3 hours.

It's really tragic the consumer can't validate this. So I just don't buy FBA stuff if buying from Amazon.

Please just contact the seller if this is a genuine concern, it's so easy, and we have to respond within 24 hours (on average).

1. Click seller name

2. Click contact (seller)

3. Type "Is ASIN BXXXXXXX commingled?"

4. Hit send.

But as a consumer it's even easier for me to just buy it somewhere else, which is what I do. I'm not in the business of verifying if everything I buy off Amazon is commingled or not, I just want to buy it.

Perfectly simple. Easier to just avoid FBA (or Amazon).

I'd say it's probably against their best interest to do so. People would just start buying "not commingled" items only, which would be a big hit to their shipping times.

Looking at the seller rating is probably the best you can do aside from messaging or going somewhere else.

Well that is disheartening. I figured if it was from Amazon I could somewhat assume authenticity.

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