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Comment by tomnipotent | Hacker News Reader

> Its difficult to tell if its amazon selling something or a private seller.

No it's not. The info is next to the checkout button (Sold by/ships from), and displayed during checkout.

You might not be familiar but within Amazon warehouses, they will mix and match the same UPC from different vendors. When it ships, they have no idea if they ship the one from supplier X. If it’s the same barcode, it’s all the same.

So a legit supplier might have their stock mixed with a supplier of fake stuff. And people buying from the legit supplier can get the fake products.

I keep hearing this on HN but it never seems to happen to me with Amazon, and a buy a lot from Amazon...

I haven’t had fake goods, but I’ve had it happen where a generic part seems to get substituted for an OEM part, even if it is sold by Amazon.com. Things like replacement water filters or vacuum cleaner bags.

Some parts are more common than others.

I got a grey market baseball catchers bag the other day intended for another country. I was replacing my son’s current bag that got damaged and it was like a completely different product.

It happened to me the first when buying high end skin care products for my wife.

Received a product that was in the same bottle and branding but very different from past items.

I now buy direct for expensive items and only buy crappy toys and charging cables from Amazon.

I hope you reported that to the real manufacturer.

They are probably the only people with any influence over Amazon.

Yeah I’ve def had grey market Levi’s jeans. As in, as far as I could tell, made by same company, but clearly had manufacturing defects that I’d never had to worry about from a store or said companies website. So somebody was putting factory seconds in the bin…. As another poster said, items intended for different markets are common too.

That doesn’t tell me anything when Amazon provided no guarantee that the item I’m ordering is from that vendor. I’ve been burned many times with cheap fakes. It’s clear Amazon does nothing to ensure I’m getting the original product. As long as the upc matches, they’ll ship it.

> Amazon provided no guarantee

Except for all the guarantees for refunds or returns.

> I’ve been burned many times with cheap fakes.

This is statistically unlikely, unless you're intentionally going out of your way to shop at risky merchants.

> Amazon provided no guarantee that the item I’m ordering is from that vendor.

You mean the products that all came from the same factory? How does the arbitrary partition of them by random reseller change anything?

Magic the Gathering cards come to mind! Buying MTG cards from Amazon can be a little risky as there is a non zero chance of getting a box with already opened packs [0]. Customers buy the product, take the valuable cards out, reseal it and return to Amazon. Amazon just throws it in with the rest as they doesn't know how to properly check for tampering.

[0] : https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/omj8jh/amazon_cus...

This has nothing to do with Amazon or co-mingled inventory, and everything to do with shitty customers. Non-Amazon sellers would have the exact same issue. At least with Amazon, I have regress as a customer and know that things will be made right regardless of the circumstances of the sale.

There's plenty of ammo to use if you want to take potshots at Amazon, but this isn't one of them.

Because the supply chain to an arbitrary vendor may not be secure.

With electronics, it’s common for suppliers or distributors to supply bad parts, especially in times like now where parts are constrained.

Because I'd have recourse for getting a fake if there were traceability.

I wanted to buy a Sony phone direct from Amazon. I specifically bought "Shipped and Sold by Amazon" three times and had to return it three times because they kept sending me another seller's commingled inventory. It was obvious because the box had the third party seller's sticker on it and it was a Hong Kong model phone which would not work properly in the USA.

But Amazon commingles inventory, so the fact that that says sold by Amazon doesn't mean the one you get is really from them.

You're still considerably more likely to get a defective product that came straight from the manufacturer than you are to receive a fake product.

100%! My point still stands though. I don't like buying something when I don't know who I'm getting it from!

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