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Comment by cnst | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why anyone still buys anything at Amazon. Their Fulfilled-by-Amazon (FBA) idea was quite a game changer, but the implementation with the inventory co-mingling is something that I'd much rather stay away from as a consumer.

There's been oh-so-many reports that even if you're buying from the official store of any known brand, with FBA, then you might as well still receive a knock-off, due to the inventory co-mingling issue. Have they ever resolved this for good, or is noone really bothers to even pay any attention to this anymore?

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>>I don't understand why anyone still buys anything at Amazon. Their Fulfilled-by-Amazon (FBA) idea was quite a game changer, but the implementation with the inventory co-mingling is something that I'd much rather stay away from as a consumer.

As far as I know it doesn't happen in the UK at all. I have placed 200+ orders with Amazon in last year alone and haven't had any issues except for a couple deliveries which were a day late(Amazon extended my prime by a month each time). 99% of my deliveries arrive in 1 day as promised. They have exemplary customer service as well. In a way, I don't understand why you'd buy from anyone else but amazon :P

I wonder if this knock-off problem I keep reading about is something specific to the US. I've ordered ~200 things over the last 3 years from Amazon, and I've never received a knock-off either. I've never even heard of that happening outside of internet comments. Plus sending things back to Amazon is usually fairly trivial.

How would you know whether what you received was authentic?

For example, one wouldn't know their bike helmet was a knockoff unless they had fallen and hit their head.

https://www.npr.org/2018/09/16/647377213/fake-bike-helmets-c...

>I've never even heard of that happening outside of internet comments.

Amazon itself has admitted it has a counterfeit problem to it's investors

https://qz.com/1542839/amazon-has-finally-admitted-to-invest...

Beyond that there's been documented cases by manufacturers such as Birkenstock and Apple plus the eclipse sunglasses.

No, not US specific. I see some of sellers in my country includes stickers or keychains just to change ASIN.

One aspect is that not everything has counterfeit counterparts, e.g. there is no counter-counterfeit to, specific counterfeits, products that require exotic parts, or foods.

I’ve never seen a 4-cell(Lipo) knockoff battery for Lenovo X200 and I know the reason is because it is not easily possible to source appropriate components.

So there could be specific usage model for Amazon of a person that could completely avoid receiving unexpected items.

Just to add one more data point, I received a fake i7-8700k from Amazon UK, in addition to a couple other fake items over the years. Amazon is my last choice nowadays.

In case anyone's wondering, the fake i7 was some sort of Celeron with an i7 sticker on top - the real one is engraved/printed and has a different shape.

On a counter point, I regularly order from smaller shops because they offer the same service (next day delivery for 99% of orders) for a lower price (usually about 5-20€ per item). Amazon is quite pricey for some product categories.

> I don't understand why anyone still buys anything at Amazon.

It is cheaper than almost every other computer store in the UK for the same parts, deliver next day and they don't tend to shaft you on delivery cost (if it costs anything at all).

Unless you are near one of the large online shops and need something delivered next day there is no other option than Amazon.

They aren't always cheaper. I often (but not always) find hardware cheaper elsewhere - and I don't have to worry do much about counterfeits/refurbs with other suppliers.

Run your next purchasing decision through Google shopping. You may be surprised.

I use https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/ as a guide when building out a new system. A browse across some parts there seldom shows Amazon as cheapest. It's usually competitive, but in some cases it's quite a ways behind.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/Hy97YJ/msi-b450-tomahawk...

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/Y6Crxr/fractal-design-me...

etc.

It sometimes makes sense to spread the parts buy across a couple of vendors to save costs - of course too many vendors and delivery costs eat into the savings. But it's quite rare that I've ended up buying anything other than monitors and the occasional component from Amazon.

Official brands with their own store can opt out of commingling. I've confirmed this with a friend who works on the retail side of Amazon.

As a consumer, is there a way to tell when this is the case? It would be nice to filter this way, similar to using "Prime" to filter to just "ships from Amazon warehouse".

When you select your seller on Amazon, make sure the seller is Amazon and not a third party seller "fulfilled by amazon"

this is the opposite of what was asked

That won't save you from the scourge that is comingling.

co-mingling is mostly opt-in, unless that has changed. And I doubt they are co-mingling high dollar products, nor should anyone be dumb enough to do that. You usually only co-mingle to avoid the effort of putting individual sku stickers on each item which makes sense for very low priced items.

The solution is Amazon Transparency. This is offered through their Brand Services division.

And the solution for the whole industry is the same thing with some distributed ledger or some very light centralized authority (like MAC or UPC vendor assignments) plus vendor-specific databases.

Transparency should be FREE if its the only solution. It really should become a protocol and not Amazon-specific so that other vendors can jump on board. Right now nobody wants to do this unless the majority of their sales are Amazon.

Also, Amazon charges $0.05/UNIT for this!

Source: I am a consultant for Amazon Suppliers. The problem is not as bad as OC exclaims, but its slightly annoying.

About the only thing I buy from Amazon now is books (physical used, digital new) and devices made by Amazon (a new flagship kindle every 2-2.5 years as the PPI and other hardware features get better).

Anything food/supplement related always has reviews mentioning mold, substitutions etc. Cables and electronics are often counterfeit or of questionable quality. I've seen threads here on HN about counterfeit new books. Just not worth the headache of trying to find something that you think is legit and then hoping that co-mingled products alleged to be that don't get shipped to you instead.

Trust. If something happens, I know amazon got my back. Unless they betray my trust, I will continue shopping on amazon.

Funny timing - this s theVerge's headline story: https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/28/21080720/amazon-product-l...

Sometimes waiting too long for your personal trust to be broken (after seeing them drop on others) can be a lot worse than just a broken toy.

It's a story about a hairdryer going awry four years after it was bought. This isn't something I would even bother amazon with, it's on the manufacturer. If it was within the first year I'd expect amazon to get me a new hairdryer and that's about it.

Once there are any customer-complaints on a given SKU then co-mingling is deactivated.

Later, sellers attempting to co-mingle inventory are provided a seller-specific SKU that is matched to the parent and they're required to use. This ties all issues on their orders back to their store.

This still requires lots of human intervention, which sucks.

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