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Comment by Buttons840 | Hacker News Reader

How does a company that consistently sales scam products not get sued into oblivion? Is there some legal loophole Amazon is using, or is it just that they have enough money to buy the legal system outright? Is there a legal protection for marketplaces or something? Is Amazon a marketplace?

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Not just scam products, their catalogue is flooded with stolen goods. Many of which were stolen from their competitors that have physical stores. They just turn a blind eye to it. They also have a horrible counterfeit problem. It's pretty insane what Amazon gets away with. I shop at Amazon for many things, so I guess I'm part of the problem, but generally know what to avoid.

Any sources on stolen goods? That's the first time I hear it, it's quite nasty honestly. Bad stuff, scam, I can even tolerate, as I can send back, but stolen goods no way - how do I know it's stolen?

I also learnt over the years what to buy and NOT to buy, but sometimes, especially for "compatible" pieces (e.g., a phone screen protector, not official from Samsung or Apple, if they exist) it's like gambling: you don't know what you're getting, and the reviews seem to be about other things (toys, remote controllers, ...literally anything).

Yeah there's huge shoplifting rings that pay crackheads $1 per item and resell it through FBA. They do the same for food stamps. If you drive in the hood they will have signs out. They know the items that poor people get excess of and advertise it then they bring up the other opportunities. Diabetic test strips is a big one.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/17/the-fight-against-stolen-pro...

Tide laundry detergent is a big one. People steal it by the cartload, and either relist it themselves or sell to unscrupulous resellers who list it themselves.

Pretty much any fungible commodity that grocery stores sell that's easily stolen, if it's available on Amazon almost certainly has stolen instances mixed into the supply chain, especially with FBA items.

Guarantee there's plenty of people making decent money doing this in San Francisco and other cities that no longer prosecute shoplifters, there's literally no risk or downside.

If you want to or an end to that, persecuting the shoplifters won’t do a thing.

The people running the shoplifting ring aren’t out there doing the shoplifting. You can keep arresting the people doing it and the ringleaders will keep recruiting people and your jails and courts will just be full of people on minor shoplifting charges.

No, if you want to end it you need to go after Amazon and the other fences along with the ringleaders running the show.

You have to go after BOTH. The supply is largely coming from areas where stores are powerless to stop it. Eventually they are just going to close the stores, which will negatively impact those communities even more. It's very possible we could go from "food deserts" to "retail deserts" because of these abysmal policies on both ends of the transaction.

Tide has been a currency for more than 10 years: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5023204

You're absolutely right, my point was that Amazon makes it even easier by removing what is by far the largest hurdle with stolen goods, which is the actual distribution and selling of them.

> It's pretty insane what Amazon gets away with.

In this case amazon are essentially being eBay and like eBay they will refund you if anything goes wrong. They will then deduct that refund from the seller (while still charging the seller fees). We don't sit around and wonder how eBay gets away with these things. They also cant inspect every good to see if it's stolen. If you want to allow third party sellers on an online platform this will happen and there's very little we can do to stop it.

eBay has an anti-counterfeit program but does have some theft issues...but it's MUCH harder to move volume on eBay so it's not even close to Amazon's issues (not to mention some stolen goods are even housed and fulfilled by Amazon itself through their FBA program!) Facebook marketplace is also flooded with stolen goods, but that's largely with the not so smooth criminal minds moving low volume goods. Amazon has actually started to remove abilities to get ahold of support to report problems, there was a thread about it here recently.

The problem isn't with allowing third party sellers, it's with allowing unvetted third party sellers.

I believe that is their loophole, yes. They're just the payment processor and shipper, you are not buying the product from them. To me it seems like another area where the Internet has exposed gaps in the law that were not foreseen, and legislators have not caught up.

My mother is a sucker for online shopping, and over the last few months has bought a number of clothes on Amazon. I've checked, and every single one of them has been a counterfeit. One set was literally a pair of hospital scrubs with a label sewn in. It's disgraceful.

She's simply not savvy enough to know she's getting scammed. She can't fathom that a company as big and famous as Amazon would let that sort of criminality happen on their platform, and as such refuses to believe me that most of the products on there are a scam. In her words, "Amazon wouldn't let that happen". Not only that, but because she buys this sort of shit, Amazon seems to show her even more of it through their recommend function. She's getting targeted, and Amazon is complicit in it.

This is what bothers me most. Their excuse is "the market place isn't at fault, it's between the buyer and the seller". They damn well are at fault if they're using their algorithm to fill a persons marketplace with counterfeit goods. As soon as you manipulate what a person does and doesn't see in your shop, you have agency. You are culpable.

Block amazon.com in router firewall config. She isn't safe.

Amazon is the merchant of record.

Because they will give you your money back. That's one thing they are good about.

Edit: even if the fault is not theirs.

Thinking of the poor folks that never even realize they've been scammed by Amazon.

Buying AirPods on the Internet is a particularly easy way to get scammed. The counterfeit ones are so good nowadays that even a knowledgable person can get deceived. Amazon is not an exception and there's tons of stories how people buy new AirPods from them only to receive counterfeit ones.

So why doesn't Apple use some S/N associated PK authorization when pairing with the iphone? They seem to be doing things like this for internal components as far as I understand.

They already do that, in iOS 16:

https://www.macrumors.com/2022/09/12/iphone-fake-airpods-ale...

Internal components work because they are added at the same time the software has been loaded on the phone. Airpods are added after the fact and can change later. This means scam products can just bit for bit copy the signature and serial number from genuine airpods.

The only detection method then would be Apple noticing multiple products have the same S/N which I guess is how they warn users of fake products these days.

The airpod could send the phone a public key + apple's signature for that key, then the phone could do challenge-response against that key. That would mean the scammers would have to exfiltrate the private key from a legit pair of airpods, which would hopefully be much more expensive

The people who fall for it and don't return them likely have no idea. They'll probably just show up as Bluetooth headphones and have none of the Airpods features that the buyer doesn't even know exist

The fake ones somehow do have all the proprietary airpod features. The main difference is things like the sound quality and reliability. Without a comprehensive test, it's effectively impossible to spot fake airpods before Apple added the warning in a software update.

Clearly fake AirPods would pair like a regular Bluetooth headset, not like real AirPods where Apple shows the rotating case and provides the special AirPods only features.

Some fake AirPods do pair as AirPods, not generic Bluetooth devices. However Apple have been adding additional checks in iOS to root out the fake ones:

https://www.macrumors.com/2022/09/12/iphone-fake-airpods-ale...

That’s actually quite impressive!

Generally, marketplaces are not liable for trademark/copyright infringement listings until they are made aware. Amazon have a form for reporting that. In the case of items not as described, there are consumer protections to allow returns, but I don't know if they have to remove the listing.

Amazon is only a marketplace in name. They require so much validation and approval and can discount sellers' products if they feel like it. They should not have so much control and still get away with profiting from these scams.

The main problem are situations where the product mostly passes an initial inspection but fails at a later date or for specific advanced use cases (ie, it isn't easily detectable until well after a return period).

Well, same as all the other big IT giants.

They all moved a lot faster than society and government, know when they must dish out lobbying money (and have enough to do so) and give more people what they want at the expense of fewer people.

It's coming to an end though. The boomers that don't understand the current state of the world anymore are moving out finally.

The next 10 years will be filled by the tears of abusive companies that don't understand why they are suddenly required to follow rules they didn't make themselves.

> They all moved a lot faster than society and government

Not really, these problems have plagued ebay long before they plagued amazon. Further, these are problems that we've seen in other avenues like QVC and open marketplaces.

And the solution is dead simple, hold amazon liable for their part in distributing stolen and fake products. Stop accepting this namby pamby "Oh shucks, we sure are trying our darnest but those scammers are just cleaver with their 9000 listings of the same product under different names, all conspicuously with the same sell address/accounts."

The reason we have this problem is because it's more profitable for Amazon to sell fake goods then it is for them to increase consumer confidence that they are getting genuine products. The reason lawmakers aren't cracking down is because nobody is lobbying for them to crack down (And I'm sure amazon/google/etc are lobbying for the opposite because it's just too darned expensive to make sure people aren't scamming)

how are they supposed to test all the products they sell? no vendor does this.

> how are they supposed to test all the products they sell?

Who suggested they should?

And why would that be necessary?

Simply applying the least bit of effort vetting their sellers and aggressively pursuing the reported scams would solve most of the problem.

But they can't be bothered. Instead they run the largest sucker-mart in history.

what do you mean by "vetting"?

Any sort of second step verification that a business is more than just a front. Or even just watching out for things like this HN post and aggressively cleaning house when this stuff comes up (and actively banning merchants that try the same trick).

Heck, they could even do something like twitters blue checkmark with their goods. For untrusted sources, keep their supplies in quarantined from the trusted sources and start vetting suppliers (check on where they are at, if they've got a history of selling fake goods, checking into the goods they are selling to ensure they are legitimate). Once a supplier passes that test, then move their goods in with the trusted sources.

Really, just about anything would make amazon more reliable and less scammy.

merriam-webster.com:

    vet verb vetted; vetting; vets
    to evaluate for possible approval or acceptance

Literally testing every single item? No, that's not common. But vetting suppliers and doing QA on what they're giving you is definitely normal in many industries.

Also, normal businesses vet their suppliers and don't do business with AOOF (SSD department: baby-girls), LATROVALE (maker of SSDs, night vision monoculars, and Garden of Life Dr Formulate Probiotics for Women), or Luqeeg (SSDs, finger splints, and badminton sets).

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