Amazon receives FDA warning letter for supplements with undeclared ingredients
fda.gov
fda.gov
As a side note, this letter is exactly why I think a regulatory agency like the FDA is absolutely necessary. This stuff can kill people and it is impossible for the average person to protect themselves.
My two cents: good market to be looking for good data folks who might want a (potentially remote) federal agency data job with shakiness in tech.
If it ever happened, I can already see the endless coverage by Sean Hannity and similar about how it's governmental overreach that risks destroying an important US company with X thousands employees...
However, I don't think it will ever happen, in the end it's one of the richest men, Jeff Bezos behind Amazon with significant influence on news reporting, who seems to be on good terms with both the Republicans and Democrats, and the regulatory agencies in the US just didn't show a pattern of going too hard against US companies.
When that happens, what would it take to convince you that the reason for the FDA’s decision is Amazon’s compliance with the law, rather than Jeff Bezos’s influence over the government and news media?
It also means that if things do get to such a point, then the action will come down swift and heavy in a manner generally agreeable to the majority of the commons.
Not in this universe. The more likely outcome is that Amazon shuts down the FDA.
It doesn't really hurt the Amazons, they're just distributors. Doesn't really even hurt me. If RTP is a part of my software product I should be under a microscope. It's going to be small people who try to market supplements who will get trounced now. Because every report will, by law, have to include the source of the product. And that source company or individual is in for a long year. Even shutting down won't end their legal obligations in a lot of cases.
On the other hand, that was, in part, the original point of the FDA. To stamp out the snake oil salesmen. So, yeah. I guess they're just carrying out that mandate in new and updated ways.
I'll omit brand names here, but I can tell you some sketchy stuff happens in supplement manufacturing all the time. During the ~6 years I worked there, only one letter came from the FDA after a whistleblower at a competitor's company came forward. The FDA sent a warning letter out to several of the large competitors in the industry to "don't do it or else" and never followed up again. The company that got in trouble got a few hundred thousand dollar fine for using mislabeled and toxic ingredients. They had one follow up inspection about 6 months after the warning and that was the end of it. For comparison that company was making ~$600M a year at the time of the fine and is now making $1B+. We carried on and never heard from the FDA again despite being equally guilty in our own company.
The guilt is what eventually led me away from the cash cow, where I went on an 18 month sabbatical to get away from any corporate greed for a little bit. I legitimately had nightmares that I would be complicity guilty of several crimes if I stayed there long enough.
I promise you, there is no oversight in supplements. There are a handful of posted guidelines. If a whistleblower comes forward the FDA might react to that single case, but they are so understaffed; the team that manages nutriceuticals is marked in the "tens" of people, not the thousands dedicated to proper medical equipment and medicines.
I don't think it's an undue burden that if you're going to sell things people are ingesting, you have to know and communicate where they came from.
And I feel like small people that try to market supplements won't be especially damaged by this. It feels like as much as anything this would "hurt" small people that try to start a supplement manufacturing cottage-venture on a shoe string, over which I don't expect to lose any sleep.
I'm doing my first FDA-monitored automation project at a local brewery, and am quickly becoming familiar with the abundant controls that the FDA puts on domestic producers.
But the FDA is an American organization. Amazon or Ebay or Aliexpress or whoever may be just distributors, but they're international distributors. They're fully-automated self-service distributors for manufacturers in China and Russia and Indonesia and India who aren't subject to FDA jurisdiction, who sometimes aren't subject to any oversight at all.
The only entity that the FDA can go after here is Amazon, so this should hurt Amazon.
This isn't what anybody objects to about the FDA. "You have to list what's in the product" is a simple rule that every knows, is easy to comply with, and doesn't require any government interaction even in the case of a suspected violation because the FDA can just buy the product to test it and compare the lab results to the label.
What people object to is when someone wants to sell an accurately labeled product with a risk-benefit trade off, the customer knows what the product is and is exercising informed consent, and the government says they can't have it anyway.
The FDA's regulatory purview is to limit the collateral damage (negative externalities) of even accurately labeled products.
Informed consent from the customer is one side of the equation. Unfortunately they cannot consent to conditions like "Don't burden the hospital system if you take the wrong dosage".
By this logic the FDA would have to ban Tylenol and Robitussin. Tens of thousands of ER visits every year.
The government should generally be concerned with preventing deception and coercion and pricing externalities, because otherwise people have the incentive to do them and they would be prolific.
Things nature punishes directly don't need the state to deter them. They happen by accident rather than by motive and we choose purposely to spread the cost of this across the population as a form of insurance and a cost of living in a free society, sometimes even when the misfortune is a result of their own stupidity. Other times we send them a bill for costs.
Advertising laws in the US mean manufacturers can and should do everything in their power to obscure and mislead about the tradeoff. A person purchasing a unverified product should have tremendous misgivings. They should only purchase it in spite of tremendous misgivings. Anything less is not informed consent; it is deception masquerading as informed consent.
Until you fix that you get companies downplaying risks and overstating potential benefits. Fix that and informed consent becomes a real possibility and a much more attractive proposition.
Which is why I think the model for such things should just be "informed consent." It's a concept that already exists in the medical practice with a well-defined procedure. Someone who your state medical board has deemed competent and responsible has to explain in painfully explicit detail all the tradeoffs and answer any and all questions. If you still want to do it you sign some forms and go on with your day.
Someone has to decide what substances safe and prevent them from sold.
The FDA could do better but you’ll never fix that problem unless you don’t allow the FDA to enforce regulations.
No they don't. If a product has a label that says "this product is considered unsafe by the Food and Drug Administration" and explains why and you buy it anyway, you got what you paid for.
See California and cancer.
Plenty of substances are risky, but can be worth the risk. For example, psychedelics, for the wrong person or in the wrong situation, can cause psychotic episodes or lasting trauma, but psychedelic therapy has already been legalized in at least 1 US state, because it can also be extremely helpful.
I'm still not able to buy it and take it home (at least legally), but in my honest opinion, I should be.
Why?
If someone buys deadly nightshade, and gets deadly nightshade, why should the government care?
That's an odd take.
Where do these uncorruptible angels live ? Who are they? Who put them there?
Because we all know you are not corruptible, its always the other guy, right?
What about by rights , by the way ?
What could go wrong?
Certainly if an elemental analysis is required to ensure that the heavy metal content is lower than 1 ppb, it means something like a comprehensive SEM-EDX is required for every single batch. This should be required to avoid things like not noticing the enormous addition of lead chromate into turmeric, but it does require caring a bit about quality, and caring about quality in this way won't occur in a free market economy without some checks.
The examples of this are everywhere, even in things as basic as water. If you ever want to worry yourself, learn a bit about characterization techniques for determining the amount of heavy metals or organic molecules ("forever chemicals") are in water to ppt levels. It's astounding how much different techniques will provide wildly different answers, and it's unclear which method to believe.
When you look closely enough, it can get pretty scary how little we know about what is in our products.
Dude what? Government around the world are constantly catching corporations for lying on their product lists.
As for controlled substances, on this topic is a completely fine line which I’d probably tend to agree is not treaded properly. There are risk trade offs to allowing open markets on classes of drugs.
With that said, the massive propaganda campaigns corporations get up to completely subvert that risk, and 100% leaves consumers uninformed even with the proper information at their fingertips: as a major example, the opioid crisis, leaded fuels, leaded paints, carcinogenic materials handling. I mean, the list really goes on and on.
The issue with the FDA has time and time and time again been demonstrated to be how toothless it is. Corporations constantly ignore regulation for billions in profits, only to receive a sternly worded letter and MAYBE a 0.01% of profits fine.
In my mind, the question is whether the massive regulatory burdens which protect incumbents and inhibit liberty are worth it. This is not an all-or-nothing question, and might be answered field-by-field, but regulators have not covered themselves in glory.
Obviously you have to interact with the government if they catch you lying. You're not intended to lie.
The point is that you can have a labeling requirement and businesses can comply with it without having to make regulatory filings or prohibiting products.
> There are risk trade offs to allowing open markets on classes of drugs.
Which is why you have labeling requirements. This is cocaine, it's highly addictive, you probably want to try ibuprofen first.
So for example, manufacturers cannot market erbitux as a cure for migraine headaches because no sponsor has submitted an application to FDA with compelling evidence that it is safe and effective for that particular indication. However, your doctor can still prescribe it for migraines if they so choose. Whether your insurance will pay for it is a different story.
They can prescribe a drug which is not FDA approved, can they?
You also have the question of which drugs need a prescription or are considered a controlled substance, which is certainly government regulation regardless of whether or not the regulatory agency is the FDA.
Yes they can. They can give you whatever medical advice or prescribe whatever regimen they want. They could tell you to drink bleach and the FDA would be powerless to do anything about it.
I think the strongest argument for you would be a drug approved in another country; but not in the US. Your doctor can still prescribe it; and under the right conditions that prescription can allow you to obtain the drug in a foreign country and bring it back to the US.
https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/5-tips-travel...
Saying that, the search returns hundreds of other supplements in the same category, with similar nonsensical names. They are certainly attempting to play wack-a-mole.
However, I am curious to see how Amazon handles the other drugs. Seems like pausing the sale of the entire category is the right call
E.g. these or similar tainted supplements could be listed under "Health, Household, and Body Care" (a very broad category that already has products like "stripfast5000 Fire Bullet Capsules with K-CYTRO for Women and Men" listed under it), etc.
I'm not sure the regulation here is great. As with Rx-only contraception, these regulations force patients to spend money and discuss their intimate life with a doctor for no real reason, which many people find difficult. And it's not like you undergo thorough screening to get Viagra anyway. A doctor is not gonna say "no".
The problem with bodies such as the FDA is that once they address grave risks, they seldom reach this point of "OK, we fixed the problem of arsenic in patent medicine, so let's scale back for now." Instead, the bureaucracies only grow. Today, far too many drugs are Rx-only and stay this way for too long. The need for prescriptions for equipment such as eyeglasses or contact lenses is hard to justify too.
If wrongly prescribed equipment can cause harm, it's very justifiable that a license scheme is put in place.
Sure, and the parent comment's point was that there's a line where further risk reduction doesn't make sense anymore. The agency doesn't have the right incentives to stop at that line.
Plenty of very significant risks aren't regulated to the degree that Viagra and Cialis are. You don't need a note from a doctor or a govt-issued permit to buy kitchen knives or a table saw or a Bic lighter, for example.
Viagra and Cialis have a singular use and contraindications aren't likely to be understood through cultural osmosis.
Given the bipartisan war on drugs, I think we are a long ways off.
* Checking the published label of items for illicit content
* Checking the contents of one bottle for undeclared ingredients
* Checking the contents of all bottles for undeclared ingredients
* Checking the contents of all pills in all bottles for undeclared ingredients
...etc. I guess what I'm wondering is, what course of action do you think is reasonable for Amazon to take here? It's easy to say "don't allow this to happen"; I'm curious about what that actually translates to in practice.
It translates into "don't allow this to happen," because any other standard can and will be gamed. So for instance testing a bottle or two at random would work fine if Amazon really does test a random and representative sample of what's being sold, and to me that's a reasonable level of diligence to expect. But if Amazon Testing emails the supplier: "Please send over a batch of X MAX SUPER ENERGY so we can test if for these substances which we hope we won't find, and make absolutely sure what you send is the same thing you're selling!" -- then that will work somewhat less well. There are endless ways for Amazon and sellers to wink and nod and skirt the intent of the rules, if Amazon is just checking a box for the FDA, and doesn't actually care.
The way to get Amazon to care is to hold it responsible for the outcome. Of course there will be sellers that find a way to skirt whatever process Amazon puts in place, but that needs to be Amazon's problem. Amazon can survive taking its lumps when it messes up.
No argument that that's burdensome and makes it more expensive to run an online marketplace; of course it is. But what's the alternative? Pure buyer beware doesn't work when I can't physically inspect what I'm buying and there's often no way to know much of anything about the seller. Hassle-free returns are nice when you're only out money, but undisclosed drugs in supplements can be genuinely dangerous. A refund isn't going to fix things in the really bad cases.
This is how liability has worked in the American and British legal systems for at least three centuries: when there's been harm done, the person harmed can recover the full value of the damage from any party that helped cause the harm. Plaintiffs don't need to worry about who was most at fault; that's for the defendant to work out with the other parties afterwards. Similarly the FDA can't and shouldn't need to start a separate regulatory action for every seller on Amazon's platform. It's totally appropriate for them to lean on the large domestic company with the fixed address and known officers, and rely on Amazon to enforce compliance with the law down at the seller level.
Businesses that sell supplements should create trusted relationships with their suppliers to not break the rules and to limit their own liability.
The only reason you'd need to go after Amazon is if they're selling products dropshipped from another country, which they could avoid by simply requiring sellers of products meant for human consumption to have a domestic presence. They wouldn't even have to ship from here, just have somebody here who gets arrested if they break the law.
From what I can tell, Amazon does not present itself as a farmer's or flea market, yet it tries to limit its liability by pretending it does. To the average consumer things purchased from it come "from amazon", as compared to ebay which makes it much more obvious you are purchasing from a particular person or shop.
Amazon really tries to have its cake and eat it too here, and it sort of blows my mind that consumer product safety regulators haven't clamped down on this.
It's really one thing to have basically anything available on ebay/aliexpress/others (consumer trust is much lower) and another to be a huge retailer (just like walmart) and yet to be able to sell whatever unsafe stuff you want (unlike walmart).
How can they just create a new account to sell supplements without thorough testing, vetting, control processes, etc. by Amazon, the business actually selling the stuff? If Amazon doesn't have such controls in place to stop people from "just creating new accounts" then hold Amazon liable.
https://www.quality-supplements.org
Although, I have no clue if USP simply rubber stamps it once time, or if they do continuous testing of the products. If I were to bet, I would say they probably do not test often enough after initial certification.
I think the policy mechanism here should be liability:
* If I buy a counterfeit memory card on Amazon, and it loses my photos, Amazon should be liable for the cost and effort of those photos. If I am poisoned with bad medicine, Amazon should be liable for the damages.
* If I spend money on 400TC cotton sheets, and get 300TC cotton/poly blend ones.
* If I write a book, and Amazon sells pirated copies, I should receive damages.
* If a bad medical product injures me, or doesn't have the intended effect, Amazon is liable (with standard astronomical damages)
Critically:
* It should be easy to extract those damages (Amazon can't tie me up in court or arbitration), and when this happens at scale, this should be class action or federal / state enforcement.
* Damages should include reasonable costs of enforcement. They should also be set at a minimum at treble damages, since not all instances will be caught / enforced.
At that point, the actuaries can do their thing on reasonable level of effort Amazon should put in. That may be shutting down all fulfilment-by-Amazon, co-mingling, and marketplace sellers, very different fee structures, inspections / enforcement, or something else. I don't know.
I actually think the most likely outcome is a verified supply chain, where Nestle (or any other manufacturer) sends to Amazon and Amazon to me with no middlemen. Vendors in compatible enforcement regimes with appropriate treaties (e.g. US and EU) are allowed in, so long as they have everything in order (corporate registration, etc.) and are selling under their own name. Vendors where the long arm of my local justice system doesn't quite reach aren't allowed in, at least directly, unless Amazon does a lot more scrutiny to the level to the point where I have similar guarantees about product safety, quality, environmental impact, labor laws, IP, etc.
I would not set a similar bar for eBay or Aliexpress, which claim to be marketplaces and not stores. However, when I buy from Amazon, Walmart, Target, etc., I believe that I am buying from a store (even if the fine print says otherwise). I'd want a very clear distinction between the two. Part of the way Amazon got itself into deep trouble is by trying to mix the two up. If I'm shopping at a flea market, it's caveat emptor, and those can be fun for some things. If I'm shopping at a store, I expect a certain level of trust.
What is clear, though, is that Amazon isn't self-policing, and we need regulatory enforcement.
Verification only needs to be good enough to stop low effort fraud. This is entirely doable.
They also need to ensure the product you buy comes directly from the seller you bought from.
They need to prevent counterfeits from random sellers getting added to inventory of legitimate companies.
Separating inventory by seller is 100% doable. My company manages it. It just costs more.
How much cocaine goes via Amazon?
Or ephedrine, or ecstasy... Etc
https://www.nsf.org/consumer-resources/articles/supplement-v...
Amazon.com does have their own certification program for dietary supplements, but it seems like the rules aren't consistently enforced.
https://blog.ansi.org/anab/requirements-sell-dietary-supplem...
But it seems perfectly reasonable that law enforcement should have to play whack a mole. That's kind and of how it works with innocent until proven guilty. I'm not a fan of the whole "you enforce it for us or we come after you" approach. In reality what it means is that gate keepers like Amazon have to put in place policies that are much more strict than the actual rules in order to avoid even a chance of getting hit. Agencies like the FDA know this and use it as a way to put in place de facto policies that are much stricter than they could legislate.
A good example of where we threw out the upfront controls was COVID relief money, and that was a disaster in terms of fraud. (Admittedly a purely government program, but the same principle applies.)
In this case the FDA is saying everything that includes regulated medications in non-regulated products must be addressed.
Seems reasonable to me. If a company completely ignores regulation, the FDA should have to power to enforce its own regulations.
Spot on. How much process is "due" is largely a function of the potential downside consequences of a mistake by the authorities.
Examples (from U.S. law):
• A police officer can briefly stop you on the street to ask a question such as "did you see what happened?" pretty much at will.
• To detain you or search your person or property, the officer (with some exceptions) needs probable cause, in most cases confirmed by a neutral, independent judicial authority (that's the warrant requirement).
• To imprison you or fine you, the government must affirmatively establish your guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, to a neutral jury of your peers, using evidence that meets established legal standards of reliability.
• In all civil cases, a claimant seeking damages must put on admissible evidence affirmatively showing facts that legally entitle the claimant to the requested relief.
• In certain grave civil matters, such as claims of fraud, the claimant must prove the claim by clear and convincing evidence, the highest standard of proof in civil law. (The usual standard in civil cases is "preponderance of the evidence," i.e., more likely than not.)
• In some cases, the testimony of witnesses "having an interest" (e.g., an agenda to advance, an axe to grind, a score to settle) must be supported by corroborating evidence because the law recognizes that such witnesses can sometimes be, ahem, unreliable.
Usual caution to readers: IAAL but not your lawyer.
If you understand how tough it is in one case, think how many trails yearly never get done because of the FDA.
The amount of benefit vs. the amount of deaths caused by the FDA being slow likely means many more are deaths at the hands of the FDA than you expect.
Cracking down on supplements that people take voluntary hardly seems like something I’m pleased they meddle with too.
I am very happy they crack down on supplements, a kind of product that is filled with fraud and that I lack the resources to make informed purchases on. I would also be just as happy if they started cross-approving drugs with the EU and Australia. They are neither angels nor the devil.
Though I do think Amazon should have a share of the blame. Buyer and seller are both wrong here.
The mislabeling is certainly a problem, but really these drugs (sildenafil and tadalafil) should be over-the-counter and cheaply available on Amazon as generics. That they are not is a failure of the same FDA. They have a great safety profile and limited contraindications, comparable to many other OTC drugs.
- Anything which goes in or on my body (foods, medicines, etc.).
- Anything which is easily knocked off (SD cards, memory, SSDs, etc.)
- Bed sheets (oddly enough, you'll often get lies on materials and fabric)
- Thing I need reliably / reliably on-time (I cancelled Prime after several shipping issues)
Since I cancelled Prime, things added to this list include:
- Most digital content (they added ads to music I paid for as soon as I cancelled Prime, and many newer Kindle books are hard to back up into non-DRMed formats)
Most of what I will buy on Amazon are generic gizmos, like kids toys, cables, generic keyboards, battery chargers, basic tools, and basic clothing (kids pyjamas and that sort of thing). However, it's no longer my first source. I'll go Aliexpress, eBay, and Walmart first.
I now have Walmart's equivalent of Prime instead. It's not great, but it's better. There is zero customer service, but shipping times are more accurate than Amazon, generally faster, and they'll actually let you know if something is running late or early (which is huge, if you're planning a project). Walmart's selection is worse than Amazons, but I'm hoping it will catch up. I also am starting to go to local stores again.
Whether it’s undisclosed flame retardants, toxic dyes, or other harmful substances, kids bodies are generally more susceptible to harm via environmental pollutants. Such harms may not be at all obvious in the short term, but could still be very harmful over the long-term.
I wish I knew of a vastly superior option (ie, safer option) for buying kids or baby clothes. (Anyone have suggestions on this?)
That said, I believe Amazon is probably at the riskier end of this spectrum vs.traditional stores because of their distributor-centric structure.
Basically, if a harmful product were to receive any negative press, it would more easily be equated with a single company/seller from another country, and probably one with an odd-sounding name.
With a more traditional brick and mortar store, the product may be sourced from the exact same producer, but the reputation hit will be greater to the brick and mortar store, because the customer tends to equate the product more closely with the the store itself. Often, they present themselves to the public as the “seller” of the product whereas Amazon will more give the presentation of “distributor” on behalf of “(_insert_generic_inscrutably-named_foreign_corporation_name)”. Fly-by-night seems an apt description for these companies most the time.
This seemingly reduced level of accountability is the biggest problem I have with trusting them but it’s not the only one; it’s just compounded by the often fraudulent reviews, their practice of taking down authentic but critical reviews, and of selling counterfeits – even occasionally when one orders via a “Prime” option, or fulfilled by Amazon, or seemingly buys an item directly via the manufacturer’s Amazon ‘store’.
Of course there are many other issues as well but these are a few that have created headaches for me in the past to the point that I now avoid them for most purchases.
Just buy the long underwear and "base layer" items from either REI or Patagonia.
Very versatile and utilitarian, last forever, and you can buy them directly from the source - either online or at an actual retail store.
We had patagonia base layer onesies and long underwear, etc., that were handed down across three children.
My concerns around clothing have more to do with durability, comfort, and quality. For example, bad pyjamas can be not very breathable or collect sweat.
That's pretty easy to tell, though.
So that's shady clothing fits in my risk profile.
As a footnote: I'm not implying it should fit into your risk profile; I'd avoid based on hypothetical risks like lead contamination, PFAS, and other hypotheticals if I earned perhaps 50% more than I do today. I'm asking since if there are specific instances (not of contamination but of harm), I might change my risk profile.
Do you know who sells on Aliexpress, and to a large extent on eBay? The very same shady Chinese/Indian sellers peddling counterfiet products you are seeking to avoid by not shopping on Amazon.
Aliexpress was literally set up as a direct-to-US-market Chinese factory marketplace, which results in 99% counterfeit and knock-off products being pushed directly to consumers.
It makes you wonder about all those masks people were buying online and wearing 14+ hours a day
I only bought through trusted supply chains. My masks were made in South Korea, and I bought directly from the manufacturer's US-based distributor.
I'll go to Aliexpress and eBay first for: "kids toys, cables, generic keyboards, battery chargers, basic tools, and basic clothing."
I have the exact same list for them as for Amazon. I'll go there first for those products since Aliexpress has much better prices than Amazon. eBay has better seller reviews. I certainly wouldn't buy food or medicine from them, though, or even bedsheets or SD cards.
Walmart is a lot better than Amazon. They do have a search filter to disable marketplace sellers, and if buying from Walmart proper, I do trust them to still get supply chains adequately right. Amazon did okay here too, even a half-decade ago; it crapped out with Covid and never fixed itself. Perhaps Walmart will crap out too, but it hasn't yet.
Happens with clothes too, had to return several linen shirts for this reason.
With work-at-home, most of my work day is spent in fluffy cotton pyjamas in the winter and simple underpants in the summer from basic-but-large companies like Hanes, Fruit-of-the-Loom, and similar. I'll put on a plain cotton t-shirt and a pair of jeans to go out to the store or whatever. If it's cold, I'll toss on a worn-out long-sleeved t-shirt (the good ones see very little use) and/or a jacket of some kind.
I do have fancy clothing for business meetings, as well as for specific types of exercise, but the total number of hours of usage on those is quite low.
Post-covid life is good!
Are you guys not in the U.S.?
Amazon has lost all of my business for consumable goods. It's not worth the convenience to risk my own or my families health. Fuck 'em.
A lot of people don't have time, or money, to risk legal action.
They also claimed to have zinc (greenish) and elderberry (purple). It's not safe for Amazon to let any random exporter put stuff for sale without any sanity checks.
And it is white and odorless in its pure form. It does have an acidic taste though, because it is an acid. I have some of it in my kitchen (pure bulk powder, not bought on Amazon) and I can tell you by experience.
I have 250g of the stuff, probably enough to last me a lifetime considering the quantities used.
It’s not tasteless of course, it’s sour.
They should be liable for any damages caused by these drugs, as well as patent/copyright/trademark infringement for any counterfeit products.
I don’t feel the same for ebay, reverb, or facebook. I’m not sure where the line should be, but I’m certain Amazon crossed it. Plus their business model infected Newegg and even Walmart, and who knows how many others, it just needs to stop.
Maybe it should be that either you’re a retailer or a marketplace, but never both? I don’t know the answer but it sucks and has sucked for a long time, and im too lazy to stop using it so i guess im part of the problem.
It baffles me that Amazon's item listing system ever allowed this in the first place.
In practice, it seems very likely harm outweighs the benefits for consumers here, and it's just that it encourages more sales that keeps Amazon allowing it.
- I order a large tweezer for cooking etc
- It works great!
- End up losing it so "order again" a year later and it's clearly a different product/manufacturer etc
E.g you're looking at a mattress cover and the reviews and pictures are for a folding chair or a slotted spoon.
The internet of today is total trash.
The fact that the reviews are not limited to a single vendor is a major part of the overall problem.
So the way it works is that some company makes a page for a stuffed animal for example. They name the product page appropriately and start selling their toys. They push hard and gets lots of reviews and build up the aSEO (amazon search Optimization) for that page. They build up 1,000 positive reviews for their stuffed animal averaging 4.8 stars. Cool.
Now they decide to stop selling that toy and instead start selling fidget spinners. Why start from scratch and go through the work of building up all those reviews again and the aSEO that took years on the stuffed animal product. Instead they just go in and change the title, the URL slug and the images to represent the new Fidget Spinner. They publish the changes and now, within seconds of posting their new Fidget Spinner is one of the best reviewed fidget spinners on Amazon and starts immediately getting sales because the page has strong aSEO and high reviews which makes it present well in search results. Visitors of the page see the high reviews and buy the product. They start selling thousands of Fidget Spinners overnight and build up to 2,000 positive reviews.
Now that company sells fidget spinners and then gets sued for using toxic glue in the building of their fidget spinners. No problem. THey change their name from SpinnyAltodaWidgetCorpIncUnlimitedPlus to ShenzenSpinnyWidgetToyPlusUnlimitedCorp. New company, now you can't sue them. Then they change the name on the product page and keep selling the same product with a different name and same reviews, building it up to 3,000.
Now the company goes under. But they have all these high performing amazon pages. Here is where the fun begins, they literally go up for auction. Companies will page hundreds of thousands for a top performing amazon page. They sell the page to the highest bidder. Now a new company ShenzenShitzuSuperCorpPlusMegaChargerMorePlusPlus buys the page and starts selling Fish Oil supplements. They just change the name, images, URL, and company information, but it is technically the same amazon page. Then they start selling Fish Oil supplements with 5,000 reviews averaging 4.8 stars. They immediately shoot to the top of the search results and start selling thousands of bottles overnight because people are overwhelmed by the positive reviews of this product and its age and legacy on Amazon tells Amazon to push it to the top of search results.
This is the black market of Amazon pages. These pages change hands often many times a year. Amazon could easily prevent product changes above a certain threshold or even across categories to prevent or eliminate this, but they don't want to. They are complicit in these behaviors by turning a blind eye to what they know is happening.
Here is a detailed article about Hijacked Reviews from Consumer Reports: https://www.consumerreports.org/customer-reviews-ratings/hij...
For example, in one review they find a phone charging cable that has reviews for zip ties, hand soap, shaving cream, and gaming headsets all in the reviews for a phone charging cable. This page has been hijacked several times by entirely different product types.
With PKI, the customer reviews a product, and puts the hash of his review somewhere on the internet. The hash might be the hashed version of a JSON like so: {company: "Stuffed Animal company", product: "Stuffed Animal", review: "Very good stuffed animal toy"}
When the buyer tries to buy the product, he will verify each review against a public key, and check if all info in JSON verifies correctly. If it does not, then something fishy is going on.
The only problem is where to put the hash of the review. An official database of some kind is required, by a government or something like blockchain. That's why some people refer to blockchain as a "source of truth". It has the potential to contain information no human power can delete from the internet or modify in any way.
That was the last time I bought from Walmart in an attempt to avoid Amazon’s shenanigans.
All of this is even more troubling when you consider their purchase of One Medical. So my Amazon doctor tells me to ingest more zinc but buying zinc from Amazon might not actually have zinc in it?
So, a performance enhancing drug, probably some kind of amphetamine if not straight meth, and it is fine? The story may be true but blaming Amazon sounds like a lousy excuse. Someone must know what he is doing.
https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/lawandarts/a...
For just detecting Meth there are much faster and cheaper methods. But the one I am talking about has the advantage to also allow for detection of other things like steroids (extremely common in supplements), opioids (same) etc
The only thing it will not work well for is anything inorganic, so if they put lead or chrome salts you will not see them and really small (solvents for example) and really large (proteins, large sugars etc)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5691710/
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fspor.2022.8682...
https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/amazon-counterfeits-no-starch...
Edit: if anyone hasn’t seen just how lax they are, search YouTube for FBA. Literally random people driving around to drug stores picking up nearly expired clearance items to send in for FBA.
You shouldn't have to be tech savvy enough to host a shopping experience that's competitive with Amazon in order to sell things online. You ought to be able to focus solely on your product and if it's a good one you ought to be able to compete with Amazon Basics on a level playing field--even if it's a field served by Amazon metal.
I think we need more separation between the part of Amazon that handles clicking "buy" and printing shipping labels, and the part that comes up with things for sale. So much separation, in fact, that the former considers the latter to be no more trustworthy than any other company or individual.
Seller reputation should be important, and the medium for determining if a seller is trustworthy should be free from conflicts of interest.
If the user facing part was adequately adversarial about the cardboard facing part it would result in a UI which had no reason to encourage the user to trust the contents of the cardboard, and instead simply presented facts that enable the user to apply their own scrutiny.
In some cases the fakes are downright dangerous. This is much more the case in supplements, cosmetics, food, and occasionally electrical appliances.
People will only sue them when they get actually dangerous products. Even then it’s a difficult process.
"As an example, if I sell Duracell C batteries on Amazon through their “Shipping Fulfilled by Amazon” — which I must do to receive Prime shipping designation — I need to send my batteries to an Amazon warehouse. After receiving my delivery, they will count the number of batteries, then slide the whole stock into a generic shelf labeled “Duracell C Batteries.” Any purchaser receives a Duracell C battery from that box, and thus the actual seller is unknown."
1: https://thetriplehelix.medium.com/your-amazon-products-could...
They replaced it, of course, but had it been a gift, or I’d been in a hurry, would anyone have noticed? If Amazon can’t keep counterfeits out of their own inventory, what chance do most buyers have?
https://www.redpoints.com/blog/amazon-commingled-inventory-m...
That alone would solve 99% of the problems, as dedicated inventory would allow to quickly weed out the bad actors.
However, Amazon has abandoned any idea of consistent reliable shipping or even delivery “promises”, so the only thing co-mingling does is reduce shipping costs and warehouse space at the customer’s expense. That’s the antithesis of what Amazon delivery used to be. It’s sad to see all the work we did on Prime and Delivery Experience get washed down the drain. Prime used to be a no brained for anyone who used Amazon regularly, and now I’m not even sure if there is discrete value there anymore, rather than just a mishmash of unrelated, mediocre up upsell opportunities.
If you're not familiar with Skinny Puppy (industrial band)
There is a lyric in a song "...define... the state of things...
https://youtu.be/sDEhCm0pxCo?t=271
"...that paper shredder, patent tender, puts us back in time again...."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KHDb9xwHvc
Skinny puppy is from an AI cultural perspective, where they audience is a bunch of ~50 year old dorks (yes, population, we are fucking old - but we built things)
1. the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDEhCm0pxCo
2. Reference: https://youtu.be/sDEhCm0pxCo?t=271
(about to filter this through AI topaz and see if can get a better qual vid - but this song is a Hex on Exxon mobile (in response to valdez spills and oil profit demons)
Nevermind the fact that they pay no taxes, at least not here.
If a physical store near you sold fake everything, including supplements, you’d think it extreme to shut it down?
Note that idea isn’t mutually incompatible with penalizing the company for all the counterfeit products it sold/marketed.
Step 2: Legal action to pursue a change of policy and damages.
Step 3: 2nd legal action if Amazon continues to be out of compliance with the previous ruling.
There's a process here and jumping to the very end is not how it works.
I will buy my books from Indigo (Canada) from now on. Electronics and related doodads can come from Costco, Bestbuy, Walmart.
Maybe it's not as convenient, but you know what you're getting.
It's really unfortunate that Audible is in the Amazon family, because I'm not cancelling that any time soon.
I know much of the internet runs on AWS, but I'll never really trust that either.
It is and I don't understand the downvotes here. With commingled inventory, I don't understand how people are ok with ingesting stuff they buy from Amazon.
The company looks very shady, with no registered address and no contact details. They list dozens of "male energy" supplements that all apparently have been certified by HAACP (Safe Food Alliance, https://safefoodalliance.com/).
First, grocery stores work on a 3% margin, so if they have a ton of returns on something, it costs them a ton of money from credit card fees and wages, and possibly from losing the cost of some portion of the product.
Second, grocery stores have limited space and are picky about what they'll put in their store. They want quality goods that will sell well, and they don't want to cannibalize other products that would make them more money. So random supplements don't find their way to their shelves.
* All of a single product is from the same vendor. Very often, that vendor is also the manufacturer. (model)
* Grocery stores have limited shelf space, and thus spend time getting to know their products. (model influencing qa)
This has been going on for years with those over the counter gas station products as well.
The demand for these products is clearly big enough, and dozens of other countries sell these ED medications OTC at pharmacies.
Maybe it's time the FDA approve those drugs for sale OTC and curb the madness.
“Man has been searching for an aphrodisiac for thousands of years and we finally found it. Of course they are going to put it in everything!”
I'm even wondering if to do the same for things applied to body as well, my wife recently bought a hair cream because from Amazon because she couldn't find it in stores. It was obvious the one from Amazon was not real when compared with the remaining ones she had. Package was perfect, but the color/texture of the cream was very different.
It's a big chance buying things from online marketplace.
Anecdote: I tried to market my own dietary supplements in the US for a while. Unfortunately I am poor in marketing but many customers loved it. I bought all the ingredients from a supplier, had it mixed in California and shipped to a company that can package it. For a slight taste I needed a tiny amount of sucralose. Did not want to buy a huge amount. So I ordered it on eBay. I asked the guy to send me a CoA and he did. It said Manufacturere Spectrum and Food grade. Unfortunately I knew that Spectrum was not selling this as food grade. Sure the guy could have made his own tests but how likely is this? I just trashed it and bought it somewhere else. Should have used Stevia anyway.
Now, the tables have turned. If i want a genuine product, i often shop locally rather than amazon. They even messed up my socks and sent duplicate versions of fairly common books like harry potter.
The whole site seems to be promoting bad products, placing something not even Remotely close to my searches. "Looking for a yoga mat? Here's a chinese fitness tracker we think you might be interested in".. the fuck??
On top of that, the bad quality supplements they sell are just nerve wrecking. Almost no information is factual, No usage guidelines, nothing. And the reviews are just another scam by themselves!
All in all, it's a really bad product now!
So Amazon was literally selling Viagra and Cialis disguised as a supplement. Wow.
Here's a similar article from 5 years ago: https://www.wired.com/story/dietary-supplements-can-contain-...
The barrier right now is that you have to waste 2 hours and $100 to tell a doctor that you have ED. What's the point? It's not stopping anyone except people too poor or busy to jump through the hoops.
A doc visit does take time but it neither takes 2 hours nor costs $100 for me, co-pay is still $20 I think (or maybe covered 100% once a year), and the visit might be 45 minutes when the clinic is pretty busy. There is plenty that’s messed up and wrong with our health care system and insurance, but maybe the minor hurdle of having to require a doc to check on the potential for side-effects really is justified?
Another decent reason, I speculate, is that the drug is relatively new and we don’t know the long term effects of overuse, nor all of the contraindications. If it’s available over the counter and many men use it when they don’t really need it, just because it’s available and easy, there could be dramatic unforeseen consequences. Like a lot of drugs, Viagra might be something that people look to as an easier alternative to changing habits or doing preventative work.
Viagra is trivially available on the black market because many people don’t want to put up with that B.S. Antibiotics have a public interest in being gatekept; they harm everyone if abused. A similar argument can be made for addictive substances.
Merely-harmful drugs, on the other hand, can be disclaimed and, where the clinical and fatal doses are close, diluted. Beyond that, we’re manufacturing busywork.
Interestingly, there do seem to be long-term side effects of sildenafil/tadalafil - though they seem to be positive. There is a possible link between long-term usage of ED drugs and cognitive protections in old age:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6705107/
https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-...
At that point we're approaching the same level of hassle as just getting a prescription, though.
My proposal would be to create a new type of rx: a "standing rx". Some form of probably-digital rx that your doctor gives you that allows you to buy unlimited quantities of the named drug until the doctor revokes it, and it's easily transfer-able between pharmacies. Digital mostly to provide a means of revoking it that doesn't involve calling the doctor every time you try to buy it, though I'm open to counter-arguments about being vulnerable to hacking.
Then you only have to go through the hassle once, and it's honestly probably easier to have your doctor check the interactions than it is to do yourself. They have nifty tools to do that kind of stuff.
I do still wonder whether it should just be OTC, though. On one hand, the interactions are easy to understand. On the other hand, I routinely see people not read or intentionally ignore the instructions on stuff like tylenol (oh it says 2? I'll take 4, because my headache is bad). The common "do we give adults agency or try to protect them from themselves?" issue.
So some degree of oversight by a medical professional is warranted.
Reminds me of the X-Ray glasses and aphrodisiac ads from old magazines and comics when I was a kid.
Cosmetics get away with anti-aging and beautification claims, but I believe they are not regulated by the FDA for thise claims, because a lot if it is hogwash.
If you want to get more reasonably unhappy with market exclusivity, look at Celgene's grip on thalidomide/lenalidomide/pomalidomide for the treatment of multiple myeloma.
Supplements on Amazon have been a disaster for the better part of a decade, maybe longer.
It's painful to see abuse after abuse and little regulatory action.
Except in a very small handful of situations, the best case scenario is that the company pays a small fine.
That fine gets announced years after the abuse, then, that pittance gets litigated down over even more years.
The risk adjusted present value might as well be zero.
Why would any company ever do the right thing?
And who knows what else!!!
I'd never ingest anything that has Chinese provenance. Chinese garlic comes to mind as the latest thing to try to avoid. Not sure if true but it seems to be grown in sewage. I'd rather be safe and avoid that altogether.
If that's your concern, you shouldn't be worried about just China. It's done in America as well.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/04/10/176822392/ci...
As someone who has made a career consulting for supplement companies selling on Amazon, this does not surprise me. When Amazon first instituted testing requirements for supplements (something that already exists under federal law) they required all sellers to provide testing for all of their products. Failure to do so resulted in removal of your products from the marketplace.
Since then, two things have changed. Certain supplement categories have additional testing requirements outside of what is expected by the FDA. Companies have to prove the absence of certain illegal ingredients. But, Amazon has switched to random testing requirements. In the last 3 years, Amazon has not asked a single one of my clients to provide any COAs. I have seen other brands have to provide some, but the requirements are very limited. It is for this reason, unsurprising that illegal products are making it into customer hands.
It is my understanding that the individual who drove the campaign to get COAs, GMP certificates, etc for all supplement listings is no longer with Amazon, and nobody has filled that role since. That should be changed.
But Amazon has always been aggressive over enforcement of marketing claims, and some claims will always instantly flag a COA requirement. Sellers use careful wording to avoid these flags. The solution is to make a COA required for the creation of these listings.
I mean, let's take this one further. Most supplement companies are just marketing companies. They don't formulate the product, they don't manufacture the ingredients, and they don't even blend the powder. They make a brand. But, the FDA doesn't care. As a brand receiving product from a manufacturer, you are still required to test it. The manufacturer is also required to test the raw materials as well as the finished product. Yet, most companies I speak to are not testing product received. They rely solely on the manufacturer testing.
So we should be requiring these brands to do their due diligence. Show me the COA you are supposed to have for every lot you send in. It's already required by the FDA.
As is always the case with supplements, regulation is not the issue. It's enforcement
For those of us who don't know about testing, can you explain COA/GMP and how robust the testing process is?
The reason I ask I'm a little concerned about Amazon's incentives not being aligned with consumers priority for high quality and safe product and is letting suppliers choose which product(s) to submit for testing rather than doing periodic random testing which I fear is too much to hope/ask for...
It's also relatively expensive compared to the usually marginal benefit. Most likely you should sock away that spend into an index so you can afford the more effective and expensive therapies that our healthcare system doesn't give you access to (because it generally won't pay for prevention).
Amazon Basics should be terminated with prejudice.
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/W/MEDIAX_792452-T2/images/...
I've seen some advertise "UL Safety Report", which I assume is weasel-words for "We failed UL certification so we can't actually say the magic phrase 'UL Listed'".
I've seen some claim to be UL Listed without being able to find them on the UL site.
Sure, it's nice to buy a cheap chinesium drone, but something moving 40amps of power and heat in your home without accepted safety checks? That feels like something that should have some liability on the merchant's side when it burns something down.
Sounds like you're talking about third party EV chargers. What does this have to do with amazon basics? Or are you pulling a motte and bailey, going from "amazon basics is going to burn down your house" to "third party EV chargers are going to burn down your house"?
Half the listings are sponsored ads when I search. I searched for "Lego" this past Christmas and on the first page I got a bunch of products that were in what looked just like Lego boxes with Lego fonts and numbering ... but were not made by Lego and were clearly made to deceive.
I noticed some items I get price alerts now will drop low but only one vendor is actually offering the low price ... who has terrible ratings. But you can't actually know that is happening unless you click through the UI a bunch, if you just buy it you'll see the overall rating that is fine... but you get it from some vendor with terrible ratings.
I bought something last spring that was never delivered, turns out it was some random Chinese company. The item even says it wasn't delivered and yet I couldn't get a refund if I went through the order status page. It just sent me to one automated customer service who sent me to a different customer service who sent me back.
Someone on HN had to tell me to go to the front page and contact "that customer service".... wtf
I used to go to Amazon because it offered better selection and quality products that my local stores didn't sell. Now it's just low quality garbage and scams.
It must be rather difficult to be in the US where Amazon is so dominant, because I given up and just rely on local webshops.
I worked for a webshop years ago, they wanted to implement a "marketplace" and I advised against it, but they went forward anyway. A few years later I was contact by someone still working there, they had dropped the marketplace again. They simply could not deal with the amount of absolute shit sellers where shipping and it was damaging their brand. This is a store that was really selective about which products could be sold and what resellers was allowed and they still couldn't do it. So why isn't this damaging Amazons brand to the point of them limiting marketplace?
I don't buy many products on amazon anymore.
Half of my family spends a huge fortune on supplements, most of which are placebos. If you're young, you may not understand, but for us over 40, life starts to suck, physically. When you're young, your body is very fault-tolerant...have 6 beers and a cheeseburger for supper every day for a week?...nothing a few tums can't fix. Now that I'm over 40, I do everything right (daily exercise, eat healthy, get sleep, etc) and still feel like shit most of the day....same with most my age...thus we're desperate for anything that will make us feel better and not have any side effects that make things worse.
Supplements are the dream and an age-old scam. Maybe punishing big retailers who tolerate fraud will not only reduce false claims, but make the public more aware that so called health experts online are ignorant, scammers, or both.
I’m nearing 40. Are you sure it’s normal to feel terrible most of the day when eating right, exercising, and getting enough sleep? This doesn’t sound normal to me.
Can I overdo things and feel like shit? Yeah but mostly I feel great.
My knees are kind messed up but that is from running 500 miles every summer during middle school and high school.
So no, being in your 40s shouldn’t mean feeling like shit.
As to the topic at hand, I use two supplements in addition to prescription blood pressure medications. I take my blood pressure 3 times daily. I can see in the cold hard numbers if I forget to take them.
That point being: All of us deteriorate. We all reach an age/state where conventional medicine has reached its limit and snake oil begins to be look attractive. Not all of it is proven wrong, none of it is proven right.
It falls short of feeling like shit, but there is a kind of death by many cuts that changes the baseline for feeling normal in the wrong direction.
> Chalk is typically almost pure calcite, CaCO3, with just 2% to 4% of other minerals
The supplement I just looked up uses Calcium Carbonate. That could just be purified chalk and be in compliance with the FDA. In fact, it probably is just that.
Whether or not that's true, if you replaced someone's magnesium supplement with viagra, you could seriously hurt them.
>> FDA confirmed through laboratory analyses that the [...] products, purchased on www.amazon.com, contained [...] the active ingredients in the FDA-approved prescription drugs Viagra and Cialis, respectively, used to treat erectile dysfunction (ED). These undeclared ingredients may interact with nitrates found in some prescription drugs, such as nitroglycerin, and may lower blood pressure to dangerous levels.
It's a better regulated industry now, but with the explosion in supplement popularity over the last decade I doubt there is an easy way to test and punish all manufacturers. If you look at the list of supplements included in that warning letter, they have classic nonsensical names that Chinese companies are known for (WeFun, Genergy, etc). None are on www.amazon.com anymore, but hundreds of other supplements show up with absolutely no way of telling whether any of them are clean (e.g. "Endurance 2Nite").
The issue is that a chronic mistreatment of your body (similar to what you describe). The solution is a chronic loving of your body. Best time to start was 20 years ago. Second best time is today. I wish you luck and I can tell you: it doesn't have to be the way you describe, but it WILL take patience and a life-long commitment.
And yeah: forget supplements. Focus on good food.
Minerals and vitamins come from USP, which is tested and regulated and everyone in the industry gets the same quality (regardless of what they claim). It is what they say it is, if it’s USP.
Where is gets sketchy quickly is all the other stuff, like plant extracts etc
I don’t take many supplements but they all work for their intended purpose.
creatine for muscle recovery and making me a tiny bit stronger
ZMA (zinc, magnesium, b6). for deeper sleep and overcoming multiday hangovers
melatonin for vivid dreams and waking up feeling more refreshed.
b12/d3 for energy
i don’t take them all every day, but they have consistently noticeable effects and have improved my quality of life.
i also just use the store brands from major retailers, and have low expectations.
More importantly when I was in my late thirties I also thought feeling shitty was just part of getting older, but it turned out I had cancer. talk to a doctor.
> My family spends a huge fortune on supplements, most of which are placebos
Unless you are just using “most” as a weasel word to hedge the chance that you might be wrong, using “most” would imply that you are aware of some supplements that aren’t frauds. Can you share them?
Supplements are absolutely regulated. To say otherwise is just ignorant of the law. Those regulations are not well enforced. That is the fault of the US justice department and Congress. The FDA is under-equipped in the way of funding to enforce regulations. And they're dependent on the justice department to actually follow through on enforcement. The justice department is only really interested in enforcement action where harm has occurred.
Amazon can do better, but why are we exclusively placing the onus on them to enforce federal law? Why is the FDA not going after the brands making and selling this shit?