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Comment by al_borland | Hacker News Reader

It’s about time. I’ve been going out of my way to not buy from Amazon, especially on items that are often counterfeit, or where a counterfeit item would cause real issues.

Just a couple days ago I was planning to buy some supplements, which Amazon had. I went to the actual website of the company and bought from them, because the idea of getting a knock off was a bit scary. To my dismay, I received an Amazon shipping notice after making the purchase outside of Amazon. This brought back my skepticism. I’m still waiting for the package to arrive and will end up inspecting it closely.

A few months ago I bought some headphones from Amazon, because the official site was out of stock on the color I wanted. I ended up going on YouTube and finding a video on how to spot authentic pairs vs counterfeit ones to make sure I got the real thing.

This all stemmed from when I bought a water bottle, and the reviews mentioned this commingling issue and how to spot authentic real one vs a fake. I double checked that I was buying from the company’s listing and not one of the other sellers on the item. I received a counterfeit one. Thankfully this review tipped me off. I lost a significant amount of trust in Amazon that day. A random bottle isn’t something I even thought I needed to worry about counterfeit version for.

Amazon has a long way to go to rebuild trust with me. This is a step in the right direction. The fact that it took this long is pretty sad. Amazon is the only mainstream store where I’ve ever had to question if I was buying legitimate goods or not.

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This is one of many exploitative habits of Amazon. Others include not ensuring products follow regulation, eg on hazardous substances (lead, etc), or on electrical safety. They also make your local {book, game, hobby, ...} shop go bankrupt.

You don't -have- to buy there, if you have the financial means I urge/recommend/encourage you to buy locally or from a responsible seller. Even if they are slower, less things on offer, etc. You probably already know some small local stores you would be sad to see shut down. Support them! (if you don't already)

> follow regulation

This one bit me recently when I bought a package of budget light fixtures (in Canada, from amazon.ca) and then my licensed electrician informed me that he wouldn't be able to install them as they didn't have a CSA or UL mark. (edit: originally I had mis-recalled and said CE here)

To their credit, Amazon did allow me to return them without penalty, and now my review there warns other consumers that those are only for DIY use and even then you are risking your home's insurance coverage.

> and now my review there warns other consumers that those are only for DIY use

Actually make sure with a incognito window that this review is actually visible. I've noticed that some reviews of mine have been "shadow-banned" and while it looks like they're still there when I'm logged in, once I try in a incognito window the review doesn't show up publicly anymore. My reviews were just basically facts about the products themselves, and received no word from Amazon about breaking any rules.

I posted a legitimate negative review once and it got immediately memory-holed. I laugh every time they send an email begging for reviews. I'm not wasting my time if you're going to hide the truth.

The few times I've tried leaving a negative review, Amazon has either taken it down or it has disappeared like this. The game is rigged.

Huh, that's interesting; I can see one negative review on the logged-out page, but clicking "more" or any of the star ratings prompts me to log in.

Once logged in, there are multiple 1-star reviews present, including some others referencing the missing certs.

In any case, the listing is here for anyone else interested: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0CRGMS1Q5

I've noticed this too. Vine Gold Amazon program member, but sometimes my reviews are rejected or shadow banned for no discernible reason. I think there may be some corruption in the review moderation process (as well as in the commingling process, which I've also had problems with).

> This one bit me recently when I bought a package of budget light fixtures (in Canada, from amazon.ca) and then my licensed electrician informed me that he wouldn't be able to install them as they didn't have a CE mark.

The CE mark signifies compliance with European Union standards and regulations. Why would you expect Amazon Canada to care about that?

Yes, sorry, I've updated my comment; the fixture actually does have CE, it's CSA/UL that were missing. My apologies.

IIUC Chinese manufacturers often put the "CE" mark on things that haven't been certified, and rationalize it as the mark meaning "China Export"

I have never heard of a case of a homeowner's insurance claim being denied based on imrpoper DIY work. One of the main points of insurance is to protect you against your own negligence.

Still, I would make the same decision and steer clear of such lighting fixtures!

CE conformity is a self-declaration by the manufacturer, so essentially the honor system, not an actual certification program like TüV. Items without a CE mark cannot legally be imported or sold in the EU, but there is little enforcement.

CSA and UL are definitely 3rd party assessments though.

Ah yes, I'd looked this up before but then forgotten it. My original comment would be better stated as "Chinese manufacturers often put the 'CE' mark on things they haven't designed to conform to the guidelines, and have no intention of standing behind the liability for ..."

The replacement ones that the electrician selected were only slightly more expensive and I was able to clean up the look of them with 3d printed shrouds:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7165347

I've really got to get back into 3D printing. I was building a Voron back when it would have been like serial number 20. Got it to the point where I was printing its own parts (using stub parts made of plywood and whatnot). Life happened, I disassembled it to move, and I've still got the frame sitting around plastic-wrapped for the past ten years.

I wasn't even thinking LED fixtures. For LED fixtures with built in power electronics, I would definitely want the product to be NRTL recognized.

I was late to the 3d printing game and in part that was just not wanting it to become a junk factory of disposable toys and fidgets. I've definitely printed a bit of that kind of thing but overall I've been pleased with the number of small household fixups that it's been possible to do using it.

Just last night for example my microwave oven stopped registering that the door was closed, and within a few tries I was able to print a replacement for the latch bracket that had broken off. At any previous time in my life that would have been either a whole new door or replacing the entire unit.

For sure, I've got a list of "household fixups" to print when I finally do get around to rebuilding the thing.

Just a note of caution about the microwave though. I don't know what bracket broke off your microwave, but usually the door switch is a safety mechanism to make sure the door cannot be open while the magnetron is on.. Make sure a new 3D printed bracket isn't able to break off and cause the safety switch to remain on!

Oh yeah, I'm well aware. The PLA bracket is non-structural and only supports the original latch piece.

That said, I was alarmed to see online lots of people who were also replacing the latch itself with printed parts. That sketches me out a lot more, though I guess it could be fine with PETG or ABS.

I couldn't think of something worse than demanding Amazon decide what is counterfeit or violates regulations and policing that rule. The law on both those points is far too complex for the result to be anything but Amazon blocks what the big brands tell them to and protect them from competition.

Amazon is essentially a logistics company with a search engine. It doesn't really make sense to have them enforce regulations or counterfeiting rules than it would to make UPS and google. It's not like they hide who the seller is on any item (it's listed as sold by).

What your complaining about is a fundamental consequence of anything that lowers the barriers to selling goods. You once needed to buy a storefront to sell retail goods, later you at least needed sufficient name recognition for people to visit your website -- that investment gave anyone whose goods were counterfeit as well as regulators assets to seize.

But just like making it easy for every citizen to publish their thoughts means we see lots of hate and dumb shit online -- anything that lowers the barriers to selling retail goods (in general a good thing) will make it easy to sell counterfeit or defective crap.

In the long run, I suspect tech will make reputable 3rd party evaluations easier to access but let's not blame Amazon for not becoming an arm of the state and judging what is and isn't legal.

It's far easier and efficient to have the seller be responsible for what they sell, rather than every buyer learn relevant regulations and research whether any potential buy follows that.

And regulations are necessary since many sellers are without ethics/morals and simply want to sell.

The cost to the individual can be huge (eg cancer, home burnt down), and the society as well (environment etc).

I get the line of thought that "a simple product search engine like Amazon" shouldn't be held responsible for every single small item sold, but I think they should. The information and power balance is incredibly offset here.

Don't forget that Amazon is one of the largest companies on this planet, to a large extent because they take this shortcut of "money first, responsibility later". So I do blame Amazon (among others). The old discussion of privatization of profit and society takes the risk and cost...

> You don't -have- to buy there, if you have the financial means I urge/recommend/encourage you to buy locally or from a responsible seller

That is assuming the component is even available locally or from a responsible seller. I live in a small city (half a million people). It is often impossible to find parts locally even for popular products that were purchased locally. Then there are parts where it is impossible to find official replacements, either because it is outside of the product's support windows, or because the replacement parts were never available to start with.

Yup, an important caveat. And sometimes, it may not be available, due to it not legally being allowed to be sold there (eg not following relevant regulations). And that's a valid enough reason for it not to be sold there, regardless of seller.

For some kinds of things, I don't have a local store that sells it. Maybe that's less of an issue if you live in big city, but not everyone does.

Another counterfeit issue they have that will not be solved by this is the “REPLACEMENT PART FOR OEM FOOBAR-123” listings.

I’ve had quite a few repairs over the last few years for household appliances and pool pumps and such. It’s very common to find a listing for a heating element for a Samsung dryer or a Heyward filter diverter being listed with a misleading title and often further listing the manufacturer as, say, Samsung itself.

I got screwed after buying a dryer heating element for $80 recommended via a reputable YouTube DIY channel. Silly me neglected to check the comments and lo and behold 50%+ are complaints that this heating element dies after 6-8 weeks, just past the 30 day refund window…

This is not always a bad thing. The example I always use of why it’s good that Amazon has knock off parts, is a Jacuzzi heating element.

Amazon has them for $30, but has none of the legitimate item which are only sold through a dealer network and dealers charge the OEM price of $285 bucks plus shipping. It’s not quite the same part – cause dealers only sell a larger unit that includes the heater - you can’t buy the actual part number except via a knockoff.

Add to this that the Jacuzzi part - for my model at least - has a reputation of just dying at two years plus one day, while the Chinese parts frequently last 3-5 years.

In the end, you save yourself quite a lot of money, and time by replacing less frequently, by buying the knock off. And where I live, you couldn’t get the knock off otherwise.

The important thing of course is to know that you’re getting a knock off, and have made that choice in intentionally. Your story does suck - and there can be lots of reasons both good and bad to make a knock off.

>> Amazon has them for $30, but has none of the legitimate item which are only sold through a dealer network and dealers charge the OEM price of $285 bucks plus shipping. It’s not quite the same part – cause dealers only sell a larger unit that includes the heater - you can’t buy the actual part number except via a knockoff.

Possibly the reason the OEM price is so high is because it is backed by huge liability insurance (e.g., you get into a Jacuzzi and get electrocuted). I'd pay for that assurance. By assurance, not that I get a payout, but rather the company has sufficient QA to avoid a payout.

I'm sorry but you're logic really doesn't add up. If a part goes from $30 to $285 because of massive insurance premiums, that indicates that the insurance company expects things to go wrong.

The real reasons oem parts cost more is always some combination of these three things: 1. They use more expensive processes and materials. 2. They charge more because they can. People are willing to pay a premium for "genuine" parts. 3. They have a "dealer network" to support, which is convenient but expensive to maintain.

#1 is the only thing I want to pay for. Ultimately it's on a case by case basis whether oem is worth it and you never know for sure.

But I'm really thankful non-oem parts exist, just as long as they're labeled as such and not comingled.

There's also 4) Manufacturers could position the price of spares at a level that's intended to provide pressure to scrap salvagable devices and put the customer back into the market. The classic "it will be $150 to send the guy out, and the magic PCB is $250, while an entire new washer is $550, are you sure you want to throw money into an N-years-old unit? (Bear in mind this calculus applies to the people who are not even considering DIY repair)

5) Manufacturers are burdened with selling the entire spares catalog, while third parties may concentrate on the highest-turnover items that they can sell easily.

Years ago, I looked at the service manual for a 1980s stereo receiver, and the manufacturer literally starred the parts they mentioned as most commonly needed for replacements. (The part I needed was, unsurprisingly, on that list)

I wish we'd see more in the way of "open PCB" appliances. 90% of "white goods" appliances (washers/driers/dishwashers/fridges/stoves/microwaves) have a board somewhere that reads a membrane keypad and a few sense switches and activates some relays and displays a timer. You could probably design a master PCB that replaced hundreds of different models, with different cable harnesses and firmware configurations for each model.

This would dramatically reduce the number of SKUs to stock, but at the cost of the master PCB probably costing a few dollars more because they can't strip out every non-essential component for lower-end models.

>> I'm sorry but you're logic really doesn't add up. If a part goes from $30 to $285 because of massive insurance premiums, that indicates that the insurance company expects things to go wrong.

The part goes from $30 to $280 due to 5 or 6 factors, which you've outlined well. Insurance is one of many factors. Insurance isnt high because they expect things to go wrong -- insurance forces better QA/QC and overall processes so there isnt a payout -- all those precautions raise the price. It aligns everyone to focus on quality outcomes to prevent payouts.

https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/apple-cables...

>By assurance, not that I get a payout, but rather the company has sufficient QA to avoid a payout.

They also have sufficient insurance that a payout doesn't tank their company. I don't think their risk avoidance translates into your risk avoidance.

>>By assurance, not that I get a payout, but rather the company has sufficient QA to avoid a payout. > They also have sufficient insurance that a payout doesn't tank their company. I don't think their risk avoidance translates into your risk avoidance.

The insurance company doesnt want a payout though -- they will ensure certain certifications. Also, insurance companies will not payout (and hence bankrupt the company) in cases of fraud or gross negligence.

The system is not perfect, but it exists to align interests.

The insurance company doesnt want a payout though -- they will ensure certain certifications.

Those certifications aren't worth as much as I thought they were. I just took apart a UL-certified power strip with scorched plastic, which is a significant fire hazard. It had an LED that was fed from the 120V line through a 15K 0.5-watt resistor.

a UL certification will hardly be the only one in place for a commercial insurance firm to guarantee a jacuzzi. Just imagine the risk of electrocution.

Just look at it from a retail standpoint -- perhaps you have car insurance.

- (where I live) You are forced to have a driver's license

- (where I live) Even if your spouse claims not to drive, they wont insure me unless all other adults in my household have licenses

- i'm forced to pay more if i drive an unsafe car vs a safe one

- I can pay less if I have a LoJack or other safety device

- I can pay further less if I take a driver's safety course which runs 5hrs long

- I can pay further less if I install a OBD-2 device sharing my driver behavior

- I risk having my insurance cancelled If I do something bad (DUI)

- I risk having no payout if I do something illegal

Mislabeled parts is in fact always a bad thing.

Being able to source a non OEM replacement is different than that.

OEM replacement bins for my refrigerator door are > $100, i'll take the stronger knockoffs from Amazon for $20 any day.

Yeah, and when you buy the knockoff, buy two.

Occasionally the knockoffs are better than the "real" thing.

I once had a fleet of HP servers that had storage parts constantly failing. HP techs couldn't do anything useful about it, they just kept replacing the parts with authentic HP replacements.

Then HP ran out of the parts, probably due to the failure rates. Out of desperation we bought some cheap knockoffs to keep things running until the HP parts came back into stock. Those cheap knockoffs worked perfectly and were reliable, zero issues. Much better than the HP parts. We ended up buying enough of those parts to replace all the HP parts.

Many times the expensive official parts are literally the cheap knockoffs with more steps. And sometimes high-quality knockoffs are competing with the low-quality branded versions.

There would be enormous value in being able to trace the true provenance and supply chain for everything you can buy. It would be extremely challenging due to the incentives to misrepresent this information.

So long as the description stays it's not actually OEM - I see zero problem with this.

The title is not misleading in this case - it's how you discover the item to being with, but if the description says "Samsung" as manufacturer I'd send it back.

There are certain times you want an OEM part for good reason (e.g. safety critical/expensive items) but most of the time aftermarket is perfectly fine and sometimes even desirable. Most wear items in cheap appliances and the like are made in china anyways and typically are low quality to start with.

When I see "replacement for x" I assume it's a third party part. Might be good, might not. If I'm worried about quality I look for "genuine OEM" or similar.

This is a great first step but the review system needs to stop commingling too. I get a bad produce can be bad from all sellers but then you would see that when you try to buy from someone else.

Good point. I’ve also seen where there are completely different products as different SKUs of the same product listing. Just yesterday I was looking at some chopsticks, and when I went down to the reviews, everyone was talking about a wok. Sure enough, I could buy a wok from the chopstick listing. Insanity.

They also need to fix the problem of (good) reviews for one product getting transferred to another (lower quality) product.

I actually created a review to warn people that most of the reviews were for a different product (even provided photos, showing the old/new; showing the huge downgrade), and Amazon nuked my review because:

> After carefully reviewing your submission, your review could not be posted to the website. It appears your review had feedback on the seller.

Yeah, so Amazon won't let you post reviews warning others about this either. The review itself was about the LISTING not the SELLER.

Not to mention the problem of bad reviews for one product not getting transferred to a "new" product that is just the same product again with a different listing.

They do try. seems like it’s a bit less lately. Still sometimes see a review talking about it being a soft towel and you are buying a toaster.

It seems like it is easy to get good reviews on some product then just switch the product completely different. Do they not have ways to prevent that??

I have had similar issues.

I no longer buy anything over $50 from them, but I have had "Fulfilled by Amazon," from the sellers' [actual] sites, and haven't had a problem.

I don't trust the sellers' "stores" on Amazon, though. You will get things like gray market Chinese versions, from "official" stores.

Let's be clear, the reason they are doing this is because by now the majority of listings on Amazon for any even remotely generic item are from made-up brands with a bunch of fake 5 star reviews. The commingling just happens at the source..

Just last week I got a fake Tony Moly skin lotion from Amazon. So frustrating. It had 1200 positive reviews, which I read and looked good so I ordered. Only when I got it and the bottle different than my last order and the lotion smelled weird I went into the reviews and actually keyword searched "fake' did 18 new reviews come up talking about how it is not the actual branded product. Initially I searched in the "ask Rufus" AI bot field and got some gaslighting slop about how there are no fake products on Amazon as the response!

> Have gotten fake products twice > First things first, I love this moisturizer. I’ve used this as my primary since the product line was released. I use a lot of skin care and the chok chok cream is the best. They used to have a gel version for summer and a thick version for winter. I loved those too.

> Problem: Twice now I have ordered and have gotten fakes. How do I know? Packaging not correct, texture of cream not correct and no correct date stamp on bottom. The container was actually strangely big next to my authentic version. You can see in the photo that the stamp on the container is not similar. The one on the left is the real deal and the one on the right is the fake I have gotten twice.

Same here, I'd buy from B&H instead.

The thing, though is, as you discovered with the water bottle, "items that are often counterfeit" is pretty much everything nowadays, not just SD cards.

I've gotten a counterfeit SD card from Amazon before, so it's likely a pervasive issue. Glad they're finally doing something about it.

Is this also a problem when buying and the seller is amazon.com or only affects third party sellers?

You listed common items you think may be counterfeits, and all your effort in checking, but fail to mention av single time you _actually_ ran into a counterfeit. I'm sure if it occurred you'd happily mention it since it would do wonders in reinforcing the paranoia.

What do you mean? They specifically say they received a counterfeit water bottle in their post.

Signed, someone who has received a counterfeit Canon DSLR camera battery, fridge water filter, and "official" Nintendo Switch case from Amazon. (Albeit some years back for all of them, as I rarely buy there any longer.)

The time of retailers being 'honest' is over. Scamming, bargaining and the likes were a big part of business. Bargaining was normal before certain religious beliefs (like the quakers and calvinists, similar religious beliefs were found with catholics), The fact it was more efficient with the industrial revolution not to do so helped it.

When you lose both those factors it's bound to come up again. People don't 'really' believe anymore in the west, doesn't bother me so much besides the fact that nothing better really replaced it. Better operation research/management/computers now allow for the bargaining to be done 'efficiently'.

Nobody in the US cares about this anyway, who cares if Zuckerberg makes billions scamming people. People were brought into passivity by the same culture industry and the politicians gain from these guys, they're cash cows for the US. I don't see how things could get better.

I'm not exactly sure what you're saying here. Are you implying that secularism is the cause of counterfeit goods on Amazon? Or am I reading you wrong?

Secularism, changes in 'christianity' in the US. I'm not some christian nationalist but I do believe changes in values allowed Amazon to do this. Maybe I'm wrong and people will end up going against this in the long term. The 'christian' view of this behaviour didn't come from a vacuum. My biggest worry is the passivity/docile nature of people nowadays can't bring such change.

Looking at it through a religious lens is pretty narrow-minded. Secular people have values too. You're limiting your ability to understand the world around you.

I would reckon looking at these kinds of things through religious lenses is actually VERY useful.

I don't follow sportsball, but there are masses of population and massive institutions that are built upon for and on sportsball.

So, seeing large changes or shifts within sportsball can be useful in gleaning some sort of trend.

While, I don't fully follow the gp comment, I can see the other side of yours.

It's more like following astrology - entirely irrelevant to reality.

Your comment is entirely irrelevant to most of the human beings on this planet.

And yet, you took the time to type it out. And will even spend some time defending it, proposing it.

Narrow worldviews have utility to one, but don't encompass "reality" as such.

Some secular people have values, I don't think religious people are saints. Secular people however don't have a framework to 'force' others with supposed values to adhere to them. I don't believe it's narrow minded to believes changes in religion might have an effect on things, the way people follow their religion is influenced by external factors, don't see why it wouldn't be the other way around as well. Atheists are quite new we'll see what happens.

You are deeply mistaken as to roots of this culture difference. There many highly religious cultures which absolutely lack the "social agreement" framework. The real reason why "social agreement" countries exist is feudalism. Feudal structure of power was the second on this planet (after ancient Greece, but that culture had been exterminated) to allow bidirectional agreements between kings and wealthy nobles. The only countries which managed to preserve this tradition unbroken were European ones, NA colonized by the Europeans and Japan which had societal structure close enough to adopt this culture without big changes and who later transferred them to its own colonies in Korea and Taiwan. And that about all countries valuing "social agreement". This is not because of religion or lack of it, it because of the accident - not being conquered by a despotic empire in the middle ages.

> Atheists are quite new

What ever you're smoking, I'd like to try. A break from reality sounds nice right now.

Gallup polling says 1% of people in the US didn't believe in god in 1967, 17% in 2022. Of those 17% i'd imagine many believed at some point (or went to church/temple/...), these people don't really behave like a 'pure' atheist would. They're very much still influenced by the religious ideas they grew up in. So yes it's a rather new thing if you're thinking about society.

I think your problem is you don't seem to be aware of history before 1967 or society outside of the US. Your local community college might offer some courses in history and sociology.

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. (John Adams)

I agree with some of their sentiment but disagree that it is secularism specifically.

If anything, my observation has been that social media provides better avenues for exploitation by bad actors and, for lack of a better term, people unwilling to do 'self work'.

It used to be a lot harder to 'grift'; historically, a community would eventually suss out bad actors which leads to shunning/etc.

But, when your 'community' is an entire country or a large area of the planet, the signal/noise ratio changes along with the behavior of the bad actors.

As an example not directly related to Amazon, I've worked with more than one person who would be a decent programmer if they worked on their job skills as much as they worked on their job hopping skills; online job posting (at least for a while) made it way easier for someone to just hop from job to job collecting a paycheck before the 'well now they should be onboarded and productive' red line is crossed and they are found out.

I've seen it with more than one person that is happy to screw over multiple 'friends' because they just use the internet to find the right groups to make new friends [0].

I've seen it with acquaintances where they just keep burning through 'matches' on dating sites without any introspection as to their own toxic behavior[1].

And sure, in all these cases people bad actors can still get 'outed'. However the bad actors are also happy to be dishonest in their own messaging, which again messes with the SNR. They'll just try to drag you through the mud and drain your endurance fighting their lies if you try to speak up, and unless you've really got time to burn... everyone stays quiet.

And, well, society is worse as a result.

[0] - They'll even pick up new interests in the process, once they've sufficiently burned themselves in a given community.

[1] - My favorite example was two narcissists that -both- were looking to replace the other before they broke up with each other...

Not seeing the connection.

In "non-secular times" people as a whole were far less mobile, so they grew up and built connections around the same people, and any connections to the wider world were very low-bandwidth if they existed at all. So they trusted the people they were near because they were around them constantly, and also tended to resist change.

I think you are conflating religious values with how things were when people mostly lived among the same people for most of their lives and didn't have modern communication methods that brought the whole world (or an appearance thereof which is what modern social media is) to their face.

> The time of retailers being 'honest' is over.

First, I'm not sure it ever started. Second, this article is about moving towards honesty.

After years of scamming customers, amazon has finally seen the light and won't be prioritizing shareholder returns (which they're legally required to do). In reality hey're just trying to tone down the scamming they've been doing ever so slightly because it's hurting revenue. 100% sure it will just end up at 2019 or 2021 amazon scam levels, Some sort of 'scamming optimum' for amazon.

If you think it never started try going to some third world country and compare, their people are used to the bargaining/scamming but nobody cares. Things will end up the same here at some point.

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