It's really bad with things like SD cards. I've gotten ones that are half their stated capacity, and ones that are supposed to be V90 class (90MB/sec write) that barely make 10MB/sec.
Happened to me. Once.
When inventory is commingled, Amazon puts all of the sellers' products (for a given product ID aka ASIN) into one urn. When a user makes a purchase of that item from any of those sellers, Amazon retrieves an item from the urn and ships it to the purchaser.
As a purchaser of items sold by multiple sellers with fulfillment by Amazon, it's not possible to know if each seller has their own urn, or if it's a single urn for multiple sellers. The distribution of the urn by source is also unknown.
I won't purchase easily counterfeited objects from Amazon, unless there is only one seller listed, and if that seller is either Amazon or an account that seems like the manufacturer. A random Samsung sd card[1], though; who knows . Something like this Anker usb car charger [2] looks reasonable (I'm not specifically endorsing Anker, usb chargers are just a product in a crowded, junky space, and Anker is a brand that's trying to present itself as selling good products.
Amazon was originally the seller for everything they offered. In an important sense, they still are: we still shop on their site, still give them money, and still mostly receive the goods from them.
Amazon could have chosen differently, but didn't, because they were looking to dominate e-commerce. they set it up like this, and could undo it in a moment if they wanted. If you're looking to blame somebody, blame the person with the most power over the situation, not the person with the least.
If the goods are on your site, then you are responsible for them being there. Sure it costs a lot, like it costs a lot to run an auction house. Boo hoo
None of this is realistic. We're commenting on an article that says Amazon has half of the e-commerce biz right now. The small but vocal contingent on HN might seem to make it that counterfeit goods are rampant everywhere but it's not the case.
For most of history people selling things had an understanding of what they were selling. If Amazon can't meet that standard for some products, or for third-party sellers as whole, they can just stop.
Alternatively, they could set up a separate site. Something like "Caveat Emptor" or "Bezos's Dubious Flea Market". Something that doesn't trade on the Amazon brand and create confusion between responsible vendors and fly-by-night operations.
That you can't or won't think of a way to do something without harming megacorp short-term profits doesn't make it "unrealistic" to address a recently create problem. I leave it to you to figure out what it does mean.
It is not my problem to solve, it is Amazon's. If they can't solve it then they need to go back to selling their own stock. If this makes them less money than facilitating a crime, then so be it.
If money if not an issue, buy Swissbit S-45 cards from Mouser.