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Comment by 4mitkumar | Hacker News Reader

Honest question: With so many alternatives to Amazon (direct brand retail, Walmart, Target, regional competitors) probably offering lesser fake products and still failing, doesn't it mean that the overall consumer base is not as concerned about the fake product issue?

It could be because:

1) Fake product issue is not as widespread (per user, seller or per transaction)

2) Fake product cases are usually resolved in a satisfactory enough way to dissuade the consumer/seller from seeking alternatives

3) The annoyance of getting a fake product is outweighed by other conveniences offered

If any of the above is true, well, there is not a real problem for Amazon to address.

Of course, the assumption is that there are theoretical alternatives to Amazon for getting stuff you need, minus the convenience perhaps, but with higher degree of trust in product quality.

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I suspect a lot of people just have no idea they received a fake item.

this! 100 times this! In a totally unregulated market consumers have very little access to information to make a proper decision. some markets should not be free EDIT: alternative is to limit size of companies so there is proper competition

If the consumer has no idea it received a fake product how is the proper decision not getting the cheaper conterfeit?

You just assume that the product is shit and never buy it again. But the user base is large. With the swath of fake reviews on the site you can’t judge by ratings either.

To me, the real victims are the original product sellers.

I commented something similar on an article here about a year ago, and people had some good points[0]:

> Heavy metal poisoning may take years to show effects.

> Shoddily made laptop chargers may be a fire/shock hazard that kill in 100/1,000,000 instead of 1/1,000,000 cases.

> Not every dangerous counterfeit is immediately obvious as such.

> If you're slathering it all over your body but you have no idea where or how it was made, do you suppose that you might suffer from deferred regret at some point in the future?

So, yeah, if the counterfeit is just as good, then fantastic. If it's not, that's a problem. If it's not in a non-obvious way that affects health or safety, that's a big problem.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17526538

For items with no safety implication, that is probably true.

But, take the case of USB chargers. If the name-brand bursts into flames at a rate of 1/1000000 and the fake 1/1000, most consumers will never know they received a fake. But, for those that have their house burst into flames, the fake was not worth the savings.

I might just have bad luck, but I've bought many electronics products from Amazon, and more often than not it's unsatisfactory in some major way: obviously opened box with broken/missing items or fake.

If this hit rate is normal across electronics on Amazon I have to imagine it's just plain ignorance on the part of the customer. Because there's no way Amazon could live with a return rate > 50%, which is what I'm at right now.

opened box with broken/missing or fake first hand items? Never happened to me, now if you are talking about second hand items I never bought any so I can't talk about that.

I've never used the "buy used" option if that's what you mean.

Babies haven't died from fake formula like in China... yet.

Not sure what you meant, but Chinese babies died due to tainted milk and formula. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal

Fraud is one of those issues that takes time to build momentum against.

Simple, those other companies are not selling fake products. If they were, it would be a huge scandal and lawsuit.

Amazon is able to hide behind the fact that more than half of what is sold on the site is from unvetted 3rd party sellers.

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