I just bought some gym shorts from Target for $20. Amazon had some for the same price, but numerous reviews with photos showed people were getting fakes. Fuck that. Target of all places seems more curated than Amazon.
Isn’t this going to be true of any “pure” retailer? The nature of FBA and third-party sellers just means there will always be at least some percentage of fraud and so on that’s higher than “trick various people in the retailer to sell fake goods”.
Particularly as it’s much easier for insiders at a retailer to steal from their employer (and then resell via whatever means), I think the utility for “put fake goods on the shelf” at a retail shop is basically zero. I dunno, maybe you can trick/bribe the person near the start of the supply chain, but it wouldn’t take long for returns to pile up and an investigation to find “Jim and Sally colluded to sell fake gym shorts”.
No. First-party retailers don't generally commingle stock with other third-party retailers. They typically have few suppliers, often one supplier, for each good. That's for many reasons, but it also makes it easy for them to identify who sent them counterfeits.
Amazon is discovering what old-fashioned retailers learned long ago: customers do not give a fuck who, ultimately, has injected the counterfeit. They will blame the retailer.
If I was Wal-Mart I would be absolutely hammering this point to customers. I'd be running ads about "Shamazon". Tearful mothers whose child got sick. Teens who saved up for a game system or phone and got a block of wood. Grandparents who bought medical equipment and got a faulty knockoff. Everything dangerous, disgusting, outrageous or even just annoying. I'd be carpet-bombing every channel with ads amplifying the message that Amazon can't guarantee what you get. Wal-Mart aren't saints, but their historical success has rested heavily on an incredibly tight grip of their supply chain and logistics. They do actually know what they have on the shelf.
I knew things were going bad, when rock climbing gear was being counterfeited. (2011).
https://www.petzl.com/US/en/Sport/recalls/2011-2-21/Informat...
https://www.reddit.com/r/climbing/comments/b685vi/new_climbe...
(Also: is it Walmart or Wal-Mart?)
I just go to the brand's official website nowadays and pay whatever they ask so I don't have to research what channel it's coming from.
I wasn't very good at it. But I learned a lot.
The tradeoff is selection and probably price--although for some large specialist retailers like B&H Photo you largely do get both price and a pretty good selection of products.
Amazon should at least better separate the products it largely has control over the provenance of and everything else. But a third party marketplace is always to be hit or miss in terms of what you get.
A wide random selection is still wide I guess.
Unfortunately they also completely ignored counterfeit issues which has sabotaged their reputation. I think this is just damage control because I'd they're selling coungerfeit goods with some knowledge of the issue they mm at have some Liabity.