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Comment by dmwallin | Hacker News Reader

So create a system that encourages abuse, profit from that abuse at the expense of brands, and then charge those companies to use your proprietary tracking system if they want to eliminate it? This is straight out of a racketeering playbook, "It would be a shame if someone counterfeited your products and ruined your brand..."

This is Amazon's problem and they should be responsible and accountable for this.

This article is low quality and reads like it's straight out of Amazon's PR team, with no actual analysis.

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It's strange how you attack specifically Amazon for this, while every e-commerce platform that allows 3rd party sellers has this problem. Amazon is the only one doing something about it; they should be applauded.

let's not go into whataboutism. Amazon is the biggest player so of course it has to be scrutinized the most.

It's not whataboutism to state that Amazon is the only one actually trying to fix things.

the point is things == the problem they specifically caused

Amazon caused the problem by mixing inventory. You are a legit seller who sells product A and there is another seller who sells a counterfeit product A. Even if a customer buys from you it can receive a counterfeit product.

I think this happened to me a long time ago on Amazon (2015). I ordered a bicycle tail light. When I got the package it was some cheap bad non brand name product. I'm not sure what Amazon did on the back end, but they refunded me. I just looked at my order history, it appears to be one of the items Amazon sells from multiple vendors, like what you describe.

I'm having a hard time grokking how Amazon is somehow culpable for the fraud of "another seller" claiming that their wares are "product A" (by self-describing it by the same SKU).

If this happened on eBay (user buys/wins auction of "product A" as sold by "another seller", but described the product sold by "a legit seller"), who is culpable? I'm sure the reputation of the "another seller" should take a hit -- the only question is should the marketplace's reputation?

Perhaps if the "fulfilled my Amazon" is used, that might make more sense, but I think they just add the "distributor" role to their transaction role.

Because it isn't transparent to the purchaser that the stock comes from an illegitimate seller.

So as a hypothetical example: Rolex makes Subarmariner watches and sells them on Amazon, and KnockOffWatchCo makes counterfeit Submariners and sells them as genuine ones on Amazon. I order a Submariner watch from Rolex through Amazon. However when Amazon sends it to me it grabs a watch from a bucket that contains intermixed submariners supplied by Rolex and counterfeit submariners supplied by KnockOffWatchCo, even though I purchased it from the legitimate seller.

This is because Amazon treats items with the same SKU regardless of the origin of those items.

This leads to two problems: the first is legitimate sellers being blamed for selling counterfeit goods. The other is the damage to brand perception. "Oh wow my Rolex watch sure keeps terrible time, I guess they've gone down hill".

So in the case of eBay if the seller sold me a fake product and I could identify that it is fake I could dispute that I received the advertised goods.

With Amazon I could do that too, but I would not buy through that seller again even though they weren't actually the ones who provided the item.

Does that make more sense?

I was under the impression that suppliers could choose not to allow SKU mixing but many do not because mixing leads to lower delivery times.

Is that not true?

>This article is low quality and reads like it's straight out of Amazon's PR team, with no actual analysis.

http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

I don't think I fully understand your perspective. Aside from simply offering a marketplace on which people may sell various products, what has Amazon done to encourage abuse?

I don't necessarily know their validity one way or the other, but the points that tend to be made are:

- In today's world, Amazon isn't just a marketplace, it is THE marketplace. For many brands, not selling on Amazon isn't a realistic option.

- Amazon's marketplace makes it very easy to counterfeit due to co-mingling, the difficulty of holding foreign sellers accountable, and the prevalence of fake reviews.

- Amazon has done little if anything to combat counterfeiting.

>Amazon has done little if anything to combat counterfeiting.

This article is entirely about Amazon doing something to combat counterfeiting...

Amazon has benefited tremendously from counterfeiting, and has done little to combat it until recently, mostly because the pressure to act has increased and the benefits of stalling have decreased.

Yes, finally. And they’re putting the cost on the manufacturers, even though it’s a problem they created. In effect, manufacturers are now paying for commingling and Amazon is reaping the benefits.

What a hilarious notion that Amazon "created" the problem of counterfeiting. Counterfeiting has been an issue for centuries, long long before Amazon existed.

Amazon didn’t create the problem of counterfeiting, but they did create the problems on Amazon. If I purchase something on Amazon and it is counterfeit, I can’t blame or avoid the counterfeiter because Amazon has commingled inventory. Even if I buy from a trusted seller or even Amazon itself, I might get a counterfeit item. My only choice in that case is to not buy from Amazon at all.

If I buy anywhere else that allows third party sellers, I might get a counterfeit item, but I’ll know to avoid that seller in the future. And I can develop a meaningful relationship of trust with sellers; seller reviews about counterfeits will have meaning; and I can shop with a lot more confidence.

I think the point is that by creating a system that makes counterfeiting easy and doing nothing to stop it when they knew it was taking place (or now demanding payment to stop it), Amazon is somewhat responsible.

Putting the cost on manufacturers and potentially breaking legitimate resellers just feels straight out of the Walmart strongarm playbook. It feels like it should be against some FTC regulation somewhere that a transferrer of a good has the responsibility to not allow this to happen. The only historical equivalent I can think of is the movements of crude oil through pipelines where if you sell one type of oil and get a different oil on the buyers end the pipeline owner doesn't get to wash their hands of the affair and say 'its just oil, buyer beware.'

Amazon should be subsidizing 100% of this program if they can't take care of their own mess.

> what has Amazon done to encourage abuse?

Co-mingling of products at the warehouse. When you buy from Amazon, you don't actually know which "seller" is supplying the goods. They all were comingled at the Warehouse.

Even "Sold by Amazon" and "Fufilled by Amazon" products are comingled. Leading to: https://twitter.com/billpollock/status/1183094406573748225

Amazon, instead of fixing the comingling problem, has decided to charge the legitimate companies (ex: No Starch Press) for anti-counterfeiting defenses. Amazon is destroying No Starch Press's reputation by shipping shoddy low-quality counterfeit books, but its No Starch Press who has to pay the price to fix the problem.

Yes, as a heavy user of Amazon and (I think) a pretty savvy consumer of their site, commingling of different seller's offerings under one ASIN number causes big issues for me.

Almost as bad is Amazon allowing resellers to combine "similar" products into the same listing. While this makes sense for functionally equivalent products such as color differences, it's now used all the time for products that are substantially different. For example, mixing the ratings of a Micro-USB wall charger with a USB-C Power Delivery-capable wall charger is not only useless but misleading. They look different, work differently and use completely different parts internally.

I really wish Amazon would stop this.

The big difference between Amazon and other marketplaces is that Amazon have done their best to not make it look or act like a marketplace. Like, if you look at a listing on eBay there's a prominent seller information pane telling you which user you're buying from, their feedback history, etc. On Amazon there's just a single unobtrusive "sold by" line which blends into the rest of the page. Not only that, if you or someone else comes back to the same listing a few hours later the product could be coming from a completely different seller - Amazon decides who they want to direct your purchase to based on secret algorithmic factors.

Co-mingling inventory.

Amazon isn't a marketplace. It's warehouse where the real goods are mixed in with the fake goods and you can't buy directly from a specific seller.

The fix is to stop co-mingling and allow users to buy directly from a seller. That would be a true marketplace platform. Sellers shouldn't need to pay Amazon for an add-on anti-counterfeiting service to fix a problem they created.

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