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Comment by ecommerceguy | Hacker News Reader

>>In a statement on its website, Amazon also said its employees “work hard every day to help ensure all products offered in our store are safe and authentic.”

Bullshit. The front line employees that receive inbound product don't enforce any policy and actually Amazon encourages to deal with disputes only after a product is sold, shipped and a customer complains. That's the Bezos way. Fact. Let's discuss grocery products in glass containers real quick if anyone wants to argue...

I admit, we'd sell counterfeit products if I didn't have morals. We push all the AMZ limits we can. I could write a book on this subject.

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This also makes me laugh out loud.

If Amazon gave two craps about some of this stuff it would be cut WAY back.

For a few years at least every Apple branded product on amazon I bought was 100% fake - lazy fakes too. I ended up having to buy from Apple directly to get something legit. You are telling me brands haven't complained about this? I find that totally hard to believe.

The crap amazon sells is going to bring them down.

I've got used stuff sold as new (complete with debries from previous owner).

If they cared they would.

Have sellers post $1,000 bond to sell, scaled up based on sales volume.

Enforce clear fraud issues with account bans and forfeit the deposit (ie, the whole changed 5 star listing selling a totally different product).

Segregate inventory by seller, and enforce consequences on seller for product quality issues.

Have a QC team sample 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 100,000 items and 1 item per seller each year. If it claims USB 3- test to spec, claims waterproof test to spec, claims safe for kids - test for lead. Whoever does this will win in long run. Who wants lead in the product they give to their kids.

This reputation issue could bleed into AWS. Why trust a company that CANNOT get control over its marketplace. The fakes are horrible.

The only way Amazon is going to fix it is if it costs more to leave it as a problem than it will cost to fix it.

Let's hope that Amazon recognizes the seriousness of this problem before it manifests itself financially. By then it could be too late. If we think about this as a "reputational security" problem then Amazon is already vulnerable. If the idea that buying from Amazon means you will get a fake gains traction--either organically or through an information campaign by a competitor--then it seems likely that their sales will decline. And, once their reputation is damaged in this way it will be difficult to repair.

I'm suggesting that reputation has a delayed effect on sales, it may not have a significant financial impact until the reputational attack hits a certain threshold; at which point that impact could be very significant. It's easy to imagine the hyberbolic, clickbait articles that might arise: "The Amazon Fake Crisis: What you need to know" or "Amazon fakes: Read this before you buy another thing on Amazon" (or better clickbait headlines than I can write but you get the idea).

If Amazon retail imploded, it would affect their revenue greatly, but not their profitability. 75% of their profit comes from AWS.

This strikes me as very idealistic.

They are selling more than double the amount of stuff they were 5 years ago, and are over half of US ecommerece. You might care about getting a fake charger, but 90% of people don't give a crap if it's 30% cheaper than the real thing and magically appears at their house the next day.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/revenu...

I think AWS and retail/AFT are basically two different companies. I don't think what happens in one reflects on or affects the other, at all.

People do care about fake chargers when they make their phone explode or their house burn down.

Genuine Samsung premium phones can do that too.

Just saying...

Sometimes yes, but if it happens there will be a very public recall, and they will replace the device for free. A crappy charger someone bulk- ordered white-label is not going to have either of those things.

Replacing a phone isn't going to help someone who's house burned down

You can plausibly sue Samsung for it. Does AMZ have the same accountability?

When Samsung phones had a well publicized issue. Airlines prohibited their phones and called them out by name before every flight. You bet that's going to encourage them to never make that mistake again.

and fake batteries! - for laptops, cameras and cell phones - I have seen some really bad stuff come from the smiling boxes - and read nightmares from others.

It's to the point that I do not buy any batteries from Amazon and tell others to be wary, fire to save a few bucks is not worth it.

Sometimes it's easy to spot knockoffs, other times the sellers have the name of the OEM as their store it seems - and it's crazy bad.

> but 90% of people don't give a crap if it's 30% cheaper than the real thing and magically appears at their house the next day

...until it burns their house down.

Yes, but at that point it is too late, right? I'm not defending the business practice--I just don't think many consumers consider that kind of exceptional possibility when they make purchases.

Wait until it happens enough to make the news.

You’re not getting a fake for 30% off... because then it is not a fake.. that’s just some off brand crap

It’s a fake when you get a counterfeit item that is sold to you at full price under the listing for the real thing. I think most people that seek out a particular brand and then find out it is a fake are pretty pissed off.

Have sellers post $1,000 bond to sell, scaled up based on sales volume.

This is interesting. I've looked over various pages, starting at https://services.amazon.com/fulfillment-by-amazon/pricing.ht... and I can't find anything where FBA stores need to do anything like this (post bond).

Compare this to Chinese stores tmall.com (operated by Alibaba) and jd.com. Both tmall.com and jd.com are focused on trying to ensure that customers can trust the authenticity of their products and similarly can host 3rd party stores. Their corresponding webpages say:

https://about.tmall.com/tmall/fee_schedule

This one-time fee (frozen on Merchant's Alipay account) is used as collateral in the case of any damages incurred by Tmall.com or any customer, unfrozen upon termination of the Tmall.com Service Agreement.

    - Flagship Store, Franchise Store:™100,000RMB; ® 50,000RMB

    - Specialty Store: ™ 150,000RMB; ®: 100,000RMB

    - Specialty Categories:

        Flagship Store of a multi-brand marketplace - 150,000RMB

        Specialty stores sell merchandises produced outside of Mainland China and the trademarks of those merchandises are not registered in China(Fruit, import products, etc) - 150,000RMB

        "Book/Audiovisual" primary category operators: Flagship store and franchise store - 50,000RMB; Specialty store - 100,000RMB

        "Service" and "E-tickets" primary category operators - 10,000RMB

        "Online Gaming and QQ", "Mobile Fees", and "Travel" primary category operators - 10,000RMB

        "Medicine/Medical Service" primary category merchants - 300,000RMB

        "Cars and Car accessories" and below 1st class "New and Used Cars" primary category merchants - 100,000RMB

        For information on first-class categories, please consult: //a.taobao.com/detail/2011/11/10/533509/1.php

Tmall.com reserves the right to deduct from the Deposit an amount equivalent to the damage incurred by Tmall.com or any customer. Should the Security Deposit be less than the required amount, the merchant must cover the difference within 15 days. Should the merchant exceed the deadline, Tmall.com will close the store until the payments are received.

Correspondingly, for jd.com, I couldn't find a similar official company URL, but I found this one.

https://www.tmogroup.asia/how-to-sell-using-jd-com/

Although companies who are registered inside mainland China are eligible to sell on the JD Marketplace platform, it is important to take into account the costs associated with operating a store. Roughly the costs can be divided into the security deposit, service see, and commission.

    First, the security deposit ranges between 10.000 and 100.000 RMB depending on the product category. This deposit is refundable if you decided to leave the JD Marketplace.

    Second, the service fee is a monthly payment between 500 and 1.000 RMB depending on the chosen product category.

    Lastly, JD will charge a commission based on your sales. This commission ranges between 1% and 8% varying with the shop type and product category.

I'm sure they also take various other measures to ensure authenticity and punish misbehaving sellers. Both of them basically are market responses to Chinese consumers being fed up with counterfeit products.

I am surprised that to date, Amazon has not done something similar to weed out all the bad sellers.

It seems to be less of an issue in Germany. But it is bad enough that for certain products I insist on sold and shipped by Amazon. Do, my impression is that over here it is more like a marketplace problem, for now. Also, customer service for marketplace orders is just crap.

Insofar as I've understood, buying products that are sold and shipped by Amazon doesn't protect you anymore because inventories are no longer segregated.

That would be bad for all kind of reasons, I don't like that kind of lack of transparency.

Not would. Is. Speaking personally I haven't bought anything from Amazon for that reason.

It may be related to the german legal concept of „Mitstörerhaftung“ which basically means that anyone who is contributing to a rights violation (like selling counterfeit goods) is liable for this. This can be a bit absurd (a shipping company transporting a sealed container which contains counterfeit goods they know nothing of is liable to at least stop doing so), but it may keep amazon on it‘s toes.

I bought a product on Amazon this Christmas that was completely fake. It was "sold by Amazon" but didn't even have the same label as the brand I had ordered. I complained to Amazon and they just gave me a refund without requiring that I return the product (I ended up just throwing it out).

I suspect that they knew the inventory was tainted but figured the cost of dealing with noisy customers like me is less than the amount of money they make selling a cheaply made ripoff of a $15 product.

If multiple suppliers ship same product to Amazon warehouses Amazon will ship closest one to buyer regardless who supplied it. In fact if the seller requests their goods back they won't get the same ones they sent to Amazon - they are mixed together with others sharing ASIN

There must have been an Amazon marketplace seller using same listing but shipping fakes. Or Amazon got duped.

What bothers me most is the fake was incredibly lazy. It came in a plain white box with the brand I ordered stamped on one corner. The product inside looked completely different and was from a "brand" that I can't find sold on any legitimate site. I suspect it didn't even include a functioning battery, I couldn't get it to hold a charge for more than a few seconds.

If Amazon got "duped" by this they could have gotten duped just as easily by a guy selling a box of old newspapers. I don't understand how it's not fraud to label it as "Sold by Amazon" when they don't have the slightest idea what they're shipping to me.

Please tell us the product name so we are aware.

The product name won't help. This could happen with almost any item Amazon sells because of how they commingle inventory.

This is very common. For example I was recently shopping for a popular brand of silverware and it was crystal clear from reviews that lots of people were getting fakes - some terrible, some subtle, like rusting after a couple washes.

So if you are selling the absolute lowest-quality stuff, you may increase the quality of your inventory by simply giving it to amazon and request them back? Now I sympathize with Amazon, knowing how shady some merchants could be.

If it's true that they do not track products by suppliers, this could be a scalable fraud. Send in absolute garbage and take it back/buy it to enrich your metarial.

What are you going to do with your "enriched" inventory? Sit on it?

Sell it on eBay as a merchant, or in a physical store.?

You can sell it on Amazon because they don't care if you send them counterfeits or stolen goods.

But you will have competition, instead, you might be able to sell it somewhere with quality standards - like a real shop - and have ticker margins given that you bought your inventory for dirt cheap and revitalized it in Amazon.

In that case you wouldn't bother trying to get "real" inventory back, you'd just send them the inventory and be done with it.

I still don't get how this commingled inventory happens. I know that Amazon has different inventory owners for FBA and AMZN stock. So technically they should be able to separate between different FBA owners, too. So at the very least AMZN and FBA inventory shouldn't be mixed.

Only explanation I can think of is returns, issues in the return reception could add FBA returns to AMZN stock. Which should trigger some kind of investigation. I don't like the fact that this stuff keeps happening as it points yo bad processes and, IMHO, some WMS issues as well.

It's to save on shipping. They got quite a bit of warehouse nowadays. They just share all the same inventory, thus have to move less stock in between warehouse and you get your stuff faster. It fail when their FBA inventory is fake though, and they weirdly don't care enough about it to stop doing that. I guess the cost of refunding theses cases is less than the cost of shipping.

It's a lot worse. I bought an RCA minifridge, "sold by amazon." 10 months later the compressor starts clicking. I check the "RCA" manual - it's clearly written by a non-native speaker in broken engrish. Nor does RCA make this model apparently. The listing now has the same fridge with a different logo on it.

I complain to Amazon that it's counterfeit, and need a refund despite it being 10 months later. I ship it back, get a refund less than purchase price. They charged me a restocking fee. They're now going to sell it used.

They know it's fake - they knowingly sell fake things.

I just use walmart.com now. I spent ~80k on Amazon over the last decade, and they will never get another penny from me, even if they fix this. My two brothers stopped using amazon too. And my wife. Walmart has most things Amazon does, as a first seller. Their 3rd party sellers are the same as amazon - just less of them. Because walmart actually investigates and kicks people off for selling fakes. Amazon literally knowingly sells fakes themselves. Prices are same or less. If I want aliexpress, I'll buy there. But I don't.

On that one I'd suspect RCA, actually. They've become a meaningless sticker on so much generic Chinese lowest-bidder trash that I would not be surprised if they'd lost track of several SKUs they supposedly sell.

I buy so much stuff on amazon, and have never had a fake anything. Can you give more detail? I’d love to know at least what kind of product it was.

We bought a PlayStation 3 controller on Amazon many years back. It was a pretty good fake, the buttons felt slightly different, but we thought it is just a different production run. After six months or so, Sony disabled this range of counterfeits (IIRC because the built-in battery was a fire hazard). So, we had a useless controller.

Luckily, we got a refund.

Just over Christmas I heard a story from my Aunt who had their basement flooded because of a fake replacement water filter she bought on Amazon. The entire filter unit exploded and water just poured out of the pipe.

I tried to file a claim about a fraudulent purchase (filing complaints is intentionally obscure and arduous on Amazon) I made and I got an email back that told me I didn't have a claim because I wasn't a seller. So they do enforce a policy, their policy is to make money on whatever legal grey area they can get away with.

This is the thing about corporate statements.

Amazon has a hundred thousand employees? If they have 5 people working on this then it's absolutely true that "[their] employees work hard every day to help ensure all products offered in [their] store are safe and authentic".

Employees working on something has weight when you have a handful of employees total. You can measure the effort expended as a whole number percentage of the overall budget. When you've invested almost nothing as a percentage of your entire labor budget, it's just lying with facts.

I am surprised Amazon has not run into Food safety issues / lawsuits by now.

Hard to ship fake perishable goods via Amazon. Food fraud is way more lucrative on bigger scales.

You'd be surprised how much 3rd party grocery is sold via FBA... It's a nice income stream done correctly.

Doesnt have to be perishable. Things like Biscuits, Cereals, Nuts, Dates, ground items of various kinds etc.

As frequently as I've seen BBQ sauce in glass containers, for instance, 1 starred as shattered on delivery, I am too. To be fair, these items should not have been placed within FBA in the first place, according to "policy". Inbound employees are supposed to filter products for policy violations (specifically in this instance liquid in glass containers over 4ozs). Not the employees fault..?, they are overwhelmed.

Just 1 of many examples we run into as a fulfillment service.

Merry Christmas everyone!

>As frequently as I've seen BBQ sauce in glass containers, for instance, 1 starred as shattered on delivery,

Last week I had a package show up with six 5lb weight plates, a book and toothpaste in the same big box.

Even if the toothpaste hadn't been crushed to the point of failing and getting everywhere, the book was completely mangled by 30 pounds of weight plates sliding around in an oversized box for God only knows how long.

I ordered some sea salt scrub earlier this year and same kinda thing, they just tossed it in an oversized box with a bunch of other stuff... by the time it got to me the lid had cracked and come off and oil/salt was all over everything.

It doesn't surprise me they do similar with food.

Dabbled in FBA before. I stopped when I realized the game can be won by volume shipment and pricing wars. Brand registry is also a way to own your listing. Would buy a 30$ ebook if you write all the ins and outs.

The phrasing is a deviously clever way to try to foist some degree of blame on employees rather than policy.

Repeating myself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19199343

> The classic "control fraud" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_fraud strategy is to incentivise your subordinates to maximise revenues while "neglecting" to check that they aren't engaging in fraud to do it. Then you can protest your innocence when the fraud comes to light.

I'm glad we are all in agreement about the smell coming from that statement.

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