Hacker News Reader

Comment by wongarsu | Hacker News Reader

That's great news. From April onwards buying from a reliable vendor with fulfillment by Amazon will mean you get the parts from that vendor, not some random parts from a random provider that claim to have the same SKU.

Seems like Amazon finally agrees that the counterfeiting issues from commingling are worse than the logistics advantages

View on HN

> Seems like Amazon finally agrees that the counterfeiting issues from commingling are worse than the logistics advantages.

The cynical perspective is that they are facing a serious financial penalty either from the manufacturers themselves, or a large buyer that got burned by co-mingled products, or both.

I suspect this one is death by 1000 cuts as Amazon has distribution facilities everywhere and will be subject to state and even local laws concerning warranty, product safety, and trademark. You can't contract your way out of it, and defective and counterfeit product can even carry criminal liability depending on jurisdiction. Good move Amazon.

> either from the manufacturers themselves, or a large buyer that got burned by co-mingled products

While high value resale brands like Apple and GPU manufacturers would be the obvious choice here, I’d be tickled if it was LEGO Group that finally forced their hand, given how many stories there are of people receiving faked parts, missing mini figs and straight up bags of pasta.

That wouldn’t be cynical at all! It would mean that the system works, albeit slowly.

The best we can hope for is a world where Amazon faces real financial pressure to prevent counterfeits. Thus far I haven’t seen much evidence this was happening, but this is a welcome sign.

Of course. Businesses only change when you complain and vote with your money.

That’s not cynical, that’s the system working. And if you keep bringing your money, you are signaling it’s a little annoying but not it’s ultimately ok.

"Commingling" is such a great euphemism for fraudulent counterfeiting.

I can't count the number of times I've ordered a book from Amazon (1st party, Amazon as the seller) and received an obvious counterfeit, with fuzzy text and a poorly printed cover. On one occasion, the scanning/OCR process had missed most of one chapter, so there were just section headers, page numbers and blank pages.

Unfortunately publishers and manufacturers don't have a lot of leverage with Amazon. If there's pressure coming from somewhere, it must be coming from a regulatory body.

Or alternatively: they have reduced the expectations of "two day shipping" so much that they no longer need to try that hard (by commingling inventory) to actually meet them.

I bought an LG monitor, by part number, three times and always received the similar looking but half the price counterpart.

We only realized the issue after using it for a few days and needing to use an advance feature.

So, it’s not just one sellers product mingled with another, but also sellers combining similar looking products together as well.

Amazon apparently credit full declared cost for the seller who delivered items to be comingled, and all responsibilities for the item are offloaded to whoever seller that would appear on customer invoices.

This means malicious sellers can deliver literal counterfeits to warehouses and externalize the consequences, down to angry 1-star reviews and disposal of returned counterfeit examples, to somebody else.

> Worked with a guy that used this to his advantage. He sold CD's and DVD's through FBA. He would get them "new enough" looking via buffing them out (often making them unplayable), shrinkwrapping them, and then hope whomever got them wasn't him that got the commission for that sale

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46679106

> From April onwards

Very curious how they are going to clean up their commingled inventory in 2.5 months.

Or do they already know and it will take them that long to implement … whatever?

Good point. The screenshot says the new requirements are for inventory shipped to Amazon by sellers on or after March 31. So they're not cleaning up existing inventory, just changing the requirements for new stock. It'll probably take some time after that for older commingled inventory to all get sold off.

Great news? It’s great news that nobody really knew that we were buying items but not receiving them from the person that we bought them from? It’s a logistical advantage to defraud customers? Because this is what Amazon was doing all along, defrauding customers. I never knew that I was receiving an item from someone who I didn’t purchase it from how is that even legal?

Amazon's assumption was that every box of "Apple AirPods 4" is the same, so it doesn't matter if you got the one sold directly from Apple or from some random reseller. They would just put them in the same bin, after all they are all the same product. Great for logistics because it doesn't matter if the closest fulfillment center has AirPods sold by Apple or "Office Partner Inc", they just ship you whatever is closest. Obviously this fails spectacularly if a seller ever lies about their product, but who would ever do such a thing

It also fails when someone receives the product, and then returns it (bonus points if it was ‘not what I ordered/fraud’) with the contents replaced with something bogus, if Amazon puts it back in stock.

I know they do sometimes put it back in stock, because the item I received back (as the ‘we’ll ship you a replacement) was literally the same thing I shipped back to them. :s

Won't it also be an issue for products that have a best/use before date ?

A batch from one seller may have earlier date than from another seller.

It's been discussed a number of times on HN. The Wall Street Journal even had an article about counterfeits on Amazon a few years ago. There's one at [1] (paywall, naturally).

I'm not sure if it is fraud, but it definitely aided and abetting counterfeiters, and I think it is a travesty that Amazon has not been fined for it. I also actively avoid buying from Amazon partly because of this (and this decision will make no difference; I have no interest in patronizing a company that does this, unless I see some repentance), although there really isn't anyone else for a lot of items.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-has-ceded-control-of-its...

It is not my job to be the regulator, that is the regulators jobs. I do nopt have the time of capacity in my bipolar affected mind to cram in the detail of this corrupt capitalist world we all let happen.

And I cannot read that article because it is behind a paywall and I am too poor and homless to afford a subscription.

And how many people even come to HN (not just thinking about myself).

And now I have no option but to buy from amazon since I am homeless and do not have a fixed address where I can has stuff shipped to.

All of your point are fine if you are well off and capable, but putting this on me, and people like me, is just wrong.

If you want to organize a boycott against amazon, I will be right there with you. Until then all you have are words.

This is amazing!! I get what I paid for. Gonna miss the massive amount of garbage that I got instead of the product I wanted to have. What time to be alive.

It's pretty optimistic. They certainly cannot "uncommingle" existing stock, so you may be able to buy new product with better source assurance, but for existing products...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com