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Comment by leetcrew | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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> 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.

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