Amazon's Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon's Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse

#61

Post by ikeboy » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 7:22 PM UTC

manyxcxi wrote: post #35

syshum wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will not always save you. If a company uses the "Fulfilled by Amazon" service they ship their stuff to amazon and it is co mingled with all of the other SKU's purporting to be the same item, including Amazons own stock

Exactly this. The article mentions that they basically take all the same products and put them together. So seller B's fake item may be sold as seller A's real item and seller A gets blamed for their fake stuff. It's gotten so bad with certain groups of items I don't even try. Sunglasses, handbags, all the usual stuff you'd expect. My anecdote: I like gold colored Ray-Ban aviators with a brown or dark polarized lens.…

Amazon keeps track of which seller's inventory it originally came from, so the right person will get in trouble if a fake is sent.

Re: Amazon's Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse

#62

Post by ikeboy » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 7:23 PM UTC

syshum wrote: post #57

WillPostForFood wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the frustration, you can easily end up buying from a chinese seller if you aren't playing attention. But I have a hard time understanding how you were fooled three times. https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B000EYP57K/ref=dp_ol... Buy from Amazon - the second choice. Pretty sure that is the default purchase option on the main page as well.

Clearly you do not understand how Amazon Warehouses work Just because you buy someing from Seller A, even if Seller A is Amazon LLC, you may not be getting stock from Seller A If I am A retailer selling SuperWidget 55, and I ship Amazon 100 Genuine SuperWidget's to store in their warehouse for amazon to ship to my customers (aka Amazon Fulfillment Service) . Then another competitor ship 100 Fake SuperWidgets to amazo…

You can choose whether to turn on comingling when using FBA.

Re: Amazon's Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse

#63

Post by ikeboy » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 7:38 PM UTC

epimetheus wrote: post #8

syshum wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will not always save you. If a company uses the "Fulfilled by Amazon" service they ship their stuff to amazon and it is co mingled with all of the other SKU's purporting to be the same item, including Amazons own stock

Co-mingling isn't set by default (or wasn't last I was selling a couple months ago), you have to select it, and it can be bad news for a seller (one seller got banned from amazon and had to pay to destroy or ship home 50k products because one of the items in the stack that got sold "by him" was counterfeit)

I assume you're referencing https://startupnation.com/start-your-business/plan-your-busi..., which I've seen referenced a couple times as an Amazon seller.

There are a couple of problems with his story.

First, Amazon denied it was due to comingling:

"I’m just calling to inform you that there were no other sellers of that item that were in the co-mingling program"

Second, he apparently didn't show up to the lawsuit and had a judgement by default. Never a good sign.

Third, he was moving hundreds of thousands of items, but couldn't afford a lawyer?

Fourth, he cites as evidence that his items were comingled the fact that his returns came from a different warehouse than he sent them to. As someone who regularly sends items to FBA warehouses, this is bullshit. Amazon sends your own inventory between their warehouses, and you can track this in reports. Often I send to warehouse A, and it immediately goes to my reserved inventory, and then it goes to another warehouse a few days later. Anyone who doesn't know this didn't invest enough time to learn about Amazon policies, and you should doubt their story.

Re: Amazon's Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse

#64

Post by superuser2 » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 7:45 PM UTC

carterehsmith wrote: post #56

blantonl wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their EC2 servers are pretty good quality.

This reminds of something I read - apparently, for whatever reason, not all EC2 instances of the same class perform the same. So, some large AWS customers (like Netflix) keep spawning instance, run some benchmarks on them, then if the instance is in top X% as far as performance goes, they keep it; otherwise they drop it. Which means that, what a regular customer gets, is an instance that someone (or multiple someones…

Do we have reason to believe low performance is an enduring property of the instance, or could it just be that instance performance varies over time (i.e. when neighbors are hungrier)?

Re: Amazon's Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse

#65

Post by ikeboy » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 7:49 PM UTC

stordoff wrote: post #37

jeffdavis wrote: post #19

This can be solved by requiring higher-risk merchants to put money in escrow for a while (maybe an initial amount plus some fraction of revenue). If they turn out to be selling counterfeits, amazon could use the money to set things right. Otherwise the merchant gets the money.

Don't Amazon already do this? IIRC from the few things I have sold on Amazon, I had to wait 2-4 weeks after an order for the money to be paid into my bank account.

Yes. For the first six months after you start selling there's a two week reserve (plus the standard settlement wait). Every time you have a significant increase in sales they'll apply a reserve and monitor your metrics before removing it.

Re: Amazon's Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse

#66

Post by ikeboy » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 7:50 PM UTC

davidf18 wrote: post #59

Firms should start using serial numbers for their products that can be verifiable on the web and in fact could be registered with the manufacturer. A totally different and important problem is counterfeit drugs. There are ways to battle counterfeit drugs.

Most items aren't expensive enough to be worth it.

Re: Amazon's Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse

#67

Post by dmritard96 » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 7:52 PM UTC

dmritard96 wrote: post #39

Its interesting how much sympathy is expected for these people who make a silly little product and have foreign competition, but would a reaction be similar if it was an Amazon Basics product?

Not sure I understand the downvoting here but fine. perhaps clarifying my question would help.

Today:

Brand 1 makes product and sells on Amazon. Files IP to try and prevent others from copying their idea.

Brand 2 (Chinese company) makes similar product and sells through amazon - results in headlines like - Amazon has a Chinese problem.

Brand 3 (Amazon Basics) - makes similar products and has Chinese supplier add logo to their generic product. Even though brand 1 has the same problem (arguably worse), because Amazon does it instead of a Chinese company it is seen as less problematic.

Re: Amazon's Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse

#68

Post by detaro » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 8:02 PM UTC

dmritard96 wrote: post #67

dmritard96 wrote: post #39

Its interesting how much sympathy is expected for these people who make a silly little product and have foreign competition, but would a reaction be similar if it was an Amazon Basics product?

Not sure I understand the downvoting here but fine. perhaps clarifying my question would help. Today: Brand 1 makes product and sells on Amazon. Files IP to try and prevent others from copying their idea. Brand 2 (Chinese company) makes similar product and sells through amazon - results in headlines like - Amazon has a Chinese problem. Brand 3 (Amazon Basics) - makes similar products and has Chinese supplier add logo…

Are there Amazon Basics products where IP is an issue? I only know them from USB chargers, cables, rechargeable batteries, …, stuff where there is little innovation.

Re: Amazon's Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse

#69

Post by techthroway443 » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 8:10 PM UTC

discardorama wrote: post #52

The biggest problem with Amazon reviews is that they'll let you post a review of something you never bought! Sure, they do add the "verified purchase" tag for things you bought; but for calculating the aggregate stats, etc. Amazon will cleverly ignore the fact that you could just be talking out your ass (or selling reviews). I find this very dirty on their part, and it's something that can be fixed with 1 line of cod…

This seems like the most sensible solution and would easily weed out 99% of these fake paid for reviews. Is there a way to filter ratings by verified purchasers?

Why don't they do this by default?

Re: Amazon's Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse

#70

Post by CamperBob2 » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 8:11 PM UTC

manyxcxi wrote: post #35

syshum wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will not always save you. If a company uses the "Fulfilled by Amazon" service they ship their stuff to amazon and it is co mingled with all of the other SKU's purporting to be the same item, including Amazons own stock

Exactly this. The article mentions that they basically take all the same products and put them together. So seller B's fake item may be sold as seller A's real item and seller A gets blamed for their fake stuff. It's gotten so bad with certain groups of items I don't even try. Sunglasses, handbags, all the usual stuff you'd expect. My anecdote: I like gold colored Ray-Ban aviators with a brown or dark polarized lens.…

My anecdote: I like gold colored Ray-Ban aviators with a brown or dark polarized lens. The two stores near me didn't have them in stock, I couldn't find my old pair and I was leaving for a week long motorcycle ride in two days. I ordered them up and immediately knew they were fake. They were too light, the nose pads weren't right, all the usual tells. I returned them 3 different times until I just cancelled.

The other possibility is that they weren't fake, just the result of Ray-Ban moving production to China. You could return them 300 times and you'd still get the same cost-reduced crap.