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Comment by throwawayiionqz | Hacker News Reader

I ordered a well-known baby-bottom cream. The product gave her never-expanding rashes for a few days. Then I realized the color slightly differs from the same cream bought at the local pharmacy, and that many 1 star reviews also report knockoffs version of the cream. In some cases review pictures show that the packaging itself is clearly fake.

I write a 1-star review explaining the above, and saying that the anxious parents are now in an unbearable situation after applied a fake, potentially harmful and untraceable product to their newborn bottom.

The review does not respect community guidelines and won't be published.

View on HN

I wrote a detailed, solid, accurate 1 star review of a child's digital camera which clearly didn't contravene their guidelines. Didn't meet their guidelines, wouldn't publish it.

Amazon used to be great. Nowadays it's full of fake reviews and dodgy secondhand stuff being sold as new.

Of my past 10 orders with Amazon, 4 of the items I've received have been either non-functional, the wrong item entirely (a knock-off of an APC replacement battery), or clearly used.

Amazon has refused to publish every one of my reviews, which, as you said in your situation, clearly met their guidelines.

My experiences indicate to me that they have no interest in improving. They're far more interested in protecting shady sellers from buyers than they are in protecting buyers from shady sellers, counterfeit products, etc.

Do you still have the counterfeit tube? It might be worthwhile to get in touch with your Attorney General’s Office. Doubly so if your AG is up for re-election.

I imagine a lot of Attorneys General would jump at the chance to stand up to Amazon in defense of poor little baby bottoms and a media-friendly fact pattern like this could help bring about much-needed change at Amazon across all product categories.

Before calling the AG on this, how do you make sure that fake is fake in the first place?

The major hurdle is that you do not even know and cannot know. Maybe the product is actually legit and the visual difference comes from temperature or whatever, and the rash appeared for a different reason. One avenue may be to contact the manufacturer with the lot number.

If you try a new product and baby develops rashes or allergies, you know not to buy this product again. With Amazon you can't even conclude anything about the official product because you might have used a knockoff.

You can just conclude to stay away from Amazon for baby care products.

I don’t think you need to conclude it’s a fake product in order to contact the AG so long as you have a reasonable suspicion. The AG, if they decide to pursue the case, will contact the manufacturer and/or have the contents of the tube tested by a lab.

> Before calling the AG on this, how do you make sure that fake is fake in the first place?

You have enough evidence to form a reasonable suspicion that you were sold a counterfeit item, and that it harmed your child. At this point, it would be the AG's job to figure out whether or not the product is fake, and whether or not follow up on your report.

> Before calling the AG on this, how do you make sure that fake is fake in the first place?

Contact the manufacturers consumer helpline.

To add some context, the "critical" reviews of the product [1] describes multiple instances of the problem.

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Aquaphor-Healing-Ointment-Advanced-Pr...

Edit: Searching with "yellow" or "fake" brings more reviews with the same issue. In the mean time parents keep receiving it and applying it on their newborn.

This sounds litigation ready!

Second this - this needs to be litigated.

How many hours a week would a person need to dedicate to starting a lawsuit about something like this?

Anyone have experience? Even if a law firm would do 100% of the work & charge on contingency, I bet it still takes 100+ hours for the average joe to research and find the firm to do that.

Ask a lawyer friend to refer you. They're pretty good at that. I imagine an initial 1/2 hour conversation will clarify a lot and cost nothing.

If you don't have a lawyer friend, find a friend who does.

The copied brand owner would likely be very interested. That's direct harm to the brand.

Yes, Amazon has what seems to be a paid program for brand owners to monitor and respond to Amazon reviews. It's been around for years now.

I'll never order something I put on or in my body from Amazon again.

Same thing happened to me with a FBA product which I was not happy with. It didn't ship for two weeks until I left a bad review and reported the seller, and it arrived in not-great condition. Originally got offered $20 ($100 product) to take down a one star review, then they got it taken down anyway.

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