Hacker News Reader

Comment by partiallypro | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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).

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.

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.

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.

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...

> 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.

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

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com