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>Amazon is sourcing their stock through standard channels.

This just isn't true. There's been plenty of lawsuits alleging that Amazon themselves sourced counterfeit product. Their supply chain for many products is not necessarily better than third party sellers.

About 6 years ago I ordered a $150 graphing calculator from Amazon, 'Shipped and sold by Amazon' or whatever the actual phrase was, and iirc there were no 3rd-party sellers for the item. The calculator came in two versions with software differences as well as a different accent color on the hardware to differentiate. I ordered the one with the extra software but instead got the one with the cheaper color and firmware. I returned it for a replacement from Amazon and got the right one that time.

It wasn't counterfeit (I don't think anyone is ripping off high-end TI calculators, and it also came with a license key for the computer software), but I believe it was intentionally incorrectly sold. It came in a blister pack and the paper insert inside plastic indicated it was the CAS model, but the calculator itself was the non-CAS model - in other words, aside from having the non-CAS calculator in the box, it was exactly identical to the CAS model as you would buy from a store.

Maybe TI mixed up their stuff but I doubt that; by that time I had already heard of Amazon selling counterfeit items and as you said there have apparently been lawsuits for this.

About a year later I had the exact same issue occur with another item - sold by Amazon, but fake, but got the right one after a return. Can't remember what it was though.

I can suggest another likely culprit for your wrong calculator: its barcode got broken/lost.

Everything is tracked by barcode. If it doesn't have a barcode matching what's expected, it doesn't exist anymore. Scratch a barcode the wrong way or mark it wrong, it loses it's ability to be scanned. It gets found, but what is it, inventory-wise?

The folks solving these problems, they're trained but some are better than others and it's not easy. There's 100s of millions of different ASINs. So they search by name and brand and say "looks like that's it" and voila, you have virtual inventory tracking this item as ASIN X, while it's actually ASIN Y.

No maliciousness needed. Just a complex system failing on the edge cases.

(Bias note: I work for another branch of Amazon. I do not speak for the company in any way. These are my own opinions.)

That doesn't explain the cheap calculator in the packaging of the expensive one. I mean the branded plastic blister pack that the calculators are directly packaged inside, not some box that is used during the shipment to/from Amazon.

Buy real calculator online, buy cheap knockoff in shady store, get a refund from Amz. Tracing is hard with commingled inventory. Something i heard about on the internet...

>It seems like Amazon is doing all sorts of things but not actually addressing the root -- inventory co-mingling + sketchy 3rd party sellers that can come back overnight.

Right, and for the reasons you listed, they simple do not care. They care only about appearing to care.

As someone else linked in this thread, they announce some bullshit "investigative team" like this every 6 months or so.

I don't think they don't care -- this is a huge source of negative press & goes against company culture of putting the Customer above ALL else (including employees & their well being lol)

The problem is just that even a tiny percentage of bad-actors still make up millions of sales at Amazon's scale.

If they cared, they would let customers filter to only search items shipped and sold by Amazon.com, and they would come out and publicly announce they do NOT commingle inventory. They specifically removed the ability to filter by "shipped and sold by Amazon.com" (ignoring the fact that with commingling, it doesn't matter anyway).

Since they do not do the above, they obviously do not care. Retail profit margins are tiny, and they make far more on a third party sale while shouldering none of the risk. Therefore, Amazon's best strategy is to appear to care, as long as people continue to shop. And the more third party sellers people use, the better for Amazon, as they simply skim some percentage off of total sales.

Of course they don't put their customer above all else. They are a business: They put money above all else. "We put customers above all else" is just another way to put money above all else.

Amazon seller here - cominging is typically a long tail problem these days, as manufacturers with brand registry basically get their own special inventory/storage treatment. I know it doesn't seem like it from a consumer side, but we as 1P vendors have to jump through a buncha hoops to sell our own products using Brand Registry, and even more hoops in 3P items and extra labeling of barcoded items just to note that the items came from and are trackable to us.

*1P = first-party manufacturer, 3P = third-party (not original manufacturer) seller

I’m not sure commingling is as big a problem as you imply. Amazon’s inventory system is random so every item can essentially be tracked by location. Even with commingling, if there is a counterfeit all the inventory from the original sourcer can be tracked and pulled. It’s not like they are randomly tossing all of the same item into a random bin and doesn’t know whose is whose.

Also Amazon buys from many distributors just like every other retailer. Even their own inventory for the same item could come from many different suppliers. Many of those distributors/suppliers are now sellers themselves and all that’s changed is who sets the price and who decides when to send in more inventory (and who takes on the working capital risk.)

As for sellers coming back overnignt, one of the largest complaints on the seller forums is how onorous the KYC process is for new sellers. (Bank documents, passports, business license, etc).

Also you a manufacturer can become a brand owner which prevents commingling and other sellers from listing on their items. Notice that Ankara highest volume power banks pretty much only have offers from Anker and amazon warehouse / woot (an amazon subsidiary).

> I’m not sure commingling is as big a problem as you imply.

Commingling is the sole reason I canceled Amazon prime and don’t shop there.

I am spending my money to receive a certain product, and in order to do that I have to trust the vendor. If I can’t trust the vendor, why should I buy from them?

> It’s not like they are randomly tossing all of the same item into a random bin and doesn’t know whose is whose.

Tell this to my buddy who had his card game counterfeited about 3 years ago.

He was getting a lot of complaints about counterfeit products, so he ordered a few and got a few duds.

He ended up having to recall all of his inventory from Amazon, and he found out that a fairly sizable percentage was counterfeit (~20%... can't remember the exact number). According to him, Amazon was literally "tossing all of the same item into a random bin and [didn't] know whose [was] whose".

The solution he ended up going with was paying Amazon extra to separate his items from other potential sellers of his own product. IIRC, he also set up (paid for?) the right to be the sole distributor for new items. I can't remember if he took those actions concurrently or sequentially, but he decided it was cheaper to do both rather than deal with counterfeits.

Hard to say since only Amazon knows. As you've mentioned, there are many ways for counterfeits to enter the supply chain.

I think the main difference is who shoulders greater risk/impact of a counterfeit. Under normal models, the store (Amazon) is hit harder (returns, supply chain management). Under Amazon's model, the customer and potentially manufacturer bears a heavier burden.

As a customer, why should I care about the brand owner feature? Additionally, Amazon does not clearly mark products as such. These things just look like any other FBA product.

As a product creator, why should I have to register myself with Amazon? Should I have to police Amazon listings (which seems likely based on the brand ownership service feature list)? Or can I just work with my trusted distributors like the standard model?

I don't have an answer to these questions especially on the sell side. However, this all seems more like Amazon's way of shifting risk and cost to external parties.

This is a hard problem to fix. The last statistic I read was that 52% of all items sold on Amazon were 3rd party sellers. Imagine even if 1% of the items by 3rd sellers were counterfeit, that's still millions of items.

I don't envy Amazon's position right now. They should have thought about this issue before opening 3rd party sellers but now they're dealing with the consequence in a huge scale

All Amazon had to do was make it possible for people to filter for only items shipped and sold by Amazon.com and publicly announce they don't commingle inventory. If they did that, they would be a viable competitor to Costco, Best Buy, Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, etc.

It's not a hard problem to fix. It's an unprofitable problem to fix. See the tiny profit margins at the above listed actual retail companies. The juicy profit margins lie in being a platform and taking a cut of all sales.

At the very least, whoever ships the product should be considered the retailer. If I visit Amazon.com, buy a product that's stocked in an Amazon warehouse, pay Amazon, and Amazon ships it to me, it's insane that Amazon can turn around and claim someone else is the retailer when things go bad.

Politicians are tough on crime unless it's corporate crime I guess.