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Comment by criddell | Hacker News Reader

> and a way to get products that aren't counterfeits half the time

How often do you actually get fakes?

My family probably gets an Amazon delivery three or four times a week and we've never received a counterfeit item.

How do you know you're never received a counterfeit item? Many counterfeits you probably can't tell are counterfeit unless you have the real item already and do a side-by-side comparison.

For example, would you be able to tell if you got a counterfeit tumbler?:

https://youtu.be/WvaTA0K_DZs https://youtu.be/8B12EfGArME https://youtu.be/OfDZZPHByG8

Counterfeits might not last as long as the real thing or, worse, they might but unsafe.

I think I got counterfeit wallet a couple years ago, but I just suspected it of being not built to last, not counterfeit, until I read something on HN last week about Washington State making Amazon get rid of toxic school supplies. I was inspired to look up the wallet again and I found an extremely similar if not exactly the same wallet from a reputable brand but the one I bought was unbranded. I only knew the brand was reputable because I bought something from them before. I'm going to order a new wallet... straight from their site.

For a few years I was in the same boat: dozens of items delivered without issue. Within the last year or so it's become more common to hear about counterfeit issues on HN as well as personally be confronted with them--I've had to return 4 items that were obvious fakes and a 5th item that was already opened and probably not legit.

Is there any area in particular that seems problematic?

For me it's board games, and more specifically expansions. The last expansion I bought had slightly differently colored card backs than the base game, meaning you could tell if someone had expansion cards and making the expansion unusable. I had to compare them both to a friend's sets to know which was counterfeit.

Outside of the biggest major game manufacturers, that's long been a problem with legitimate board games having inconsistencies like that, for instance because different printers with slightly different process were used for different print runs of the same expansion.

Its perhaps a sign of the times that counterfeits are perceived to be common enough that the natural assumption when this occurs is "counterfeit" not "QC/supply chain issues".

My natural assumption was "QC/supply chain issues", because I've seen those too. In this case the designer actually posted about the issue on a forum, which was later linked by the publisher.

You might be getting counterfeit boardgames, but the slightly different colors on the cards isn't a great tell.

Manufacturers are not great at getting card color to match, even for the same item, even in the same manufacturing run. I've got three kickstarters that have outstanding shipments to send out replacement cards because colors were mismatched on the backs in the very same box, and more that have already done it.

I've only purchased Kingdom Death Monster expansions from the official store, and card colors are hit and miss.

QC on color accuracy is pretty shitty in the popular factories used to produce boardgames, unfortunately.

I've had a few fakes or knockoffs -- mostly low-cost electronics that I didn't care too much about.

But one of them was an AC adapter for my laptop :|

After I plugged it in, my laptop smoked. Well, more like sizzled. The manufacturer replaced the motherboard for me. After it happened, I examined the two AC adapters I had (real + not-real) and they were virtually identical except for some font and mark differences.

That was enough for me to change my shopping habits wrt to expensive electronics and to start using review analysis sites for everything.

>we've never received a counterfeit item. How can you be sure? That's the trouble with buying from street vendors.. could there be something in this water bottle?

I can't be sure. I got a book and a CD from them yesterday and both look legit. One or both could be counterfeits and I'll never know.

Try to buy an Apple, Logitech, or Samsung product.

Also (not by personal experience) its become quite difficult to get name brand clothing and shoes.

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