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Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

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Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#171

Post by dredmorbius »

riskable wrote: post #66
losteverything wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious. Did you ever send an order to China? So if I make a thing that can't be digitally copied easily I'm safe???

Bespoke everything is the future of retail goods. Imagine if every product on Amazon was custom made for you. A Chinese seller could do it sure but you might get suspicious of the 4-6 week shipping time and it would be blatantly obvious where it was coming from. With the cost of 3D printing, CNC, and laser engraving dropping faster than a Miami facelift it's inevitable.

I think you're vastly underestimating the economies of mass production and the complexity costs of even templated or made-to-measure items.

Yes, you'll see some degree of custom manufacture, as exists now in furniture and a few other areas. But in too many cases, the costs of mass production and available efficiencies are simply too great to compete with.

Apple's devices, as an example, are not custom-specified, but are offered from an exceptionally small number of variants.

Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#172

Post by revelation »

herojc wrote: post #154
revelation wrote: post #109

I have no idea how Amazon keeps getting away with selling counterfeit and plain unsafe (anything cheap chinese plugged into a socket) products. No judge would accept that somehow a 3rd party is to blame when 1) I'm paying Amazon, 2) Amazon delivers the item from an Amazon warehouse and 3) Amazon takes the return and reimburses me. At no point in this transaction is a 3rd party involved. Clearly they should be liable…

Well inventory Amazon retail imports can be commingled with 3rd party inventory. So just because you bought from Amazon doesn't necessarily mean that it was inbounded by Amazon. It's not an excuse for Amazon, but commingling is a double edged sword and the bad part of it is an extremely difficult problem to solve, yet the benefits are too strong for them to consider turning it off.

I understand how it works. I don't see why this would extend any legal benefits to Amazon in disclaiming responsibility for the faulty and dangerous products they sell and deliver.

Commingle all you want, if you are taking the money & shipping the product, you're legally responsible in ensuring that it is up to code. Any physical retail shop would have been closed already, why is the government not doing its job?

Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#173

Post by foota »

s917 wrote: post #121
foota wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're in a goldfish I think you're already out of luck

I think he's trying to say "you can't teach a goldmine to ride a bicycle". Edit: Humorless. Sad.

I didn't downvote, but I just don't think people understood the joke (I for one didn't)

Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#174

Post by parametrek »

HoppedUpMenace wrote: post #7

Its ridiculous the amount of energy and effort you have to waste in order to find a product that you don't suspect as being counterfeit on Amazon these days. The other day, I wanted a super bright flashlight that ran on AAA batteries and was of decent quality and price. I had to pour over the millions of listed flashlights, most looking physically identical, with the exception of the brand name printed on the flashli…

> The other day, I wanted a super bright flashlight that ran on AAA batteries and was of decent quality and price. I had to pour over the millions of listed flashlights, most looking physically identical, with the exception of the brand name printed on the flashlight itself. Then I read about how these flashlights are all mass produced by the same manufacturer and re-branded

You need a trusted third party to collate all of the information about a product category and then filter out all the crap. I have conveniently already done this for flashlights:

http://flashlights.parametrek.com/index.html

(Yes, I run it and yes it uses affiliate links.)

Also, AAA cells are terrible for flashlights. A single AAA cells is okay for a compact penlight but many use 3xAAA cells and 95% of the time 3xAAA lights have the worst engineering of any flashlight.

Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#175

Post by cwkoss »

Animats wrote: post #40

There's no way to report a counterfeit on Amazon unless you're claiming a violation of your own IP rights. I've complained about fake solid state relays. There are lots of fake "Fotek" solid state relays. UL has noticed.[1] The fakes are usually marked with much higher amp ratings than they can handle safely. Look at this "100 amp" fake "Fotek" relay on Amazon.[2] Fotek doesn't even make a 100 amp relay in that packa…

Seems like a smart lawyer could make a good chunk of change from Amazon if they can reliably acquire counterfeit goods and sue on behalf of the brand.

http://apps.americanbar.org/litigation/committees/intellectu...

Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#176

Post by billpollock »

dfc wrote: post #111

We recently ordered four or five Oreilly Hadoop books from amazon and the printing was horrible. The fonts look terrible and simple things like grey backgrounds are not uniform. The book is still legible but the printing gets distracting at times. I thought it was an indication that Oreilly had lowered there standards.

We generally avoid POD. Quality doesn't always meet our standards, and we're picky.

Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#177

Post by billpollock »

jojohack wrote: post #145

Wow, I wonder how long this has been an issue. I recall buying tech books a few years back and noticing that the book quality was pretty low. At the time, I thought it was a general manufacturing decision to save money.

Not ours I hope!

Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#178

Post by themagician »

blobbers wrote: post #63

Counterfeits in comingled inventory has become pretty common on Amazon these days. "Fulfillment by amazon" has led them to comingle inventories on common products, meaning every seller's product gets jumbled together. I've gotten counterfeit huggies diapers from amazon (invalid serial number for huggies 'points' and different build quality), Mach 3 razor blades, GE MWF Water filters, even a counterfeit baby bath. The…

I've been running into his problem personally. About 25% of our business now is done via Amazon. We sell to Amazon retail directly and also use Amazon FBA internationally.

The problem is that "other sellers" keep beating us to the buy box for certain SKUs. Amazon keeps asking us to sell to them for a lower price. The funny thing is, Amazon already gets the lowest price, by far, compared to all other distributors. I know, we are the manufacturer. Some of the SKUs we don't even sell to anyone else anymore but Amazon, yet still these random businesses seem to be selling our products. Some are fake, some are watered down. Some are… I don't even know. I have a lot of trouble figuring out who these people are and how they are getting our products or look-a-likes at prices low enough to resell, since we don't sell them to anyone at these prices!

Amazon needs to double down on the vetting they do for new sellers.

Starting in 2018 I'm going to re-SKU/UPC every product we sell to Amazon and start closing the listings on old corrupt ones. It's going to be a pain in the ass, but I see no other choice. We have about 300 SKUs and trying to manage them all and fend off all these shitty sellers is becoming a huge burden on me and our brand.

And ideally, actually, I'd like Amazon to offer a feature that essentially "bans" third parties from listing a SKU at the manufacturers request. I'd gladly pay to few thousand a year to ensure that the only one that can sell our products is Amazon themselves.

Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#179

Post by tadblarney »

Animats wrote: post #40

There's no way to report a counterfeit on Amazon unless you're claiming a violation of your own IP rights. I've complained about fake solid state relays. There are lots of fake "Fotek" solid state relays. UL has noticed.[1] The fakes are usually marked with much higher amp ratings than they can handle safely. Look at this "100 amp" fake "Fotek" relay on Amazon.[2] Fotek doesn't even make a 100 amp relay in that packa…

"There's no way to report a counterfeit on Amazon unless you're claiming a violation of your own IP rights"

I feel this is problematic - one would think that AMZN would want to at least have a 'heads up' with respect to these issues very quickly to look into them, you know, to protect their brand?

Because if Amazon is selling you 'XYZ' and it's a knock-off - they are part of the crime.

Rather odd.

Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#180

Post by jmspring »

HoppedUpMenace wrote: post #7

Its ridiculous the amount of energy and effort you have to waste in order to find a product that you don't suspect as being counterfeit on Amazon these days. The other day, I wanted a super bright flashlight that ran on AAA batteries and was of decent quality and price. I had to pour over the millions of listed flashlights, most looking physically identical, with the exception of the brand name printed on the flashli…

If we are at the point where Amazon is being compared to quality at Fry's, things have gotten really bad. Fry's has so many issues with returns, etc. and just slapping them back on the shelf.
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