Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake
wired.com
wired.com
It is ridiculous that you can order a supplement where it says "sold by Proctor and Gamble, fulfilled by Amazon" on the product listing, and then receive a counterfeit product that was sent in by a different company. If they received it from a different company, then it wasn't "sold by Proctor and Gamble."
At the very least they need to give brand owners the tools to protect their brands- an option to put non-authorized resellers' shipments into a separate comingled bin, and have all the authorized resellers in another.
Right now the only option for a brand with a popular product to protect from counterfeiting is to not sell anything through Amazon and sue everyone that tries to list your products on Amazon- which might not even work and really hurts your market reach.
But saying something is sold by a specific party which I then choose to do business with, then substituting goods that are likely to be from any of numerous other parties, some of which I may be explicitly trying to avoid doing business with...I would at least be interested in hearing why that doesn't count as fraud or false advertising or some such, or maybe some trademarks issue.
At least, I'd love to hear a less rage-inducing justification for putting up with allowing this behavior than "it was buried in a ToS somewhere that lying about who my goods came from is okay, actually."
1. You place an order from supplier A.
2. Supplier A buys the unit from supplier B (and pays the balance by transferring another unit A => B).
3. The now supplier A's unit gets sent to you.
I.e. somewhat similar to e.g. dropshipping and other such practices which are traditionally perfectly legal.
It seems it would be quite hard to argue false advertising on that (as you got the item from A - generally it does not matter who A got it from, unless A claims to be the manufacturer), which I guess is why it has not happened yet.
But I could still see it happen, especially if the counterfeiting problems worsen. Maybe the fact that Amazon does it automatically for the sellers (with their approval) could be considered a factor that makes this different from the traditional stock supply cases.
The way Amazon does it, A isn’t involved in the choice of who supplies the product, they just receive the money. They don’t even know who supplied the product, if I understand things correctly. You’re just buying from B, while Amazon says you’re buying from A.
It's not the comingling that is the root cause here, it's the fraud. It doesn't matter whether or not Amazon buys their pills from Joe or Sally, what we care about is that they're not selling fake pills. Focusing on comingling seems to be missing the point. We have even less ability than Amazon to detect the fact that Joe is selling fake pills, so they'd still make it into people's mailboxes.
That's an interesting argument except for the fact that the source of money is extremely important for fraud and tax purposes. Money laundering is specifically the co-mingling of "inventory" to hide the source. Amazon is product laundering.
When the product comes from "Sally's Supplements" then if there is an issue with the product then that's first and foremost Sally's problem. It might go up to Procter & Gamble or maybe it doesn't get that far.
The source of the product and who supports it is very important.
Sounds like it is time for a "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Retail Products" with the first entry being that every item with the same SKU is identical to every other item with that SKU.
You would think at the very least Amazon would need to maintain a chain of custody for each individual item that is meant for human consumption. What happens if there is a Tylenol poisoning [1] like scare with one of these supplements? Would Amazon legitimately have no way to track down the source of the contaminated product? If they can, what would be the possible explanation of not displaying the source to the user beyond "it is cheaper if we don't"?
Its a lovely situation to say the least. All strategies are sub optimal. Logically we need a law forcing them to divulge who your actual product is coming from on the page before you buy effectively ending comingling.
It does not mean you have a right to do so on Amazon.
They could say "we'll only let Apple sell Apple products here".
Depends on who the "you" is here.
Nike can't forbid me from reselling shoes. Nike can ask Amazon to willingly forbid me from doing so on their platform, and Amazon can agree.
The issue is selling fake products as a branded products. Amazon makes this easy to do by commingling inventory and not matching/tracking sellers to inventory items.
This fact by itself would probably make Amazon liable for product liability claims in any court in the US, it's traditional CDA liability sheild notwithstanding.
EDIT: Products liability law is complicated, but generally even if Amazon wouldn't be treated as a seller, they could still be held liable for their negligence in providing the wrong/defective item out of their (commingled) inventory. Amazon doesn't match sellers to inventory items so they have literally no way to defend themselves from such a suit especially if the seller can show that they provide products straight from the manufacturer but Amazon commingled with other sellers' inventory. (I'm aware of several such suits that were almost immediately settled by Amazon with NDAs attached.)
That is not correct. Amazon's seller help pages and Amazon spokesperson comment on e.g. this FT Alphaville article https://outline.com/4R7fp6 say that Amazon tracks the original supplier:
> The system is purposefully designed so that similar products are not placed next to or near each other, and Amazon can also track the original seller of each unit.
I.e. commingling only means that any sellers' inventory can be used for fulfillment, not that the inventory is physically commingled.
In practice, they clearly don't. I've had a client that was the only manufacturer of a product receive fake versions of their own product that was part of Amazon's commingled inventory. This happened last year.
Also, unless Amazon removes tags prior to delivery, there is no mechanism on many items that would allow them to track goods short of maintaining physical separation, which it is abundantly clear that they do not.
When evidence builds for fake product, Amazon can halt use of a particular seller's inventory...but prior to that you might get a fake, regardless of the seller's reputation.
As a brand I think you can stop others listing your products. I tried to sell something a while back and was refused because I was a third party seller.
Instead of making it clear you're buying second-hand goods, or from a non-authorized seller, they are deliberately conflating what you're buying, with who you're buying it from. This way their anti-counterfeit efforts will conveniently squash the second-hand market.
And believe me, as a seller I have some insight into the bullshit black hat tactics at play in the Amazon marketplace. Amazon needs tools to fight the bad guys. For the sake of consumers.
Also, allow product manufacturers who sell directly, to block other sellers on the platform for their products and handle reports for alike-named and-or brand confusing products.
Amazon does very little to actually do anything meaningful to limit counterfeit products.
They do have a program for this, I believe: https://brandservices.amazon.com/
From their seller help pages:
> Note: Amazon ensures that the initial source of the commingled units can be traced throughout the fulfilment process.
> Important: Amazon ensures that the exact same units from two sellers, participating in the commingling programme, are always physically segregated. This means that Amazon storage logic does not allow same ASINs of different sellers to be stored in the same bin in our warehouse if they are commingled.
In other words, Amazon ensures that commingled items are never physically commingled.
For a public source, see e.g. Amazon comment in this article: https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2019/04/03/1554287401000/Amazon-... (outline link: https://outline.com/4R7fp6)
> The system is purposefully designed so that similar products are not placed next to or near each other, and Amazon can also track the original seller of each unit.
> Sellers are able to choose whether to share identical inventory or not.
That seems to indicate physical commingling. IIRC, avoiding commingling has an additional cost to the seller.
Yes, there is a cost for the seller if opting out - they need to apply their own barcodes to the products in that case.
The difficult part in all of this is dealing with Amazon and their terrible marketplace back end.
Why should a buyer be expected to trust either Amazon, or the fulfiller, to decide which bait-and-switch sales don't count as bait-and-switch?
It wrongs both the buyer, who doesn't get what they ordered, and the original manufacturer, who is being subjected to something akin to 'passing off' in trademark law. You aren't allowed to hijack someone else's brand to sell your product. [0]
We should fault the sellers for using Amazon in the first place.
I would never purchase anything from amazon other than books, personally. Too much of a chance you’re going to get counterfeits or faulty merchandise.
The fault may be with the company Bob hired to manufacture swimsuits, or maybe the shipping company for confusing boxes, or maybe Bob's catalog contractor got some model numbers switched around, but I'm just the customer. None of that stuff is visible to me, and I have no control over it. If the catalog company or the fulfillment company or the manufacturer part of the pipeline is known to occasionally produce bobcats, it's Bob's job to fix it.
Yes, this is Amazon's fuckup, but it's not the customer's job to conduct the postmortem. The customer has the privilege of blaming the entity they do business with.
They need to show you who you're buying from if they aren't going to accept liability for selling it.
I buy a lot of stuff from AliExpress. I know that there's a fair chance that I'll get some kind of junk, but it's cheap enough that I'm often willing to take the gamble.
Until very recently, Amazon offered the lowest-hassle online shopping experience by a considerable margin. I'd often buy from Amazon without bothering to compare prices, because the convenience of one-click ordering was worth it.
Almost entirely because of Marketplace, Amazon is regressing from a premium retail experience to an AliExpress-style flea market. Every time I click the buy button, I worry about getting a counterfeit product, I worry about the hassle of returning it, I worry about getting banned from Amazon by an algorithm for "abusing" their returns policy. Buying from Amazon isn't a no-brainer any more.
Amazon were so very close to having a total monopoly on my online spending, but they squandered it. They could have secured a loyal and price-insensitive customer, but instead they're driving me away from their platform. Maybe they don't care about being a retailer any more, maybe they're all-in on AWS, but if I were an Amazon shareholder I'd be getting pretty damned nervous.
I moved $40k/year of IT spend from my company off Amazon to BHPhoto.
I also stopped buying any makeup / food / supplements / dog food / dog toys on Amazon.
Hell, I bought my dog's new leash and collar straight from the manufacturer!
I think what others are saying is that you can't do this on Amazon, even if you want to, because of fakes.
I've personally moved all my online shopping to Target and Walmart, and I only buy products that they stock in their stores.
An appeals court just recently said this in their ruling on a consumer products liability case. Oberdorf v Amazon I believe.
Edit: Apologies, I was on my phone earlier and I didn't link to the opinion https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca3/18...
Amazon can in turn sue the party who provided the product to recover what they have to pay out to the end customer, if they want.
Amazon allows their product providers to be somewhat anonymous. That weighed against them in the court decision. To the court, that looks like a retailer-wholesaler relationship. An actual seller has to disclose the actual name and address of the business in some states, including California. (B&P code section 17358).
Only in part. Section B @ page 21 is the Court outlining their reasoning under the Second Restatement of Torts which has been adopted in some form or another in most states. The court could have ended with the Pennsylvania four-factor analysis but the ruling would have definitely been limited in scope. Instead, the 3rd Circuit has anticipated this case going to the Supreme Court and went through the effort of detailing the logic for a SCOTUS ruling that would hold Amazon accountable beyond the boundaries of Pennsylvania as well.
Other offers were for what looked like seriously questionable quality things, that were semi related to items that I had searched, but looked like rock bottom quality, but they were a few $ cheaper.
It all has a very Kmart / Wallmart, but maybe worse vibe.
Amazon seems more and more like a wide open low cost kinda store where fakes, low quality garbage, and such aren't just too common, but even pushed by their own system. Sometimes Amazon takes some light action, other times they argue they're simply not responsible for whatever it is they sell: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/07/amazon-on-the-ho...
It's all the opposite of what I chose to go to Amazon for. I went to Amazon to find options I couldn't find elsewhere, and generally want good quality things BECAUSE the local retail stores already were in a race to the bottom.... But now Amazon wants me to wade through their garbage to find it and seems to want to join that $1 cheaper for $5 less quality type race .... and I swear I'm seeing fewer good quality items sold in areas where they used to exist, but now seemed to be dominated by garbage.
Supplements (or really anything I put in my mouth) is one of a growing set of classes of items I won't buy on Amazon anymore. That probably doesn't result in much loss for Amazon right now, but what it does do is:
1. Makes me trust Amazon MUCH less, which means I'm much more likely to forgo purchasing additional classes of items from them.
2. Makes me find new online or offline vendors for the classes of items I no longer buy from Amazon. Those vendors sometimes sell other items I would normally buy from Amazon as well. If I need those items, I'm not going to shop BOTH places. I'm going with the one I trust.
3. Makes me reconsider my Prime membership. (Among other things, like shipping having become less reliable recently.)
There's a tipping point here somewhere, where I'll just stop being an Amazon customer entirely.
How would you know that the vendors you are buying these items from aren't themselves buying from Amazon or other counterfeit vendors?
Honest question, because I'd really love for there to be some way for consumers to verify the authenticity of what they're buying, but as far as I know there isn't.
If shipping charges aren't prohibitive, I'll also consider buying directly from the manufacturer website.
If you buy from a random site on the internet that doesn't have a reputation to protect, then I agree it's just as risky as buying from Amazon or a random eBay seller.
Aside: I'm also disappointed in Newegg at whatever point they started allowing third parties. Worse still is a number of the third parties list the same products as different items/codes so search is a pain sometimes until you select newegg as the seller.
We all feel this way. Inventory co-mingling will have major long term costs. If you think about it, it is pretty crazy how big of a reputation hit Amazon has taken in the last few years.
Even the Basics brand is just about worthless as far as anything technology/electrical as the quality is usually lower than the value on the price.
The irony is I'm finding the Prime Video selection more valuable than the shipping/buying experience lately.
Absolutely. I order direct from the manufacturer for most of my supplements these days and the rest I pick up from Target and CostCo. I used to buy all of them from Amazon.
Then I had a kid, and the question of “do I trust this thing to go into or onto my kid’s body?” actually mattered.
Suddenly, my purchases from amazon drop like a rock. Partly for classes of item I don’t trust getting from them, and partly because I’m just getting habituated to shopping at different outlets.
Moreover, this has become a “known thing” in the online mommy groups in our area. My wife has told me she’s heard exactly the same thing on her fb and mailing lists; increasingly, “don’t buy amazon” is a given for conscientious parents.
I’m spending a lot of money on this tiny human, Amazon, and none of it is going to you.
* I don't buy foodstuff or supplements from Amazon
* I don't buy things at high risk of exploding (batteries that weren't manufactured by who I expected)
* I don't buy high-volume counterfeit products (vacuums, for example)
I would rather take the 30 minutes out of my day to drive to a store where I trust the supply chain.
Unfortunately, their purchasing policy sort of ruins it. While I can be certain something is the brand that it says it is at Wal-Mart, I can't be certain that it isn't a Walmart-specific SKU or outlet-store SKU that is not the same quality as enticingly-similar SKUs sold by the same manufacturer.
It's not technically counterfeit for a brand to sell a product of inferior quality into completely separate discount retail supply chains. You should know what you're getting, too, as the prime retail supply chains and outlet retail supply chains don't mix in reputable companies, because they don't want the inferior goods to tarnish the reputation of the superior.
Amazon throws that out the window. The brand manufacturer cannot control Amazon's supply chain to a level required for protecting their brand. As long as commingling continues, it only makes sense for counterfeiters to sell via Amazon. It also makes sense for "para-feiters" to buy a real brand from an outlet store and swap the outlet SKU to the prime retail SKU for the most-similar product, and sell at a smaller discount to the prime retail price. Shoppers think they're buying the prime retail version, and they might get shipped the discount version from the para-feiter's commingled stock.
So it's not entirely on Amazon. The manufacturers were already burning down brands when Amazon threw fuel on the fire.
WRT Prime specifically, it's kind of a self-feeding problem. As Amazon's reputation tanks, you stop buying things, which makes Prime's value also tank.
Same here. Also considering I've bought herbicides on Amazon, I always wonder how well edible and toxic items are warehoused, and how they handle the eventual spillage.
> 2. Makes me find new online or offline vendors for the classes of items I no longer buy from Amazon.
I'm about 3/4 on the way of replacing amazon with other online sources that are specialized in a domain. As a bonus, those sources usually know the domain well, offer a great selection and undercut Amazon on price. The only thing is that shipping can take longer… though some vendors are actually faster.
> Makes me reconsider my Prime membership.
I've already set mine to NOT auto-renew. It's buried behind several clicks but once it's out, I'll leave it out. The value I get is just no longer worth it.
I regularly have packages “delivered”, but they mysteriously show up a day or two after the claimed delivery. I assume this is the logistics “contractors” missing their quota and making up for it later.
> No, there are defiantly people delivering stuff our of cars and cargo vans. I haven't had an amazon order come via UPS or FedEx in a while.
That is the delivery person doing that. The worst is when delivery personnel don't ring or knock, they just slap a "tried to deliver" slip on your door because it's faster for them.
As far as I can tell, this is Amazon coopting the gig economy for their own deliveries. The quality of service is predictable. I doubt the delivery people (sorry, Amazon Delivery Service Partner) make a heck of a lot of money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gflpf0DrCgw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ1_P5oqf6Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkdJti43IgU (Branded Amazon Basics)
While I don't doubt are selling well.... really suck, and I fear the difference is simply sales volume of purchasers who don't know ... due to a couple bucks difference from another product... or straight up sponsorship.
Where does that leave Amazon? I don't buy anything anymore. Digikey and Walmart online are my prime online stores
* You can't trust them for entire categories of products.
* You can't trust them, period, about pricing. The amount of effort they've spent ensuring comparison between very similar items is as hard as possible is kind of amazing; discriminatory pricing: this doesn't require explanation; Their relentless efforts to shove certain products at me just started to annoy me at some point.
It all combines to erode any trust I once had in them; they're apparently no more concerned with ensuring I don't feel ripped off than someone selling junk off the back of a truck.
* Their recommendation engine is occasionally funny, but otherwise utter crap, and just takes up space.
I finally cancelled Prime at the beginning of this year, and after a couple minor adjustments, it was no big loss. I still buy books from them when I can't find them elsewhere.
Otherwise, eh. I just don't like them and don't need them.
I realize they're trying, but Amazon is clearly failing to control the tide of fakes that is infesting their storefront. I find that for almost anything I search for, the knockoff/fake is actually the Amazon "recommended" item.
Probably this is because a non-trivial part of their revenue comes from the dark patterns and scams that make their whole site feel so much like the kind of flea market where you're pretty sure some of the stuff's stolen and if you ask around one of the vendors can get you some Oxy, but you wouldn't buy it from them even if you wanted it because it'd probably be fake. IOW I'm pretty sure their site and fortune's based largely on crime and generally anti-social behavior, else they'd surely have stopped it by now.
Honestly, isn't that what's at the base of the culture of 'disruption'? Look at Uber - let's take an established, regulated industry and just ignore the regulations long enough that we're everywhere and they can't shut us down.
Honestly, when I hear the word 'disrupt', I immediately think of shady, anti-social behavior.
I bought a new mp3 player from Fry's once which, oddly enough, turned out to be stocked with a sizeable music library already.
I'd still be pretty comfortable buying a candy bar from them though.
In the case of Amazon, we know them to have a long and extensive history of selling a wide variety of counterfeit products. There is not nearly as much ambiguity to the situation. Elsewhere in this discussion the comparison to a flee market has been made, and I think that describes it well.
So I recently dropped Amazon prime and ended up buying popular name brands. Even those you can get price matched with other retailers and Target even gives you 5% percent discount and BestBuy gives you points.
Unless you are a person who is not mobile, there are several options now.
Best Buy and Target will price match eBay prices if sold by the product maker's ebay account.
So Amazon's model here looks like:
1. Allow sellers to sell counterfeit products, so they can take a cut of profits from both legitimate and fake inventory.
2. Copy the best-selling products after they've been product tested, and compete against their own customers (sellers on their platform).
3. Undermine the credibility of their competition by warning that their competitors' products might be counterfeits.
My favorite example is that I'm lactose intolerant, I've tried a bunch of different Whey Protein products that were all listed as "Whey Protein Isolate 100% lactose free" and all of them made me sick as if they had lactose. I finally caught on and tried a Vegan protein.
If there's one thing that makes me back away, as a consumer, from Amazon, it's this sort of thing, this lack of real accountability. Sure, Amazon, says they do things to prevent counterfeits from being sold through, but there doesn't appear to be any powerful outside force that consumers can bring to bear on the company when they screw up.
Maybe you find the site through googling, and decide to buy the item from them. In a way, Amazon is like an extra layer of security to that model. First you can trust the payment channels, you can trust the delivery, and you can trust that you'll get some level of customer support. Beyond that, you know that they've attempted to validate the quality of their products, but in the same way your email provider does spam filtering, so it won't be 100% accurate. And finally they have the review system, which can help learn about that particular vendor or product.
It isn't perfect, but it seems better then that alternative.
Now as a consumer, you also have the alternative to not buy from vendors you don't already recognize and trust. But then you might go back to having the selection issue. What do you do when your trusted vendors don't have the item? Flr those cases, Amazon still seems better then the alternative.
Seems to me that the alternative is simple: mandate that you receive what you ordered, and make the storefront you order from liable for any problems.
So say you wanted that product, and googled for a vendor, and you found xmanifacturer.com. How would you know to trust that? Also, I forgot to mention price. What if you find the item at xvendor.com at a cheaper price, and wanted to buy there? To me, that all just seem even less reliable.
For reference Walmart individually tags 10pks of cheap socks so it can via a wireless reader count how many Large foobrand packs of socks it has because it can differentiate between pack 5435454545 5435454546.
You can even give the user the ability to choose between getting shipments slightly faster by allowing you to fulfill their order via the closest item and send the info about fulfilling vendor along with the order OR get it slightly slower via the chosen vendor.
Amazon is technically excellent in a lot of ways its hard to imagine this would actually be hard for them they just don't want to.
But if there were no marketplace such as Etsy, Amazon or Ebay, I think it would be harder for the customer to trust a random website. At least with these marketplaces, you can trust the payment channels, the security of the data you give them, that the support contact will be responsive, that the item will be delivered properly and at all, etc.
If you find some random vendor with a cheaper price then you need to make a decision about how much you trust them and how much it’s worth to you.
All of this is pretty standard and expected. The problem with Amazon is that people expect them to be trustworthy, and apparently when it comes to receiving what you order, they often aren’t. People’s defenses against scammers don’t work here because Amazon doesn’t look like one. And yet they will tell you “sold by X” and sell you a product from Y instead without ever telling you.
Stores should be legally liable for what they sell. If they want their suppliers to bear the burden then they can add indemnification to their contracts.
I do think your point about these big vendors maybe providing a false sense of security is a good one, though I think it applies to Google results as well.
I don't know about legally liable though. I think that's where I'm more nuanced. If you impose that rule, than you kill marketplaces, everyone becomes individual retailers again, and Amazon, Ebay and Etsy becomes newer Walmarts. The selection shrinks again, prices go up, most manufacturers stop selling direct to customers again, since there are no cost effective ways for them to be a store anymore, and now you have fraudulent storefront opening up as websites again which will play the SEO game and potentially do even more damage to the customer then counterfeit, like just outright not shipping the item at all, or charging your CC for more money, or reselling your data, etc.
At the minimum, I'm not saying this could happen, but before enforcing these new regulations that you are proposing, we'd need to evaluate that it won't actually make things worse for the consumers. And in this case, I can see a case for it.
It's easy to see why. Google's entire reputation is based on providing good search results, to the point that "to google" has become a verb meaning to search the internet. They put a vast amount of effort into ensuring that they provide good search results. It is possible, with nefarious SEO and such, to beat out legitimate results sometimes, but it's not easy or reliable.
Amazon, on the other hand, doesn't seem to care. Sign up to sell a product, done.
Why would a liability rule kill Amazon? They can make it a part of their seller agreement that the seller indemnifies Amazon for all liability. This is different from making the seller directly liable because if the seller bails out, Amazon it stuck with it. This means that Amazon will have to make sure they can actually get satisfaction from sellers. There are many ways this can be accomplished, such as requiring the seller to have liability insurance with sufficient coverage.
I'm sure that such a rule would result in Amazon losing a bunch of tiny, no-name, untraceable sellers. Which is, of course, the whole point.
How is failing to ship the item or charging too much worse than counterfeiting? Both are trivial to counteract: initiate a chargeback with your credit card company. The same is true for counterfeits, if you detect them. The whole problem with counterfeits is that it's hard to detect them. If it was easy, this whole thing would be moot.
Amazon's product pages make it so easy to overlook who the actual seller is, and I don't think that's coincidence.
But doing what CVS is doing (independently testing all their stocked products) is not the solution. This is ahem WHAT REGULATORY AGENCIES ARE FOR. The FDA needs to do its gottdang job and test and regulate supplements. This is utterly shameful for a first-world country that consumers can't be certain that pills on shelves contain what they purport to.
* Supplements
* Anything vaguely medical, really
* Chargers
* Certain types of electronics e.g. phones
My only bad experiences with Amazon to date was with NVidia video cards. Twice. Shame on me for falling for it twice. Each time they swapped out the cards with slower clock speed video cards. They also censored my feedback. Apparently nobody else checks their cards clock speed once installed?
I've received one like that before so this isn't the first time they're sending out a mail like that
seems designed to trick not only buyers but also sites like fakespot
a vendor lists an item for awhile, something cheap and reliable enough to gather plenty of legit 5-star reviews
then they leave the listing and ASIN but delete and change out the photos and the title/text with another item, not even similar item in some cases
so the ratings/reviews remain but the new product is given all their weight instead
cannot believe amazon does not detect and stop this
It really sucks, and I hope we find a way to solve this, soon. It's a terrible customer experience.
Or are counterfeits generally perfect visual frauds?
It seems that sellers first build a reputation and then move on to counterfeiting. As a result, product listings have excellent reviews, even when they are clearly false. I'm talking things like a cream shampoo, brown water instead, etc.
I have practically given up buying these products on Amazon. Instead, I pay the manufacturer's small additional shipping and handling fees.
Would it be clear the branding was different? Like, the brown water didn't have an immaculately reproduced shampoo bottle? Thinking of supplements, where it can be hard to tell what a legit one should look like.