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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

#271

Post by coldpie »

timthelion wrote: post #102
ams6110 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder about that too. How do I really know that a pair of Levi jeans at Target is genuine?

It doesn't matter. Levi's these days are trash. Bought a pair at the official Levi's store which lasted all of 6 months before there were holes in the pockets. (to replace a 5 year old pair that was fine except I was too fat for it.)

If you're still on the market for cheapo whatever jeans, I've had good wear time on jeans from Round House. I've seen others recommend Pointer brand from LC King, though I don't have personal experience with them. Both USA-made.

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

#272

Post by ceejayoz »

ikeboy wrote: post #201
themagician wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 k…

They do a lot of brand gating, but not on demand like you'd want. I don't think you'll gain much from re-skuing products. You'll lose all your reviews and ranking, and at best will get a few months until the counterfeiters find the new listings. Also, you can't fully close the old ones, so people will still sell on them, there will be multiple search results, bad customer experience, etc. The better approach is to go…

> Might take some time, but once done they'll be gone forever.

Won't they just open a new account? I doubt a new identity and bank account are major obstacles to counterfeiters.

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

#273

Post by suvelx »

ams6110 wrote: post #94
zn44 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be too confident about quality or authenticity of products in brick and mortar retail spots

I wonder about that too. How do I really know that a pair of Levi jeans at Target is genuine?

They're almost guaranteed to be 'genuine' Levis.

But you can't be sure Target hasn't asked Levis to counterfeit themselves.

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

#274

Post by ikeboy »

ceejayoz wrote: post #272
ikeboy wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do a lot of brand gating, but not on demand like you'd want. I don't think you'll gain much from re-skuing products. You'll lose all your reviews and ranking, and at best will get a few months until the counterfeiters find the new listings. Also, you can't fully close the old ones, so people will still sell on them, there will be multiple search results, bad customer experience, etc. The better approach is to go…

> Might take some time, but once done they'll be gone forever. Won't they just open a new account? I doubt a new identity and bank account are major obstacles to counterfeiters.

It takes a few months before a new account can get the buy box. You can get a seller shut down quicker than that.

And it may be possible to get new identity and accounts, but they aren't easy or unlimited. Scammers will go after the lowest hanging fruit.

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

#275

Post by nommm-nommm »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #246
dawnerd wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I dislike is when something has prime listed on it and when you look closer it's not even sold or shipped by amazon. Just some company that "meets the requirements". I use amazon's prime because their warehouse in 30 minutes away and I get stuff same day or overnight.

I used to get my stuff that quickly, now they just wait a day or two before shipping it so it's still 2 days before it arrives.

Yeah, they've been doing this forever with super saver shipping. They literally will not ship a product for 5 days if a warehouse is close.

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

#276

Post by arjie »

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…

Thanks for FakeSpot. I used to use the "honest and unbiased" check. If your review is "honest and unbiased" you're probably reviewing a bullshit product.

Ah ha, it looks like FakeSpot is fooled when Amazon removes the bad reviews. Have a look at https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B010NEW9JM/. That's obviously some low quality bullshit. Find in page for 'honest' and it has the trigger phrase.

> I received this set at a discounted price in exchange for my fair and honest review.

> My wife and I review products that we receive either free or at a discount in exchange for our honest and unbiased reviews.

> Disclaimer: I received this product at a discount in exchange for my honest/unbiased review.

I wish we could kill these products and sellers with some secondary review process.

Also, Amazon should understand that we generally don't want these reviews removed because that effectively creates an antibiotic-resistant version of fake reviewers. Much better to leave them in so I can killfile them.

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

#277

Post by jtbayly »

SantiagoDraco wrote: post #265
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…

Inventories are not "commingled" they are completely separate in the warehouses. Just because multiple vendors sell the same product and use the "fulfilled by Amazon" service to fool you doesn't mean Amazon is accidentally sending you an item from the wrong seller. If you purchase from Amazon and don't check that it's "shipped and sold by Amazon" then you are asking for trouble. The biggest issue is that Amazon has a…

Mostly wrong. Amazon does not put all the inventory together into one bin, but they explicitly tell FBA sellers that they will ship a different seller's product with the same SKU if it is in a warehouse closer to the buyer, for example. Then, they make up for this by taking one of your product and putting it in the other seller's inventory. Thus inventory is commingled, both at shipment time and then in the inventory to make up for any commingling that happened at shipment time.

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

#278

Post by dfc »

joshvm wrote: post #169
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.

I have a copy of Programming Robots with ROS in front of me which I was on the verge of sending back to Amazon. The text printing is fuzzy and images have noticeable banding. You can't read text in the screenshots it's so bad. It's like the book was printed in draft mode. I bought it a month ago. Here's an example: https://imgur.com/X6KwHNm and another: https://imgur.com/nTflKSL I bought it on sale, but this retails…

I uploaded examples from three of the four books:

http://imgur.com/a/SKEVT

It is sad because this is not how my older Oreilly books are printed.

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

#279

Post by jrs235 »

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…

We recently ordered 6 iPad mini's fulfilled by amazon. They were shrink wrapped and we use them as promo contest swag. After we had sent one out to a customer/prospect they called us and told us they received a piece of plastic that looked looked an ipad mini. Like a prop piece. We immediately opened the remaining 5 we had in our office and they were all fakes. We can no longer trust fulfilled by Amazon which greatly reduces the value of their Prime membership and "free" shipping. The good thing is that we were allowed to return them and get full credit. The down side is we will have to rip the shrink wrap and physically check these out from now on, regardless of who we buy them from before sending them out... which kind of sucks because now the box is opened. If the items were co-mingled who knows how/where they got in the supply. If the seller wasn't doing co-mingled and was doing drop shipping and wasn't actually intentionally trying to screw people... well they got screwed by someone.

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

#280

Post by nommm-nommm »

parametrek wrote: post #174
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…

"trusted third party"

Who can guarantee the third party is either trusted or impartial?

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