Hacker News Reader

Comment by arcticfox | Hacker News Reader

I used to think my wife was silly for spending more at beauty stores for her skincare products, but after realizing how insane Amazon's quality controls are, I think someone needs to actually shut them down. I wonder if there are any grounds for lawsuits. The number of counterfeit products they sell, even under "Sold by Amazon.com" is WILD. Zero supply chain discipline.

View on HN

I think the issue is multifold: a lot of the fake products are not dangerous, but they are either useless, or otherwise inferior. There’s essentially no recourse for this as a consumer, and you probably won’t even notice that you don’t have an original product.

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.

Beauty products are in the ballpark but are also a different ball game. Unless you're licensed or very educated on what chemicals and chemical combinations do to your skin picking beauty products can be tough. My partner is an esthetician and most of what she spends her time doing is helping people pick products that won't adversely impact their skin or just do nothing. Beauty is chalk full of fake products and worse influencers who push them onto unsuspecting/unknowing people. It's given rise to an industry of estheticians who don't make money on purchases but who collect a fee to just help you sift through the bullshit.

Can you elaborate about counterfeit products being sold under "sold by amazon.com"? That's surprising to me, I treat that as a sign of something being non-counterfeit.

My understanding is that all sellers, including Amazon itself have co-mingled inventory. Therefore you can’t actually guarantee that what you’re getting is from Amazon’s stock, as opposed to some other random seller who gave the FBA warehouse a truck full of fake products.

Amazon commingles[1] inventory. So if there are N vendors selling an item, including Amazon.com, all N inventories just get mixed together at the warehouses. So if some M of those N are counterfeit, there's no way to know.

"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...

This makes it rather attractive for sellers to add in some cheap fakes - thanks for the explanation.

It's an inventory management exploit that Amazon seems in no hurry to fix.

https://www.redpoints.com/blog/amazon-commingled-inventory-m...

I’ve ordered an Apple-brand Lightning cable from Amazon (sold by Amazon), for example, and received a counterfeit.

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?

obviously if Amazon sold something that damaged someone it would be grounds for suit under tort law, in which case the sky's the limit, and guessing the easy to find details of their behavior over the years any American jury would punish them.

Only a tiny few Americans can afford filing such types of lawsuits, and only a tiny few of those people are interested in pursuing such things.

Personal injury is serious business, and many personal injury attorneys work on contingency. Amazon has "deep pockets," so I doubt this is the reason.

This isn't correct, most personal injury lawyers don't charge you directly. They take a percentage of the settlement or victory. There's way more money to be made with the "no fee" model than charging hourly in these instances.

Time and availability are expensive commodities. Who's paying for that?

I literally just said that they make their money on fees from the outcome of the cases. That is how basically every personal injury case works. If they don't think the case will win, they don't take it. Personal injury/tort lawyers do not charge clients in the same way as other types of law. They especially don't do that because a) they'd make less money and b) they are often times dealing with people that couldn't afford hourly rates up front especially as a case becomes more complicated.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com