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Comment by nobrains | Hacker News Reader

The article talks about how counterfeits benefit Amazon, but its not the full picture. There is a negative affect of counterfiets on Amazon as well, and that is (1) reputation (customers not trusting Amazon anymore as a site that has honest opinions) (2) competition (other online retailers growing in the trusted-products-selling business) and (3) reliance on one country only (if this continues, and Amazon makes short term profits because of it, they will end of becoming a front end for china manufacturers only, risking their supply line. With one rule, china can ban Chinese products to be sold via Amazon, and Amazon can go broke). So it is in Amazon's interest to solve this problem, and not focus on the short term gains, but I wonder why they are not making any moves to solve this? That's the weird part.

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Yes, I've stopped buying from Amazon because of their stickerless commingled inventory program and get all my electronics from B&H Photo, and more and more other goods from Target.com. Amazon is getting to eBay levels of lawlessness.

I, too, stopped buying there because I can never assume anything I buy there is authentic. And I actually canceled my Prime subscription that I've had since the Prime program started.

The only thing I really still buy from Amazon is Toilet Paper, which seems unlikely to be counterfeited (so far).

I keep hearing about these issues all the time, but I guess they are US-only? I buy loads and loads of stuff off Amazon here in UK and I've never had a single counterfeit item. I always buy items marked as "sold and shipped by Amazon" and never had any issues. I guess on this side of the pond Amazon doesn't comingle the inventory with 3rd party inventory?

When I lived in the UK I did receive a couple of counterfeit items, one was a "Global" knife, and the rest were all compact-flash cards.

Handling the returns was mostly painless, but if I were to live in a country with a local Amazon-site I would only use it for books/similar these days.

Also uk based, I stopped buying clothing as it just doesn't seem reliable. Ordered the same shirt with quantity 3 and got 3 (slightly) different shirts. pair of Levis jeans also feels very different than the same pair bought at House of Fraser. Don't know what is going on there.

Your Levi’s example might just be Levi’s. They have numerous sub-categories and different vendors will be selling different ones. Also their QA is notoriously bad so things like fit between any two pairs can be a toss up

A common practice is to sell the same branded product at a lower quality level when sold through a different retailer. Either intentionally or because QA rejects get sold cheap to wholesalers for use at discount stores. The modern twist is that these rejects can now get commingled back into the QA-approved inventory thanks to Amazon.

Based in central Europe, have received counterfeit products that were indistinguishable from the real one. On the surface counterfeits have become difficult to identify, it is not about blurry and misspelled labels anymore. Especially if it comes to electronics they are not less dangerous. Non-electronic items like books get counterfeited too.

But I had more trouble with fake reviews selling me mediocre (often Chinese) products. I check the same US Amazon product on Fakespot for almost everything now (but the fake reviewers will game that system too). Amazon is clearly outsourcing their job to the customers.

Been a (happy) Amazon customer since I'm legally allowed to buy there and liked marketplace in the beginning for second-hand products and buying from smaller scale shops (the scale of the family winery in Saarland), but rolling out the red carpet for the Chinese counterfeit "economy" is just dangerous given that Amazon's number one rule that made them successful is keeping customer trust. Co-mingling - I don't see how anybody at Amazon could have believed that 1-day shipping is a more important metric than selling genuine products.

I wish they temporarilly blocked Chinese marketplace sellers as a whole until these issues are solved, by whatever entity. As a customer I don't care that this is unfair towards a handful of moral sellers, I care about not getting shocks from electronic equipment that I bought at full price. When I want to buy terrible Xiaomi products for some reason (e.g. because I fell for the Apple counterfeit's fake reviews) I can still go to eBay or Alibaba like back in the days.

The other solution would be visibly and strongly separating marketplace again, like in the beginning, or putting it on a separate dedicated website that crosslinks with main Amazon.

I had a 'new' iPhone with a replaced display sent to Germany

I always buy items marked as "sold and shipped by Amazon" and never had any issues.

That doesn't protect you from co-mingling of inventory. It just helps minimize the time between when you place your order, and when the order is shipped.

For me it's not about counterfeiting as such (I haven't experienced any either). It's the simple fact that the majority of the time now I'm not buying from a single retailer that I have some level of trust in (Amazon). It's some hole-in-the-wall seller, with crappy pictures and no assurance that I'm going to get the product I actually ordered in a reasonable amount of time for a reasonable shipping cost. (I rarely do 1-day shipping; I'm totally fine waiting a week or so, but I do want to know.) I have gotten wrong model/color a couple of times, which has never happened when buying directly from Amazon.

Shopping on Amz has no value to me if they're just a shitty webstore search engine.

It is a problem in Germany too. You might try searching for “Apple EarPods” and see if the results look trustworthy.

You should make a website like www.istoiletpapercounterfeit.com and update it regularly.

Then we know when the shit has hit the fan in Amazon.

Then we know when the shit has hit the fan in Amazon.

I think you misspelled "finger"

It's basically made Prime feel useless for its original purpose of free shipping on warehouse items, because if I'm buying most things that would come out of their warehouse I'd rather pay for shipping direct from a specific vendor because I don't trust anything shipped from Amazon. Maybe it's still worthwhile for other services (music, video, groceries, whatever).

Sure I can get my money back if I get a detectable counterfeit, but what about my time dealing with it and without having what I ordered? And what about items that aren't easily detected as fake but which are notably substandard when used (e.g. odd-size or lithium batteries that die in 6 months rather than 2 years)? It's not like ordering from Amazon is really notably cheaper than other options these days anyway.

And while the selection is much much worse, Target will match Amazon prices if you do find something you want there. Heck, they match the Target website as well, which is regularly much cheaper than the retail prices.

How does price matching the Target web site work? Do you have to notice the discrepancy at the checkout, and then go to customer service for a refund, or do you dispute the price with the cashier, or some other method?

You can do both, but it’s easier to go to the desk because a supervisor needs to override. Amazon usually isn’t very price competitive so it is harder to use than one might think.

Grab a screenshot of the price outside the store as Amazon prices will change inside of some stores.

You bring up the product on your phone and show the price to the checker, then they charge you the lesser price.

Yeah I go to Target first now -- I like the hassle-free returns (same as Amazon) but with the guarantee that items are verified authentic.

I've noticed that Target has, however, slowly begun to list inventory that I am guessing it doesn't have stock for, since there's literally pages and pages worth -- let's hope that Target does NOT pull the marketplace-sourced inventory scheme, because then there would be no difference between Target and Amazon anymore.

I've not completely stopped, but I am going to local alternatives more often now, all because of the counterfeit issue. In addition to Target, I'm also shopping at Best Buy again, so these competitors should take notice of this vulnerability for Amazon.

I very occasionally still Hy things from Amazon when I have absolutely no other chance. But I do everything I can to find the time locally and buy it instore or from another more reputable online retailer than amazon (which is pretty much anyone except ebay and aliexpress)

When I want commodity items that don't have a specific manufacturer (HDD enclosures, small tools, etc), I'll go to aliexpress because it's exactly the same things as sold on amazon but for a quarter of the price. I just have to wait 3 weeks longer than on amazon.

I don't even get books from Amazon anymore, because there are pirate prints of books.

It's all fun and games when it's just about having the item break after a couple of weeks because it was a low quality copy, but amazon also sells more dangerous things like Christmas lights with fake CE and UL markings or PPE that aren't sturdy enough to meet the norms they supposedly adhere to.

Not even mentioning the returned and used items sold as new for the full price, or the appalling way in which Amazon treats its workers.

It doesn't even make life that much more complicated, and thinking whether I want something so much as to go to the store or wait a month to get it from China is an excellent filter to block impulse purchases.

> I don't even get books from Amazon anymore, because there are pirate prints of books.

I once bought such a counterfeit. The amusing thing was that, apart from the utterly shoddy quality of the printing, the content of the book (Pierce) didn't even correspond to the title (Harper).

As a customer/user, there are already entire classes of products I won't even consider buying on Amazon. This includes Batteries, Cables, most common electronic goods.

As a business user, I won't consider signing up for their business account, for which they keep pestering me with popups.

As a vendor, I've held off on putting products on Amazon for exactly this reason of getting hosed by the counterfeiters and knowing that Amazon will not only not have my back as a vendor that is helping them profit, but will actively fight against me on any attempt to force Amazon to responsibly police their warehouses.

I may still take the risk in order to access Amazon's huge customer base, but I'll certainly be costly taking costly countermeasures from the start, and factoring those into the decision of how profitable it might be to sell on Amazon vs or in addition to directly.

They really have a significant problem, and are sadly, becoming another big tech firm that is creating increasing levels of problems in our society and economic environment.

The question is when those problems will exceed the benefit they bring to society.

IMO, FB is well past the bad/good breakeven point, GOOG & AMZN are still on the good side, but trending badly.

Amazon has tipped to bad -- all these dumb services like Pantry box, Fresh now, etc, all offered outside of the now $130 premium for Prime.

I'm going to call in a few days to cancel my Prime. Amazon as a whole is just not worth investing in anymore as a customer.

I will also move off all my photos from Amazon photos and onto my own manual drives until better cloud solutions come out (not goog).

> they will end of becoming a front end for china manufacturers only

And there's AliExpress.com already doing a good job of that.

Actually, a better job, apparently, because on AliExpress you know which seller will ship your purchase.

You also don't have to question if it is counterfit. You can just assume it is. Petty theft from engineers, by engineers. It is an unusual world.

You call it counterfeit, China calls it commodity. When you buy generic sugar in USA, is it "counterfeit"?

When you buy sugar in China it might be.

Yeah I wouldn't put it against them if they tried selling "sugar" as lead acetate. It sells a banned sweetener, tastes great, and gets rid of contaminants all in 1 motion.

If you are buying Chinese brands, you still need to be careful but it is usually genuine.

So it is in Amazon's interest to solve this problem, and not focus on the short term gains, but I wonder why they are not making any moves to solve this? That's the weird part.

They looks at the gain, the loss and the balance. Ultimately actions or lack of actions are driven by the balance.

You can draw your own conclusions from the lack of actions.

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