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Comment by icelancer | Hacker News Reader

At least UPS does this. We've been offered it by UPS. The rates are insane and are not remotely competitive with Amazon or third-party options... but they exist.

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The service is different though. If you use Amazon as your warehouse, on the lower tiers, you just ship inventory and they sort it by SKU .. for all stores! So some supplier could store a bunch of counterfeits with the same SKU, someone orders from your store, and your customer get a counterfeit (even if you've only shipped real products). .. This is one big reason most sex toy manufacturers won't sell to retailers that have Amazon stores.

I'm going to guess UPS keeps warehousing separate per vendor.

Amazon famously doesn’t really sort any of their inventory. It’s more efficient to place inventory randomly.

https://classic.qz.com/perfect-company-2/1172282/this-compan...

It also reduces mistakes in picking. It's hard to grab a size medium T-Shirt from the shelf above the larges by mistake if the shelf above the larges has lipstick and spark plug wires on it.

I don't understand this.

You have a product with a UPC. You have a picker with a UPC and a scanner. If the scanner scans the wrong UPC, the picker grabbed the wrong thing.

And yet I get sent the wrong item from Amazon multiple times per year. Ballpark of 1 in 20 orders. And not like I got the wrong order. More like I ordered spicy taco seasoning and receive regular taco seasoning. So a mistake that makes sense if you were matching on titles but why not match on UPCs?

Wow this is one of the most elegant and interesting things I've read in a while. This is absolutely genius. Amazing!

You can choose not to comingle your items. In this case you must relabel them with custom bar codes.

Amazon will only then use your items for your sales and not for anyone elses. Possible longer shipping times, etc. But I s always been possible to ensure correct items on the seller side with FBA.

Interesting, does Amazon do anything for damages when someone buys something thinking it is sold by you and receive a counterfeit?

You can easily use a different SKU if you want to avoid this.

Most people like to use the same SKU to get more exposure on amazon.com though.

Can the counterfeiter just copy your new SKU?

Yes.

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