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Comment by NegativeK | Hacker News Reader

Amazon's counterfeit problem seems like something they're not taking seriously enough. For a laser printer or a lamp, sure -- I'll buy from Amazon and deal with the return if I ever get screwed. But for climbing gear, of which I've bought quite a bit of, I simply won't touch Amazon. I haven't heard of counterfeit (versus obvious trash, which exists but is different) climbing goods on Amazon, but I simply can't risk it.

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There is also the issue of genuine items sold as new which are actually very well repackaged returns. Amazon does minimal (if any?) checking of returns and I have frequently received items that had obviously been opened and used then returned and sold to me as new. I very fondly recall opening the package for Wahl electric clippers and having a bunch of hairs fall out of the box, but it's far from the only occurrence. Of course, the item was shipped and sold by Amazon.

Also see the cases where houses burned down because of hover boards sold by Amazon. These items didn't meet the standards to be sold in North America and burnt a family's house down. They went to court and amazon won because "they're only a market place and your beef is with the manufacturer, and we can't tell you who they are or how to contact them because they're some fly by night company in China."

I've never had that problem Amazon fulfilled merchandise (but have run into it with some third-party sellers, including one that sent me a product with "Bad - does not work" written on the box, so it was clearly a defective return).

But I have had some bad experiences with "Amazon warehouse deals" where they do resell returned/opened merchandise at a discount, once the product in the box was completely different than what it was supposed to be.

They've been good about replacing/refunding those but now I only order the warehouse deals if I'm ok with waiting for a replacement if the one they sent is bad.

This keeps happening to me with books.

It's extremely frustrating because I know that it hurts the artist's bottom line when I have to return the same book 3 times because it comes with a worn spine or bent pages or unknown substances on it.

And I've had to report USPS multiple times for stuffing giant paperbacks from Amazon into my tiny mailbox but nothing's changed as of yet.

I thought books were what made Amazon famous? I'm so turned off by the quality that I'm wary of making purchases with their sister site at Comixology.

Ditto on ski gear and watches or other jewellery. For any kind of outdoor gear the counterfeit vs. genuine problem becomes a serious safety issue. As you say, Amazon aren't taking it nearly seriously enough.

The scarier aspect (though the thought of the number of ways counterfeit ski bindings can fail and kill you is...alarming enough in itself) of counterfeit outdoors equipment is that it's probably more likely that beginners new to a sport are going to be buying equipment off Amazon. These are the people who don't yet have the specific knowledge to spot countefeits (unless they're blatantly obvious). And they may not know enough to realize the possible risks.

Amazon's counterfeit problem is only getting worse, and there's no reason to expect anything to change anytime soon.

> it's probably more likely that beginners new to a sport are going to be buying equipment off Amazon. These are the people who don't yet have the specific knowledge to spot countefeits (unless they're blatantly obvious).

This is very true although, to be honest, even as a reasonably decent skier I'm not sure I could spot a counterfeit. In fact, except in the worst cases, I'm pretty sure I couldn't because I'm not enough of a gear-head in that arena.

I'm more confident with watches but, even then, it's only certain brands and models, and I'd have to do quite a bit of research and comparison to images of the real deal to spot a fake. For example, I'm not at all sure I could easily identify a fake G-Shock because there are so many different models, whereas I might do better on something like an SKX.

The sloppiness of a lot of counterfeits gives them away though: for example, I bought a Gamecube controller that turned up unbranded and (worse) with a USB connector. Of course, my old Wii - which I use for Gamecube games - was having none of it.

Yup. For pretty much all outdoor gear I go to Backcountry or REI. Can't risk counterfeits for technical products where specs matter.

It's getting so out of hand to the point where most products have all fake reviews.

Plus REI's ~~lifetime~~ one-year return policy is much more generous than Amazon's. Not to mention the annual member dividend.

What's a "lifetime one-year return policy"?

Poster expected to cross out lifetime because REI changed their lifetime return policy to a one year policy.

To expand on this: REI used to have a lifetime, no-questions-asked return policy. They changed it (sometime in the past few years, unsure I've only been in the US for a little over one now) to a 1 year no-questions-asked policy. This does not include things on clearance (they call it REI Garage sales online) as this is (as I understand it) mostly the returned items being resold to recoup costs. Clearance items (and electronics too) have a 90 day return policy instead.

I often pay full price at REI instead if cheaper elsewhere because of the generous return policy so I guess it works.

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