Hacker News Reader

Comment by tracer4201 | Hacker News Reader

Disclaimer: I don’t own amazon directly but do own funds where Amazon is a significant chunk.

I don’t agree with this kind of regulation. It’s simply not the governments role to decide. You as a seller are not forced to sell on Amazon. I say that as the spouse of a seller who owns a store on EBay that’s continued to be successful. We had a bad experience selling on Amazon and are better off without them. Of course that’s just our experience but I’m not convinced Amazon is a monopoly here.

I do think Amazon needs to be held liable for fake products and whatever damage they cause its customers. Amazon simply selling goods with no liability of fraudulent items is a disgrace, and I don’t think they will change until we ram some regulation down their throat.

View on HN

Serious question: What is the point of a “disclaimer” that applies to nearly everyone with a retirement account?

He's trying to sound sophisticated.

Minus the projection, I think all we can say is they were warning us to take their opinion with a grain of salt because they have an ostensible conflict of interest.

> You as a seller are not forced to sell on Amazon.

Sorry, but this argument is just silly.

Here's some food for thought: Birkenstock stopped selling on Amazon[1] due to a delluge of fakes. Now go to Amazon.com and search for Birkenstock. You get a shit ton of results.

So if Birkenstock is not selling them, since they don't sell on Amazon, then who sells them and do those sellers have a right to sell a 3rd party product despite the brand not wishing to sell on the platform at all?

If you can regulate that a pimply faced teenager in Tenessee is ruined for life for downloading 10 songs, then it should surely be possible to regulate a behemoth like Amazon not to allow the sale of crap from dodgy suppliers on its platform.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/20/birkenstock-quits-amazon-in-...

> I do think Amazon needs to be held liable for fake products and whatever damage they cause its customers.

what would this look like? they already have a pretty generous return policy. they pay the return shipping and return the funds as soon as the package ships. I'm not thrilled with the status quo of playing fraud roulette every time I order something, but the worst thing that's ever happened to me is having to wait a couple extra days for the genuine item.

> they already have a pretty generous return policy.

Yet there is no option to indicate that "This product is a counterfeit" when filing a return, despite it being a documented problem. The purchaser must choose a different, and inaccurate, reason for their return when filing for one.

One way to read into this is that Amazon doesn't want to keep records of counterfeit items sold on their marketplace because of the liability such records might incur.

Another way to read it is that amazon doesn’t believe the consumer is a reliable counterfeit detector, versus “crappy product”, etc.

This can be solved with an "I believe the item I received is a counterfeit" option alongside the "Item is defective or doesn't work" option already present during the return process.

My personal favorite was the manufacturer who purchased an item from us (a third party merchant) who claimed it was counterfeit. This product was originally purchased from the manufacturer and had its original sales receipt. Amazon’s project zero uses a hammer to fix this problem by removing all sellers (even ones that have a right to sell the item). Sometimes in rare cases legal action is taken and they do get the real counterfeiter but from what I saw the real problem (for the accuser) is solved because now only amazon or only the manufacturer can sell against that listing. Hoping this will one day change but I’m certainly not going to hold my breath.

Does Amazon know you are not a manufacturer? How do the customers benefit from the risk of involving orgs like yours?

And the seller is? Amazon never even receives the product in this scenario - how do they then try to deal with the issue?

Commercial copyright infringement.

I recall RIAA back in start of 2000’s said it should be around $100k-$300k per instance.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com