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Comment by gamblor956 | Hacker News Reader

I exchanged an item at Best Buy about 2 months ago. Took about 5 minutes. Forgot my receipt, but they were able to find it with my cc. They opened up the box to make sure the original items were inside, and brought me a replacement while I was at the counter.

Still not quite as good as Costco or REI, but at least with BB I know I'm getting the good I actually purchased and not some cheap Chinese knockoff.

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Where are people getting all these chinese knock offs? I have never had this happen on Amazon I am curious what products people are getting

What have you done to verify you never received a knock-off?

I checked every one of my SD cards when I learned about Amazon's problem with fakes... Turns out I'd bought two fake SanDisk cards. They looked and worked like the real ones but the serial numbers were invalid. Maybe they'd continue working fine, or maybe one day I'd lose 64GB of photos in the middle of a vacation... who knows?

Needless to say, that destroyed my in Amazon. How can they guarantee they aren't selling malicious IOT devices, counterfeit healthcare products, cheap kitchenware made of toxic materials, or even the products of slave labor?

Was it shipped and sold by Amazon or by a 3rd party?

This has been the secret in my experience. Pay for Prime, and only buy Prime items. For me the convenience is worth it, even though I know I’m feeding directly into what Amazon wants; to not fix their massive counterfeit problem.

> This has been the secret in my experience. Pay for Prime, and only buy Prime items. For me the convenience is worth it, even though I know I’m feeding directly into what Amazon wants; to not fix their massive counterfeit problem.

That won't really help. There are prime-eligible counterfeits shipped from Amazon's warehouses due to the Fulfilled by Amazon program. Even buying from a known trustworthy seller is not enough, as Amazon commingles FBA/Prime-eligible inventory from multiple sellers of the same item:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/on-amazon-pooled-merchandise-op...

Interesting. Thanks for the info.

Fulfilled by Amazon, from one of their 3rd party sellers.

> Where are people getting all these chinese knock offs? I have never had this happen on Amazon I am curious what products people are getting

Here's a 1 TB microSD card [1]. No such product legitimately exists [2], so it must be a data-destroying counterfeit.

4.5 stars, $80.

That one was easy to spot, but it's my understanding that pretty much every MacBook charger on Amazon is a kock-off counterfeit [3]. They get the case perfect, but the electronics inside are a fire hazard [4].

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Wazzey-Micro-Memory-Adapter-1024GB/dp...

[2] https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/8/31/16232618/s...

[3] http://www.businessinsider.com/majority-apple-accessories-am...

[4] http://www.righto.com/2015/11/macbook-charger-teardown-surpr...

> This item is only available from third-party sellers.

I know that it’s not fair to expect customers to distinguish between legit and shady listings, but I consider this effectively a “do not buy this product” warning.

Lower-cost electronics, mostly, and toys. So: memory cards, USB and power cables, batteries, etc. That's all stuff I now buy at Best Buy. I've purchased my last 3 TVs from Best Buy; and generally any purchase that I need to play with before fulling the trigger, like cameras.

Also: anything food-related that's by a major brand (like Oxo or Rubbermaid) I buy from a local store, as a lot of the Chinese Alibrands don't comply with FDA requirements but are advertised as if they were.

I told this story before, but I got a charger with a fake Intertek (an UL competitor) mark. Intertek had an alert on their site that this company just put their mark on a product. I told amazon cs and they refunded my money... but continued to sell the fraudulent product.

This was 2+ years ago and the last thing I will ever buy on amazon that uses electricity.

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