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Comment by RobertRies | Hacker News Reader

While I agree this is a problem - one which I have been the victim of as well - Amazon accepts the return with no questions and/or charges. This, of course, is not a great consolidation, especially for a novice who doesn't understand or encounters it too late. But I strongly disagree with "Amazon runs little to no risk selling the fraudulent products, but still makes money off of them." In the next paragraph the author outlines how they've lost trust in Amazon and will not be buying electronics. Erosion of trust is absolutely a massive risk, and one that eBay is also arguably pretty publicly recovering from. I suspect Amazon would prefer not to have fake drives and the costs associated with returns and erosion of trust for the infinitesimal rounding error that makes up the extra revenue they get from fake $20 thumb drives. I'm far from an Amazon fanboy, but I think the problem is more complex than Amazon turning a blind eye because they're making $10k extra profit a year from phony thumb drives. As an outsider, it seems like a difficult tradeoff of not creating incredible hurdles to list products, versus counterfeits getting through.

In my case, the phony thumb drive I bought was delisted before I got home from the walk to the mailbox, literally.

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It's hard to say they don't like it when they're not doing _anything_ visible to combat it.

Filter by country of seller? No. Filter by history/longevity of brand? No. Sort by recency of good reviews, or reviews since the last product change? No. Brand reputation, or per-brand reviews? No. Actual brand/seller contact information in the country you reside? No. Do they even require brands have company registration in the country, or are these total phantom stores?

So "it's difficult" for them but at the same time they've done nothing...

Amazon does SKU aggregation in their warehouses for all the sellers that use Amazon fulfillment. Every delivery of that SKU, by whomever, gets thrown into the same pile from witch they pick whenever someone orders said SKU through whoever is selling that stuff on Amazon.

This means that the product you receive from seller X was probably not delivered to the warehouse by seller X, but would be part of a batch delivered by any other seller that uses Amazon fulfillment for that SKU.

This makes it impossible for them to punish the seller whenever a fake or defective product turns up for you if they had no detected it before it got into the pool.

How does Amazon do this SKU aggregation? It must use some kind of product identifier (barcode / QR code / RFID tag etc.)? Why not include vendor information with it? Please stop using this tired excuse. It is not a difficult problem to solve if you have the intent.

I don't think it's a tired excuse, I think it's a withering indictment of Amazon's complicity in selling counterfeit merchandise.

It's not a difficult problem to solve at all, Amazon simply chooses not to solve it because the upside is profit and the downside is mostly reputational which is hard to convert to a number on a spreadsheet, so for business purposes it might as well not exist.

Google “Amazon stickerless commingled inventory” for the gory details.

That's another of numerous scams on Amazon, not the one discussed in the article. The SKUs themselves are fraudulent here.

It wasn't always that way; it was a conscious change they made to save money, which they decided was more important than being able to do better quality control when counterfeit products are discovered from a certain seller.

I just think it's important to point out it's how they chose to do it, presumably knowing the potential downsides, rather than some impossibility of warehouse operations.

> I just think it's important to point out it's how they chose to do it

IMO the current way of pooling things together is one way of spreading the loss (due to returns or A-to-z claims) across the entire pool. Other members of the pool bear the cost of such maleficence. Amazon's motto probably: Screw all sellers f**k if I care.

And precisely why they are losing my business. It’s hilarious isn’t it. Unless it’s deeply discounted, I prefer reputable sites like Costco, Apple direct and B&H for my expensive purchases.

Sure they have a good return policy but who wants to deal with it or assume they’ll always honor it.

This comment seems too critical. As a practical matter, Amazon has made it extremely easy to avoid these scams.

Restrict your search to USB drives that not only "Ship from" Amazon but that are "sold by" Amazon. In doing so, you will be weeding out all of the fraudulent devices that the article describes.

Comingling means your strategy is not guaranteed to ensure you actually get what was described.

> Restrict your search to USB drives that not only "Ship from" Amazon but that are "sold by" Amazon. In doing so, you will be weeding out all of the fraudulent devices that the article describes.

> Comingling means your strategy is not guaranteed to ensure you actually get what was described.

Commingling may be a problem in other contexts. But the article is about super-cheap "1TB" USB drives that don't really have 1TB capacity. If you restrict your search to "sold by Amazon" USB drives, you aren't at risk for buying these drives---because Amazon simply doesn't sell super-cheap 1TB USB drives. That's why commingling isn't a problem in this particular context.

Nah, it's a trap. At minimum, you have to be aware that Amazon isn't a store; it's a buyer-beware American version of Alibaba.

If you walk into eg a Target, you can be pretty sure that everything in there except perhaps vitamins is a legit product.

The reason these drives bother with firmware that makes them look larger to the operating system is so that people buy them and don't notice it was a scam until after the return ratio.

Also I don't know what the internal politics are like at Amazon but it is inexplicable that these listings are present and top of the results for probably a year by my reckoning - fake drives are easily spotted by anyone who knows what current drive sizes and form factors are and in theory it there should be some friction to making a selling account so that you can't just keep re-listing the same fake products under infinite new names. Though that seems to be exactly what's happening.

Also bonus points, if it's a third party seller in my recent experience Amazon literally does not let me report a product as fake, only request refunds and replacements from said seller. When I finally used a LinkedIn contact to reach out to Amazon they told me to create a marketplace seller account to report copyright infringement - but that's only if I own the copyright lol.

I would bet there's a series of seller-facing teams focused on making sure there's as little friction as possible to on-boarding and selling on Amazon.

> Amazon accepts the return with no questions and/or charges

But remember that Amazon keeps what's basically a social credit score on you that drops every time you return something, and then they permanently ban you (including from non-retail things like AWS and Prime Video) if it ever gets too low.

I did not know the consequences were so draconian. However, I would imagine returning faulty or fake products will not trigger a score decrease.

Also, it's extra work involved in returning something that shouldn't have been delivered in the first place. Just a waste of time, resources, and what not.

>including from non-retail things like AWS

is there any example of this?

This is more common than it should be for accounts. So best to assume the least charitable and plan accordingly.

You lose access to your consumer Gmail, Drive, etc if your YouTube account gets banned for comments.

You lose access to your Epic Games dev account if you get banned from Fortnite (unless they decoupled this in last few years).

AWS used to be hard-linked to your Amazon shopping account back in the day (they can't separate them for you if you ask).

For my DIY hobby I buy a ton of stuff off Amazon - usually small parts under $15 dollars. I just checked and this year I've made 602 total purchases and, after checking the return e-mails they send, I've made 287 returns this year. I just click "bought by mistake each time".

If there is a social credit score based on number of returned items I still haven't hit it.

The credit doesn't just go by the number of returns - it also considers the total value of the returns and the value of purchase to value of returns ratio.

The commenter above was suggesting that returning a USB drive could hurt your social credit and I am saying that is overblown.

In my personal experience a large volume of returns won't even get you banned. A USB drive is also low value so assuming you are correct then again the fear of returning a USB drive should be zero.

Excuse me, but do you believe this is "normal"?

I mean, if you returned 287/602=48% of the items you ordered, either there is something wrong in what you order or - more likely - your supplier (Amazon) is not reliable.

On the other side, if 48% of items (particularly if low value ones) are returned, the costs of shipping/returning/handling must be enormous.

I do not believe this is normal consumer behavior. The previous commenter claimed Amazon had a social score system that penalized people for concerns and you should be worried about making returns on things like USB drives.

My point is that if someone like me can return almost half their items and Amazon doesn't care at all - then it's extremely unlikely the people are being banned from Amazon services for returning a USB drive.

Yep, I understood your point, and it is good to know that this presumed social score system is not particularly strict, but I asked out of curiosity on the reasons why you have such a high (IMHO) return rate.

As well another question is what is actually doing (or not doing) Amazon about the USB sticks/drives issues, the return rate of that should be something like 90% assuming that 5% of buyers fail to realize that the size is much smaller and - still say - another 5% buys them "for later use" and do not test them on arrival.

In a traditional brick and mortar store there would be someone monitoring the return rate for defects on any item for sale as - besides the loss of perceived reliability - there would be objectives costs for handling the returns.

And here I am thinking that 287 Amazon returns translates into $1435 in Kohls Cash… if you make the returns on the weekend anyway.

Did Amazon buy Kohls too? What do Amazon returns have to do with Kohls Cash?

You can return items (after going through the online return process to get a label) at any Kohls. When you do, Kohls will give you a $5 coupon for their store.

oh! I've never had Kohls as an option before--just WF and UPS.

The reason I return a lot is predicated on their being no penalty and the fact I live a couple blocks from a UPS return location which is easy.

Say its Wednesday night and I'm starting to design a project I'm doing over the weekend but I'm not done yet - and realize I will need 8mm shafts but not sure the length of my design. I just buy 3 or 4 versions of the product with the approximate length I may need and then end up just using the one my final design calls for and returning the others.

> I mean, if you returned 287/602=48% of the items you ordered, either there is something wrong in what you order or - more likely - your supplier (Amazon) is not reliable.

In a case like this, there is a problem with the customer, that's it.

I have 300ish orders per year, and not even 5% returns.

In what way is there a problem? He hasn't been penalized, so it seems like he's profitable enough to let it go. Why are you trying to police his behavior for Amazon?

It's not because Amazon doesn't have a problem with it that there is no problem.

It's an incredibly wasteful way of shopping, it hurts the seller (which may not be Amazon itself), it hurts the environment, etc.

They have never said what I am doing is wrong or bad. I would think best case scenario from them I don't return that many items, but realistically if I wasn't allowed to return that many items I simply wouldn't buy from them as much. Lowe's, which I buy from a lot too, has a similar no questions asked return policy.

I almost never return, but there are domains with business models build upon massive numbers of returns.

This includes some parts of fashion. You buy online. If it doesn't fit, you return and buy another. There are hobbies which are similar. You buy extra parts, and return what you don't use.

The price factors in the 50+% return rate. If they didn't allow returns, no one would buy.

I don't know if that's what OP is doing, but I'm not ready to judge unless I know it's not.

Well for that matter, I have known people who buy fashion items online (that fit perfectly) use them on a dinner out and then return them because they don't fit or are not the expected colour, etc.

Still, since as you say these online sellers must calculate the prices of these goods to cover these return expenses, the other "normal" clients pay more and BTW there are thousands, millions packets going and returning (it is time, money, traffic, etc.).

It's a little different. For some of the fashion domains I'm thinking of don't have "normal" consumers, and most goods cost about the same as half of my entire wardrobe. For others, shopping is more like entertainment, and it's about the experience.

I have always wondered about this. I buy and return a lot from Amazon. Do you have any further information? I've always looked to see but have never found anything myself.

Anecdotally, twice after periods of large purchases and high dollar amount of returns (because I was buying a lot of equipment and sometimes had to buy several of the same due to them coming faulty), I noticed same-day and next day shipping would disappear for a few months. I was never able to conclusively determine what the reason was though.

Amazon tracks your returns, but if you're within their model, which is not particularly tight, you don't have anything to worry about.

It's mostly targeted toward people who are egregious, and more importantly, lose Amazon money.

If you return a few too many DSLRs, Apple laptops or other high end gear you'll quickly find yourself on the rocks, or decide you're going to start a drop-shipping business from your Prime account or maybe you regularly put bricks in your returns instead of the actual products.

By comparison there is my friend. She shops a lot on Amazon but not a huge amount, maybe 15 items or so a month on average. She returns a lot of items, at least 20%, sometimes 50% or 100%. Far from banning her she routinely gets courtesy credits and outside policy refunds to keep her happy.

This is after she had actually been banned by Amazon, but not by retail. Instead, she spent 2+ years returning every since book she purchased for her Kindle, well over 100, when she realized she could buy a book and immediately return it, but turn off the Kindle internet connection while she finished reading it, before it was removed. They banned her from ever doing another Kindle return but she otherwise uses her Kindle normally.

>> If you're not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about

> How do I know if I'm doing anything wrong?

>> ... that's proprietary

I mean, she could just download pirated books at this point. It doesn't matter if she got it through the store or not if she's going to exploit the system to read it without paying. The author won't see any money either way, so she can drop the pretense.

I would imagine the author would rather you just pirate the book than do this. Returns on a book can't be great for recomendation algorithms.

After Amazon's fees, returning books like this COSTS authors money.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/tiktok-trend-authors....

Nah authors aren’t part of the equation, they got paid and now the publisher is the only party affected

She could have just gotten those Kindle books from the library.

I recently dug into my property taxes and found I’m paying over $200/year (!) for the library. A lot more than the cost of Amazon Prime. Since I found this out, I’ve been using the library a lot more ..

As for our Amazon “customer score”, wish we could see it. I bet they have merchant scores too - would be interesting to see the number of returns per product displayed on each product page/merchant page.

Don't forget the online portion of your local library system, mine uses the mobile app Libby but other methods are available for ebooks/videos/audiobooks to loan, though the selection through each method is slightly different.

I pay over $400 a year in property taxes to support our library system, but I'd be happy to pay twice that, partly because I get a huge amount of use out of the system (including ebooks, though honestly I prefer paper unless there a ton more holds), but also because it's one of the most tangible contributions to the quality of life in my city I fell I can make. Obviously roads without potholes and firefighters are great too...

> I’m paying over $200/year (!) for the library.

You aren't, you are funding it. Anyone can use the library.

> she realized she could buy a book and immediately return it

Doesn't this cause authors to actually lose money, so it's worse than straight up piracy for them?

Indeed it does cost them, and so you are right - they should simply pirate instead.

The CBC did a writeup on this:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/tiktok-trend-authors....

Nice, Amazon was capable to loose my iPhone 14 Pro twice and the courtesy credits I got was £5. At least the third time was charm

As an author you need a better class of friend, she is frankly a thief.

> Instead, she spent 2+ years returning every since book she purchased for her Kindle, well over 100, when she realized she could buy a book and immediately return it, but turn off the Kindle internet connection while she finished reading it, before it was removed. They banned her from ever doing another Kindle return but she otherwise uses her Kindle normally.

Out of curiosity what goes through someones mind to think this is remotely acceptable?

Obviously by sharing this with you she sees nothing wrong/feels no remorse for what she does?

Blatant theft like this costs everyone money, why not just go to the library or something?

> Out of curiosity what goes through someones mind to think this is remotely acceptable?

Copying data is not theft.

They did not "copy data". they purchased something, returned it for a refund and then kept it by turning off the kindle's wifi.

This clearly is retail fraud.

Lots of things are fraud. Most of them are not theft.

The greatest ThinkSpeak the media industry pulled was to redefine copyright, contract, and license violations as "theft" and "piracy."

Saying something is not theft/harassment/abuse/murder/etc. isn't the same as saying it's okay. Precise language matters.

It's not possible for someone to steal my chair or my wallet without harming me. Actual theft usually is not a victimless crime, by definition. In contrast, most of the people I've seen engage in copyright violation are too poor to buy what they're copying. Virtually everyone I know starts paying when they get real jobs. How do I feel about a broke high school student breaking my license? It's complicated, but much less bad than about someone stealing my phone.

They didn’t purchase anything; the EULA says so plainly.

That’s called fraud prevention

Is there a way to get this score under GDPR?

Yeah banning your customers seems like a great strategy /s

Banning your rare, abberantly unprofitable customers who may be abusing the return system is a good strategy, yes.

90% of Amazon.de is AliExpress with a 200-300% margin. I don't know about the other Amazons but it's definitely not only thumb drives.

This is the main reason i stopped using Amazon around 2 years ago and cancelled my prime.

Why not just go to the source (aliexpress) and save the large margin in exchange for a longer wait time?

I often find the Amazon ones to be within a buck or two, now that Aliexpress’ free shipping is gone on small items.

For a buck or two, I’m willing to take Amazon’s speed and easy returns.

It has become quite awful. I was looking for gloves the other week and I ended up buying them at Decathlon because the selection at Amazon was so terrible and untrustworthy.

I don't find returns to be helpful at all.

- If I buy medicine, and it's fake, that's a serious problem.

- If I buy a bottle of vanilla, and it's tainted, that's a serious problem.

- If I buy a piece of electronics, and it's a piece which was returned for working intermittently, that's a problem too.

- If I buy clothing from brands I trust, and I get a knock-off which falls apart in 6 months, that's a problem.

Unless Amazon can get supply chain issues under control, it's too risky to buy most of the stuff I used to buy there. I find eBay and Aliexpress to be more reliable, probably due to reviews sticking to sellers.

I think it's a matter of time before someone starts selling ransomware on Amazon. You plug in a device, and your computer is compromised. The device is a buck cheaper.

Because of all these reasons I have stopped purchasing almost anything at all on amazon. Also, it's been like this for YEARS, they clearly don't have any interest at all in fixing it. They make more money the way it is. Nowadays, I try mostly just to buy direct from the company selling the product. Usually the cost is the same. It's slower, yes, and returns are more difficult, yes, but at least I know I'm getting the actual product and not a cheap ripoff that'll either fall apart or poison me.

And the great thing about an Amazon ransomware attack is that if your implant waits long enough to trigger, you can probably get the customer to return the device to Amazon where they'll dutifully stock it back in their warehouse ready for another victim. So efficient.

1. Customer: buys USB drive, plugs in

2. USB: infect, report wrong size

3. Customer: returns USB drive

4: Amazon: restocks USB drive

Goto 1

I doubt they bother to restock most items, unless maybe they’re sufficiently expensive. For example, see https://pirscapital.com/blog/amazon-liquidation-buying-retur...

This is true for obvious scams (e.g. a blender that breaks in a week). However, for subtle scams people often don't realize the scam. For instance, many people won't hit the actual size limit of the USB and won't realize it's not 1TB. In these cases, Amazon does not take a reputation hit for these individuals due to them being unaware of the scam. Only the technically inclined or those who research before buying will realize the scam and think less of Amazon.

A typical user might not recognize the nature of the scam. But they very easily could realize that the drive they bought from Amazon is defective. 8GB is not that much space (particularly when the OS thinks it has 1TB to play with). When the firmware runs out of real space to play with, it needs to start dropping data, and that is very visible.

> When the firmware runs out of real space to play with, it needs to start dropping data, and that is very visible.

Only if you are actively verifying the data. Im pretty sure most people would just look at a file listing and consider it stored.

No one is arguing the scam isn't insidious and inherently difficult to detect for possibly even most customers. The argument is that Amazon is complicit because they're banking off those sweet counterfeit thumb drive profits, and that there's little risk to Amazon.

I'm suggesting there is a significant risk, and anyone reasonable at Amazon would account for it. There's enough users (tech savvy, or heavy researchers as you point out, and ultimately some portion of casual customers) who will have a negative experience and potentially be skeptical of all purchases - major or minor. Amazon will certainly incur reputational and real return/handling costs.

It seems fairly implausible to me that Amazon would make the decision to say "Yeah, while tech savvy and discerning customers, and some portion of casual users will discover the scam, we just make so much money from fake thumb drives that it's worth it to destroy our reputation with that subset since a significant portion may not notice or ultimately associate Amazon with selling low quality products." All while we see the listings for these items get removed nearly as quickly as the pop up. Doesn't add up.

You frame it as just thumb drives, but I would think something similar is happening with a huge fraction of Amazon products.

It is easier to detect with thumb drives.

A fake (say) Gucci handbag is made with less premium materials, but only savvy consumers would notice once it arrived. You would not necessarily know from the product details on Amazon, but may have a clue based on price.

Whereas 1tb thumb drives have been sold for years now on Amazon and Wish and what-have-you but only recently did real 1TB thumb drives come into existence. Real Gucci bags have been around for decades.

Any 1tb drive which costs less than hundreds of dollars is fake. Full stop.

Assuming Best Buy hasn’t been plagued yet - https://www.bestbuy.com/site/sku/6421485.p?skuId=6421485

Yep. I was aware there were drives sub-$200. To be perfectly technical, 1.3 hundred dollars is still "hundreds" of dollars in English. And the fake drives aren't generally more than 40 dollars.

The issue is that Amazon is not incurring the costs that other retailers do to try to prevent these issues, so they can keep prices low and seemingly sustain their fast shipping model while their competitors who are trying to do something about it lose out on business. Eventually those competitors are forced out of business, or have to reduce themselves to the same lack of controls and everybody loses.

Viewed on that way, there’s actually consumer harm, and maybe there’s an opening for an anti-trust case (which in the US requires proof of consumer harm).

The real Amazon and other nature is who pays the real bill of this in the costs to nature in terms of transportation impact and pure waste of this crap being created and thrown away.

So yes, you might get your $20 back, but who will restore the cost to nature?

> Amazon accepts the return with no questions and/or charges

No, this is true only in some countries. If there's no amazon store in your country you are in trouble.

I’ve had no issues with Amazon returns/refunds in multiple countries without their own Amazon store.

Did they pay the full cost of your shipment? If yes, you are very lucky.

“It is very difficult for me to send a return internationally, could you please issue a refund instead?” Works every single time.

If they refuse multiple times, hang up and call again.

Nope. Most of the times, they're going to tell you to return it at your own costs to <random city in China>, so pay 50€ for your product that's worth 50€. The sellers lie on where they're located, pretend they're in Germany, you receive the wrong product, and you're shit out of luck. They close their account, reopen one and keep dropshipping.

All the while Amazon happily deletes bad reviews and pockets money.

They need to stop commingling FBA goods. Full stop. It’s a smart, efficient idea in a world of good-faith actors. Not in a world of scammers and knock offs

> they've lost trust in Amazon and will not be buying electronics. Erosion of trust is absolutely a massive risk

They should do something about it if they care. They’re turning into a flea market and it seems their business plan (which doesn’t matter because AWS makes all the money) is to run out the clock and hope they put everyone out of business first.

They should stop allowing listing changes that completely change the product. They should allow specific vendors (probably at some cost) evade the SKU binning that co-mingles counterfeits with genuine products.

Fuck, they should issue a statement acknowledging the problem and tell us they’re trying to fix it before we abandon them.

That said, I had to buy an SD card recently and with all these scam products I went with the Amazon basics version since they’re the only seller of AB. Funny how that works…

> . I suspect Amazon would prefer not to have fake drives and the costs associated with returns

I am not so sure about that. I think it’s a calculated risk, how many people will actually put in the time and effort to return the product and how many will just not care enough to go through the return process and just eat the cost.

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