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Comment by tombrossman | Hacker News Reader

This is interesting because Amazon isn't exactly known for supply chain integrity. Who here hasn't received fakes from Amazon? If you rely on a specific medication for your health, is Amazon a brand you trust to deliver it? How long until they start commingling pills and shipping random counterfeit/fake product to users?

Hope it never happens but if they do with pharmaceuticals what they did with everything else they sell, it's only a matter of time before users are physically harmed.

Let's be optimistic though, I hope this helps them finally get their shit together and control the rampant counterfeiting going on right under their nose.

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This is a very ill-informed opinion. The supply chain is very strictly regulated for pharmaceutical medications.

Do you really think that Amazon can get their stock medications from just anyone? Do you think there is no oversight on this kind of thing? The DEA doesn't fuck around. They take all of this stuff very seriously.

Commingling medications? Really? In a pharmacy, medications are NEVER allowed to be commingled. If your medication is coming from two different manufacturers, or even the same manufacturer but the pills just look different, the pharmacy must put them in two different bottles to give to you. Stock bottle are not allowed to be mixed together. Ever heard of a recall on medications? That is exactly why. When a recall happens, they need tedious records of where every pill went.

When a prescriptions for a schedule II drug is filled, the pharmacy technician has to count the number of pills being filled twice. Then the pharmacist has to count the number of pills, and then backcount the stock bottle to make sure everything is kosher and no pills are missing.

I understand not everyone knows everything about the pharmaceutical industry, my wife is a pharmacist is the reason I know as much as I do, but to think that there is that little oversight on pharmaceuticals is ludicrous.

That kind of "innovation" is just what I've come to expect from Amazon.

What part of heavily regulated is hard to understand? The Amazon Marketplace is regulated by Amazon. Pharmaceuticals are regulated by the FDA.

Not just the FDA, but also the DEA and the states Board of Pharmacy.

> When a prescriptions for a schedule II drug is filled, the pharmacy technician has to count the number of pills being filled twice. Then the pharmacist has to count the number of pills, and then backcount the stock bottle to make sure everything is kosher and no pills are missing.

Good grace. What a load of unnecessary bureaucracy.

In the modern world medicines come in pre-counted blister packs where there is zero room for error. Here in America we have to wait around an hour for some dolt to count and then double count the pills.

It is pretty remarkable how inefficient getting pills from a pharmacist is. The actual dispensing could be easily handled by a glorified vending machine so all the pharmacist would have to do is punch some buttons on a computer instead of having to physically handle anything except dumping packages from the manufacturer in it upon delivery.

Actually, some pharmacies do have counting robots now which count out their most commonly filled prescriptions, like norco. They’re not perfect though.

Very common now. All the pharmacies in my primary health system's offices use these: https://innovat.com/pharmassist-robotx/

Who do you complain to when the robot shorts you? Unless most doctors are writing scripts for noncomposite amounts of pills this needs to be simpler. Boxes of 15 can turn into 60, 90, 120, etc.

Why make a human type it in if the majority of scripts are coming in via E-prescription?

Baby steps...in order for that to work there'd have to be some kind of interoperable API standard adopted by all doctors in pharmacies that the system understands (I am assuming there is not). In an ideal world there'd be basically no humans involved as soon as the doctor prescribes, obviously...

What makes you think an ideal world would involve no humans after the doctor writes a prescription? There’s a very good reason we have pharmacists. Doctors can and do make mistakes, and they may not know every medication that a patient is taking. Somebody has to catch these mistakes and potentially lethal interactions.

Doctors are typically not experts in medications. Specialists probably know a lot about medications pertaining to their specialty, but asking GPs to know so much about a vast array of diseases AND the medications to treat them all, AND all interactions between medications is unreasonable. Doctors education is primarily in diagnosing disease. Pharmacists go to school just as long as doctors do (I think the major difference is pharmacists don’t typically do a residency after they graduate unless they are not planning to work in a community pharmacy), but their entire education is based around medications. Pharmacists are the medication experts. It’s a good thing that we have both looking after the healthcare of patients.

Hence why I said "ideal"...

That's dramatically overblown and incorrect (and rather insulting to trained professionals whom you apparently know nothing about). Many perscription drigs do come in blister packs in the US, but you may not have seen them because it's generally only the ones that are nearly always perscribed in the same amount - a Zithromax Z-Pack for example.

Any other medication coming in blister packs wouldn't change a darned thing, unless you expect pharmacies to carry large quantities of sealed 5,10,15,20 etc etc dose packs. If they didn't, they'd still be breaking the sealed packs up and counting to match the perscribed amount.

Actually, it changes things quite a bit. The pharmacist ends up doing some basic math for each script instead of counting pills. Italy does this pre-counted system and getting a script filled takes seconds instead of dozens of minutes.

Was also going to mention the same. Amazon will buy directly from the manufacturer.

Clearly the parent commenter didn't intend to imply that the industry is not regulated. I think it was more of a tongue-in-cheek jab at Amazon.

I think it's just generally weird that a shipping and commerce company is taking interest in pharma to begin with. I think it SHOULD make users uncomfortable that a single company is potentially exposed to all these different vertices of user information. They know what you buy, soon they'll know what groceries people buy, what they read, what medicine they take which could in turn reveal metadata like sexual habits or genetic patterns.

It's weird.

Is it weird?

I feel like it's more like Amazon just trying to monopolize everything. There are articles out there talking about getting Amazon-ed. Where Amazon would go in your industry and dominate you out the market. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamescahn/2018/04/24/dont-let-y...)

This is just a natural thing or the thing that Amazon does. Their modus operandi.

> what medicine they take which could in turn reveal metadata like sexual habits

They do recommendation system and I believe they sell sex toys so yeah... Alexia knows your kink already.

It's not weird but I think the better question is is this okay for one company to have so much power in so many area. Or at least I believe that's what you are trying to convey.

I guess I meant weird in the moral sense. It's certainly not unusual given their past behavior as a corp.

Sort of depressing, really.

What always seemed odd to me in such a wasteful society as the US: counting pills. Really? In many countries you get blisters. No counting. I suspect in some European countries it would actually be illegal to do this.

The disadvantage is that there are some leftover pills most of the time. E.g. you need 30 pills and there are only units of 20 available.

In New Zealand, I sometimes receive prescription medication in a generic box full of blister packs, where the last blister pack has been cut down to match the prescribed number of doses. Occasionally I'll get a couple of cut down sheets, presumably using up the leftovers from other people's prescriptions.

> The disadvantage is that there are some leftover pills most of the time. E.g. you need 30 pills and there are only units of 20 available.

This is the exact reason why they count pills. You have a prescription for X pills, you get X pills.

It's been a while since I've had a prescription filled, but I think that in New Zealand it's the same. Most prescription drugs like opiate painkillers or antibiotics are counted and bottled.

Yes, but is it worth the trouble?

Also, you may be able to build robots to dispense pills. But have you seen a European automated pharmacy supplier? Everything is automated. They dispense all the blister packs into a small cart that gets delivered to the pharmacy. In the end it does not matter if you supply a pharmacy with 2-20 medicines or a consumer with 1-10.

  Yes, but is it worth the trouble?

The "schedule II drugs" jeherr mentions as being counted twice are things like cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl. i.e. drugs that could be readily sold onto the black market.

While cocaine and methamphetamine are schedule II, those are poor examples. I don’t think pharmacies ever carry them, and their medical use is very rare.

Fentanyl is commonly carried in pharmacies but it’s not a commonly prescribed medication. Better examples would be adderall, vyvanse, norco and oxycontin.

Here in India, they'll either cut the blisters to your prescription or give already cut blisters from previous orders.

I used to work at a mail order pharmacy. Even though a machine counted the pills a pharmacist had to certify every bottle. This amounted to bottles coming down a conveyor and the pharmacist picking each one up, scanning it, and looking at a picture of the pills on a screen to make sure they are the same. I wouldn’t doubt if Amazon would need to do the same were they to use individual pill counts.

It's the much superior way to do it though, in France all estimate say we would save a lot of money by doing this, but with such a strong phamaceutical lobby it just never happens. Same reason why somehow we have homeopathy being reimbursed as if it was a real medicine, Boiron is french !

Amazon has had drug problems in the past...

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...

https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Health/amazon-prescription-drug-p...

Everyone knows pharmacies are highly regulated, however Amazon has somehow managed to flaunt regulations so far without much consequences.

I’ll grant you it is worrying to see that happening, interesting articles I had no idea about. Though I would think now that Amazon is officially getting into the pharmaceutical game, this will bring them under much more scrutiny for this kind of thing in the future.

I could be wrong, as the first article states, Amazon skated by without so much as a warning while bodybuilding.com had to pay fines for selling the same steroids, but I would expect the FDA is able to throw their weight around more with Amazon now by shutting down their official pharmaceutical operation if they continue to make perscription medications available like this on their retail site.

> In a pharmacy, medications are NEVER allowed to be commingled. If your medication is coming from two different manufacturers, or even the same manufacturer but the pills just look different, the pharmacy must put them in two different bottles to give to you

Are there any exceptions allowed? I'm pretty sure I've had a major nationwide pharmacy give me a bottle with pills from two manufacturers in it. It had pills from the first in the bottom of the bottle, then a cotton wad on top of those, and the pills from the second manufacture on top of the cotton ball.

They opened the bottle when I went to pick it up, and pointed out what was going on inside and made sure I understood. They explained that they did not have enough pills in stock from the manufacturer they had used before for that prescription and refills, so filled out the order from a different manufacturer.

Perhaps it does not count as commingling because they divided the bottle into separate champers with a wad of cotton?

Pharmacy is regulated state by state. What they did may be ok in that state, or may be marginally ok. At the least, they didn’t just dump them into the same bottle together.

I don't know why you're getting downvoted. I've had the same thing happen multiple times, also at a certain "major nationwide pharmacy." Interestingly, the smaller/more local pharmacies have never done this.

I can attest to this. I recently got 2 bottles of seemingly identical muscle relaxers, but they were just two diff manufacturers. And they made a point of calling it out so i knew why i got two half filled bottles..

> This is interesting because Amazon isn't exactly known for supply chain integrity.

The supply chain integrity problems were allowed by Amazon because it benefited their bottom line. If they wanted it perfect, they could have made it perfect.

Remember when the eclipse was happening and they actually did a pretty good job of removing all glasses which weren't safe? They know where integrity counts, and I think when it comes to pharmaceuticals they'll know how to play this game clean. As another user commented: Amazon didn't get this humongous by making silly mistakes like this.

That’s your opinion. I disagree. With the glasses they probably needed lots of filtering by hand. Costed them a lot of money. They were afraid of costly lawsuits. But they don’t have the capacity to do that with every product they sell.

If fake goggles had liability problems wait till they sell a fake medication.

They’ll invest the resources to ensure that doesn’t happen.

Amazon didn’t get big by being stupid.

Invest, or lobby for law changes to protect themselves.

Your point stands.

It's 'easy' to track eack item by type and source. They chose not to.

No, Amazon totally had the ability to separate glasses from different suppliers and keep them apart in the warehouse.

The bogus ones could then have been isolated and recalled, but this is not what happened.

I'd say there are two differences between goggles and medication.

1) Goggles used the existing supply chain. Which, as noted, was designed around the idea that customers would rather have cheaper things from any vendor that things from a specific vendor. Presumably the greenfield / acquired med supply chain is engineered around different desires and regulations.

2) By the time the goggle issue came up, inventory was already in the system. With some presumably co-mingled. I'm just saying I wouldn't want to be the DB analyst who got tasked with untangling that.

I remember that a lot of people found that Amazon told them their genuine glasses were fake, and a lot of people with obvious fakes weren't told anything. They even managed to screw over some sellers of high-end telescope filters that weren't being counterfeited.

> They know where integrity counts, and I think when it comes to pharmaceuticals they'll know how to play this game clean. As another user commented: Amazon didn't get this humongous by making silly mistakes like this.

Exploding hoverboard case shows how hard it is to beat Amazon in court

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/02/amazon-not-liable-for-explod...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17216972

> [T]here were so many cases of fires and explosions that Amazon had halted sales. [...] Fox's case was filled with testimony and evidence illustrating that Amazon execs were concerned about the hoverboards sold on its site. [...] [A]n Amazon vice president said the company had decided to halt sales of hoverboards and send a 'non-alarmist' email to existing customers [...] Fox received the email the next day. It referenced 'recent news reports of safety issues' and offered 'safety tips' for using the product as well as an option to return the device for a refund. There was no use of the word 'fire' or 'explosion.' Fox testified that if Amazon had said that 'they knew what they knew, I certainly would have gotten it out of my house.'

> Remember when the eclipse was happening and they actually did a pretty good job of removing all glasses which weren't safe?

Only after people let them know they were not safe and not within a reasonable timeframe for people to order replacements.

Remember when the eclipse was happening and they actually did a pretty good job of removing all glasses which weren't safe?

They also recalled a number of good units, which only sowed confusion and anger among buyers.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/nation-now/2017/08/14/a...

And it turns out some of the counterfeit glasses did get out to to buyers who thought they were purchasing legitimate units.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-lawsuit-eclips...

I tried doing a limited google search for any news about that story that occurred since November of last year and got 0 hits. Did the case die or is it that the media just doesn't care enough for there to be a single update to the story?

Probably have to check court records to see if it's still open or closed and what happened.

There's activity on the case (2:17-cv-2313-PMD) as recently as earlier this month, but you'll need a Lexis or PACER account to dig in and see what's up. But it doesn't look dead. Amazon is going to probably bury the plaintiffs in paperwork.

I understand the fear, but I don't think fake medicine is as big of an issue as fake market place items.

PillPack already has an established distribution network and prescription delivery licensing in 50 states. I don't know for certain, but I would assume that fake prescription medicine is a much bigger risk and would threaten the operation more than, say, fake batteries.

It's likely they'll integrate on the ecommerce side of things, not on the supply chain side anyhow - the economy of scale that amazon has for shipping will be beneficial.

People don't want to buy legal drugs from their UPS guy.

EDIT: i'm from outside the US, and after reading all the complains about delivery people throwing packages etc, i thought people don't trust delivery guys enough for medicine.

It appears i was wrong.

What exactly do you mean here?

That you don't feel safe receiving your medicine being delivered last mile from some random UPS guy?

If this is what you mean -- I get my medicine by mail order from CVS. I cannot imagine now having to go to CVS every single month I get my medicine.

I mail order my recurring prescription medicines from the hospital pharmacy all the time. No waiting in line and they give me a substantial discount.

My partner buys legal drugs from her pharmacy. Half the friggin time, there's some supply problem on the back-end, and she can't get her drugs in time.

Anyone who could fix this problem will get her business in a heartbeat.

Ditto. I detest Walgreens because of its invasive marketing and spamming, but I use it because CVS in my area can't keep even basic meds in stock.

I'll be among the first to switch to AmazonRx.

For pills, I would expect they'll use USPS, not UPS. That's how I get my medicine. It comes in a shipping bag instead of a box or rigid envelope.

In many cases, insurance mandates that you use their contracted mail-order pharmacy when possible. In other cases, they recommend but don't require it since the fees are lower for everyone that way. This is in the USA.

Yeah, the penalties for selling fake insulin are muuuuuuuuuuuccccccchhh greater for distributors than selling a fake Gucci belt. Also the number of companies with licenses to sell regulated substances is pretty small making it really easy to validate.

it absolutely is a huge issue, with fines that bite. Google had to settle for +500M after serving ads for fake medicines in the US. I wouldn't be surprised if the primary aim here was to get a bargaining chip for their negotiations for their health care JV (a much bigger market)

It doesn't have to be fake to cause harm, at least for epilepsy. The filler in the pills can vary by manufacturer.

Yup. Insurance companies like to pretend all generics are the same, but they are not. Getting them to pay for the brand because all of a sudden your pharmacy switches generic brands is almost impossible.

Can you explain what is different about certain generics?

Generics, all of them I'd intuit, seem to be manufactured with the same active ingredients but different 'filler' ingredients that are non-active.

Abruptly changing that filler could very well send an epileptic into a static seizure.

Shitty generics are a big problem and the FDA doesn't really care.

I reject specific manufacturers from my CVS and get trusted manufacturers all the time.

Hard to do these days though. Teva is killing off a bunch of generics, Puerto Rico still a mess, weird shortages of common meds, etc. Sometimes I spend an entire day going around the city trying to find the specific generic which I'm used to. And then only get partial fills, etc.

The integrity of the pharmaceutical supply chain is controlled by a specific federal law, Title II of the Drug Quality and Security Act of 2013, also known as the Drug Supply Chain Security Act.

The potential liability they would be exposing themselves to if Amazon treated their drug supply chain the way they treat standard 'Fulfilled by Amazon' products would hopefully prevent something like that from ever happening.

The FD&C act imposes strict liability on violations, and criminal prosecutions for mislabeling and adulterating drugs have extended to company officers that were completely unaware of the actions their subordinates had taken.

Amazon isn't stupid: they know _exactly_ where they can play it fast and loose in order to maximize profit and where they must operate under strict regulation. This isn't the former.

Yes, and a part of that is track and trace (aka serialization). Each unit has a unique identifier and must be tracked from manufacturer to patient.[1]

It’s a big infrastructure lift so it’s still being implemented.

[1]https://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/DrugIntegrityandSupplyC...

I think one issue there however is that nearly anyone can sell through Amazon. I assume (perhaps incorrectly) that to be a pharmacy distributing via Amazon would require some level of licensure well beyond what it takes to sell XBox controllers.

Just as a data point, I don't believe I've gotten a fake from Amazon.

> Just as a data point, I don't believe I've gotten a fake from Amazon.

You almost certainly have, though you may not be able to tell the difference if you don't actively look for it.

This is one of the things that gets missed when people talk about Amazon and fakes. It's not just about the cost of keeping nonfunctional fakes out of the product stream, it's about the higher costs of legitimate products.

Obviously, the USB drive stuffed in an SSD case is a fake. But that's not the only kind of fake going - printing "Seagate" on off-brand disks happens too, probably with much higher frequency. And cracking down on that would not just be harder, it would be a way bigger threat to Amazon's margins.

Hopefully the PillPack supply chain stays separate or separately monitored, but this wouldn't surprise me either - most cheap online pharmacies are selling real medicine at lower margins, possibly with worse quality control.

> You almost certainly have, though you may not be able to tell the difference if you don't actively look for it.

The gp merely asked for anecdotal data, nothing rigorous. By disagreeing, you are indirectly implying that the commenter is somehow incapable of telling fakes from the real deal.

How does anyone reliably tell fakes apart?

In my experience, it's been because the fake one breaks down in just a few days and I end up ordering a new one, after which point I notice the important differences between the two :(

This is not a useful data point, because there is a much larger set that this doesn't meaningfully contribute to.

Hacker news comments are hardly a random sample, and yet here we are.

Try buying a PS4/PS3/Xbox controller. There is a good chance it is a good looking fake. Apple accessories are another hit or miss target.

Even if you're buying directly from Amazon, or does this only apply to marketplace sellers?

The problem is that inventory from different sellers is commingled unless the seller pays extra. So Amazon's controllers are in the same bin as the ones from Real Good Fakes Inc. Even if you buy from Amazon the actual product you get might have been supplied by Real Good Fakes.

Is it not still shown as "Fullfilled by Amazon" but all grouped under the same product page? I presumed "Sold by Amazon.com" meant procured, shelved, and shipped directly via Amazon.com, none of this third party fulfillment crap.

I want to know this too. "Fulfilled by Amazon" to me sounds very different than sold by Amazon.

FBA and Sold By Amazon are commingled (unless the FBA seller pays for it not to be; Amazon doesn't segregate SBA because the commingling is part of Amazon's logistical efficiencies, which is why it costs money for sellers to opt out of it.)

It is. The issue is that for the "shelved" step there is only one shelf per piece of inventory. So once it is one the shelf there is no guarantee about the origin.

Amazon does allow sellers to pay extra to keep their inventory separate. I don't know if the stuff Amazon sells is kept that way, but there's no guarantee it is.

Source?

That doesn't make sense. They would then need to make sure "Real Good Fakes" products are cheaper than what they send... At anytime "Real Good Fakes" can ask for his stuff back and that has to be "Real Good Fakes" stuff or there may be a big problem (used vs refurbished vs new).

They automate everything, there's no way there's no barcode for this kind of thing.

>At anytime "Real Good Fakes" can ask for his stuff back and that has to be "Real Good Fakes" stuff

no, they can't, and it doesn't have to be. that's how the FBA program works - when you send your stuff to amazon, they store it in their warehouse on the understanding that it's identical to any other example of the product it is listed as. You can't then turn around and say "i want all the ones i shipped you back", because you've told amazon that the products are interchangeable.

Amazon is actually happy to charge you more to use FBA to keep your inventory non commingled. So you can totally get all the exact things you sent them, as long as you paid for the ability to do so before sending all your stuff to the warehouse.

This seems like a viable scam opportunity.

Ship in a crate of counterfeit widgets to mix into their fulfillment pool. Price them stupidly high so they don't actually sell.

Wait a few weeks, to let the inventory churn. There's a fair chance some of your items will actually be shipped out, and many more will be so mixed with turnover from real sellers that it will be difficult to trace back to you.

Then pull the listing and ask for "your" inventory back. Odds are, you'll get at least some legitimate products back, which you can then sell elsewhere at a significant discount.

The math for it to be economic is interesting and likely varies on product price versus counterfeit price, and the rate at which inventory turns over.

I can confirm this as someone who used to do 6 figures plus of business on amazon every quarter. Unless I mark that I dont want my inventory commingled (which is an option more expensive than general FBA) once my product shows up at the various warehouses it's dumped into a bin along with everyone else who sent in the same part in for FBA fulfillment.

I got all my product from HP via Synnex, all factory sealed brand new genuine parts. The number of times I got burned by people leaving shitty feedback or returning stuff because what they got when they placed there order for the part I was selling was some knockoff that was close but not exactly it was high enough that I no longer sell on there.

I guess I see how this can happen for everything marked as "New" with no extra details, but how does this work when the ones from different vendors are in a different condition (missing box or whatever)? Are they still commingled then? And if so then how do they make sure the condition matches the one they send you (e.g. not give a missing-box as one that's factory-sealed)?

Used items are not commingled with new items.

But what about with other used items? It's the same problem either way.

And what about "New" items missing packaging etc.?

This isn't an actual problem Amazon has, and Amazon has enough problems that we don't need to make up new ones to discuss. Used items are tracked and sold individually (with their unique condition described and viewable by the purchaser), unlike new items. They're not just binned together by condition, when you buy used you're buying a specific item out of inventory. A "new item missing packaging" would not be sold as a new item. "New" items that are returned to Amazon are re-sold as used under the Amazon Warehouse Deals brand, even if the packaging looks factory sealed, for example.

Thanks!

Commingling is certainly something I wasn't aware of, it looks as if most consumers are in the same boat.

The idea that FBA doesn't actually get me parts from the seller I picked has never crossed my mind. I certainly wouldn't have bought quite a few things if I knew that possibility existed.

It's part of their distribution strategy. I'd generally send 500 units to their warehouses a week. When you're dealing with quantities that large they have you split it up to several shipments to different warehouses throughout the country.

Usually it would be many small quantities near me, and then one large one to the other coast which they would then distribute amongst their warehouses on that coast themselves.

So as the number of vendors stocking inventory increases, the cost to amazon to distribute inventory widely enough to hit SLAs goes down because more of the cost is borne by the vendors.

> Source?

https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/amazon-counterfeits-no-starch...

Shipped and sold by Amazon.com means that the product is shipped and sold by Amazon Retail (via Vendor Central or Vendor Express) directly. Basically, the manufacturer sends product to Amazon.com at a set price through a traditional PO process. This inventory is commingled with all other FBA inventory.

...

Richard added, "[T]he consumer always thinks the chain is: Manufacturer » Amazon » Me. But the reality is that is pretty much never guaranteed. The only way that's guaranteed is if you find the manufacturer's listing on Amazon.com and buy via [F]ulfilled by Amazon directly from them, AND they happen to choose to opt out of commingled inventory. In every other scenario there's a chance that you get inventory that didn't come from the manufacturer."

This is true of the PS3 controller(same on ebay). I dont know about the PS4 and Xbox

But on ebay, the seller and the shipper are the same (well, actually, a lot of ebay sellers use third parties- even Amazon, to ship, but the seller is still responsible for the product that gets shipped).

Man, yeah. I’ve stopped buying anything food-related from Amazon, and I’m very hesitant to use it for anything that will come into contact with me or my family. If they integrate PillPack’s supply chain with their own, I would be extremely unlikely to even consider the service.

Have you actually received fake food from amazon?

Food items can end up 2x+ times the price over a grocery store because there are hidden shipping costs. And many times the higher prices cause less people to purchase, so the item has a short experiation date.

And Im concerned about knockoffs as well.

Knockoffs of what food? Like selling not organic produce as organic?

I used to hear about family members recieving fake ferroro rocher in America many years ago. But here is an recent example in china.

https://www.confectionerynews.com/Article/2017/02/08/Fake-Fe...

If there was any incentive to create and sell a knock off product, it is only increased when Amazon provides laxadasial environment.

If anyone buys a “ferroro” rocher instead of a “ferrero” rocher I would say that he is asking for a fake...

Looks like a loophole if you place it in small font: "Its not ferrero, its ferroro"

NPR interviewed the author of Real Food, Fake Food. Basically everything is fake, olive oil, fish, Parmesan cheese

http://www.realfoodfakefood.com/real-food-fake-food-book-by-...

That's far from an Amazon problem. Olive oil fraud has been a thing since before Christ.

Fake bananas from Honduras?

Likewise! I don't buy anything food related from Amazon and won't buy medicine either.

They have lots of different businesses and associated supply chains, they're not going to have random 3rd parties selling prescriptions on Amazon like they do for many verticals.

There would be no reason to integrate prescriptions in with their warehouses, so I don't think one is going to change the other.

Interesting.

Do they all ready have a supply chain close to the requirements needed in healthcare ? For what ?

It depends on what you mean by healthcare. There are many different supply chains in the industry and they are all regulated and managed slightly differently.

They operate data centers for the CIA, I'm sure they can figure out how to get your pills from Pfizer to your front door. Regardless, they just bought a company that already figured this out. The hard part is the nationwide licensing, dealing with insurance and record keeping, not pick and pack.

Great point. I work in the pharmacy space and most of the cost is meeting regulations. Other than for the most common medications there are regulations for most all drugs. Add to that the complexity of drug delivery (some medications need to be cold, have tight expiration dates etc.,) its very hard to push down the prices like they have done in other areas.

I would love for Amazon to come in and transform this space. There are lot of improvements to be made but all the well established players know those improvements but unless the regulations catch up its hard to innovate.

One thing Amazon might be able to do is to take a hit to their bottom line by essentially selling drugs at a loss and wait it out till they drive everyone out of the market and increase prices. But no one cares when the price of a book/toy increases by x%. Everyone cares when the price of a drug increases by the same amount. (https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/03/mylan-hit-with-racketeering-...)

There's no way they'll allow third-party sellers or co-mingled inventory, which are the source of the supply chain issues.

There's absolutely zero chance prescription meds will go through the same "just send us stuff and we'll throw them in a big shared bucket" process regular items do.

How would they get the fakes though? This is not a USB stick or a cable to get fakes from China. There are strict laws that control how they are obtained.

Amazon only has a supply chain issue because they allow 3rd party sellers to provide inventory with essentially no oversight.

I'm not sure anyone thinks Amazon will allow 3rd parties to sell prescription medications. Although if they want to let me cash in on my dead mother's extra chemo meds and pain pills, let me know where to sign up.

Maybe this is related to Amazon's health venture? Both it and Pillpack are based in Boston after all.

Possibly, CVS has a program which uses it's big discounts it gets on the drugs it sells in stores to sell them to employees for their health care needs: https://www.benefitnews.com/news/cvs-e-prescription-program-...

Does this really apply to products sold by Amazon?

yes, it does, sadly. See https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/20/13343682/fake-apple-char...

Absolutely! Some time ago, Amazon began mixing their inventory with FBA (fulfilled by Amazon) inventory. I've purchased books and small electronics from Amazon (sold & shipped by Amazon) that turn out to be counterfeit.

Yeah, I've bought counterfeit Amazon Basics batteries off of Amazon before :/

That sounds shocking to me. Did you notify Amazon about that?

How? Amazon doesn't allow 3rd parties to sell/list AmazonBasics batteries.

I don’t see any reason why Amazon would have difficulty here. There’s already regulation in place and generics are designed to be interchangeable—getting an off brand alternative would be a win to the consumer, so long as the choice is clear.

> There’s already regulation in place and generics are designed to be interchangeable—getting an off brand alternative would be a win to the consumer, so long as the choice is clear.

They're not, though.

As an example, my wife is allergic to a filler ingredient in one generic manufacturer's version of one of her medications.

Isn’t that part of the reason they’re buying a company that has developed strategies for this sort of thing?

Amazon was in negotiations with hospitals for doing their supply chain. That could be good branding.

> the rampant counterfeiting going on right under their nose.

This is news to me. Can you link an article about it?

I'd be more worried about the quality of generic formulations.

Jesus this is hyperbole...pure hyperbole.

Just found out about PillPack, would have given them a shot but I don't feel that I can now.

Yes but wasn't Holmes allowed to give people fake services for many years before it caught up with her?

In no way I say it was fine, I'm just saying that Amazon will have time and opportunities to fix whatever counterfeits popup before hammer will go down on them.

It may also be they won't allow 3rd party markets into healthcare, we just don't know yet all the details.

Just don't buy "VVViagara Including Free Ray Bann Sunglasses" and you should be safe from physical harm. They always get you with the trademark misspelling and bonus gift.

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