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Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers

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Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers

#121

Post by rwmj »

arcticbull wrote: post #85
nagvx wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They can't keep counterfeits off (I just recently got a 'samsung' battery that would only charge to 80%), Are you sure that it is counterfeit? 80% is a common charging cutoff point for Li-ion batteries to minimise wear-and-tear. Usually it is enforced in software.

They're shipped at 60%, though any charge cap would still be reported as 100% by the logic in the battery. I know my MacBook doesn't say 80%: Full! ;)

But my Thinkpad does say 80% full, because I've (deliberately) capped the battery charging at 80% to prolong the life of the battery.

Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers

#122

Post by Zigurd »

tw04 wrote: post #101
emodendroket wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is probably a calculation that the feds will be reticent to do that to an Amazon warehouse as they're generally major employers in the areas they're built in.

I guess I'm curious how you came to the conclusion they're major employers where their warehouses are. As far as I can tell each warehouse is about 1,000 full-time jobs. If I look at a list of warehouse locations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Amazon.com_locations They're pretty much universally a rounding error for total population and jobs in their respective metro areas.

1,000 full time employees is pretty big these days. The highly touted Carrier deal amounted to maybe 700 jobs. Elizabeth Warren made an announcement about the big new Amazon distribution center in Fall River. It's supposedly Amazon's biggest, and I recall it was about 1,000 jobs. So they are doing more with the same headcount.

Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers

#123

Post by rwmj »

Jb611 wrote: post #47
emu wrote: post #13

It's trivially easy to run into counterfeit products on Amazon. Here's an example I pulled up in 2 minutes of searching: https://www.amazon.com/Apple-A1385-Adapter-Charger-iPhone/dp... I see two sellers offering an iPhone charger, ostensibly genuine and new, as low as USD 3.19. Compare with the Apple listing for the same item for USD 19: http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD810LL/A/apple-5w-usb-pow... There is no way…

This is actually a different scam that's been going on recently. These "just launched" sellers show up for about 1/10th the actual price and when you buy from them they just won't ever send anything. Their strategy is to delay as long as possible and hope Amazon gives them their first payment before they finally get shut down. I sell on Amazon via FBA and the counterfeiting and scamming is unbelievable. I'm glad to s…

Even better than that, some of them offer products at the normal price and then don't send anything, while dragging out the complaints process as long as possible.

Had two of them in the past 3 months ...

Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers

#124

Post by ikeboy »

home_boi wrote: post #99

Have you found any alternative to online shopping? I generally just roll the dice with Amazon on anything that is not food or electronics. The convenience trumps the money wasted on buying a bad product. For electronics, I've looked at Walmart and Jet.com which have shady 3rd party sellers that are worse than Amazon sellers. I believe BestBuy gets all its inventory from authorized sellers so I trust them, although th…

Food is not commingled, or anything with expiration dates. Buy from a seller with good feedback and you'll be fine.

Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers

#125

Post by cmrdporcupine »

Quality control in their catalog has gone down generally. It used to be if you searched for something Amazon was almost always the best deal. Now it's a wild west of people just throwing prices against the wall and seeing what sticks.

The worst is it's actually getting harder to filter things to make it return only things that are actually sold by Amazon itself to avoid scammers. At least in Canada it seems they've removed options to filter it down to Amazon as the seller. Basically have to guess-work it by filtering it to "prime" or "free shipping."

Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers

#126

Post by jmcdiesel »

jessriedel wrote: post #36
jmcdiesel wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the rules are to not include pricing information and you include pricing information, how do you possibly get upset over it being taken down? Reviews are long-lived, that pricing info is probably out of date in a few months, but the review will live on for a while, and lead to confusion (Especially since, I assume your reviews were well written, giving them more credibility, and thus leading to more confusion) The…

Reviews clearly have to take the price into account. You expect different thing from a $40 grill and a $300 one. If Amazon doesn't want explicit price info displayed and they make that clear, fine, but a review can't be accurate under arbitrary price movements.

Its one think to differentiate between $40 and $300, of course.

Its another to list actual prices of various products side by side in a comparison chart, that data becomes stale real fast and is factually inaccurate at that point.

There is a vast difference in saying "For $500 I expected more" and saying "Product a works out to $4 per plumbus and product b works out to $3.50 per plumbus and product c works out to 3.75 per plumbus" ... that data becomes factually misleading as soon as one of those prices changes.

Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers

#127

Post by emodendroket »

rincebrain wrote: post #100
tlrobinson wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This inventory is commingled with all other FBA inventory"

Yes, I think the person's assertion was that FBA inventory != "Shipped and sold by Amazon" inventory.

That how I understood what the article was saying, yes.

Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers

#128

Post by emodendroket »

Spooky23 wrote: post #96
emodendroket wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that means that buying direct from Amazon can get you third party inventory.

It does. Many commodities are comingled. That's a big reason why DVD and Software piracy is a huge issue.

It sounded like they were saying that "fulfilled by Amazon" inventory is mingled with other inventory in the same category, rather than that it is mingled with "sold and shipped by Amazon" stock.

Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers

#129

Post by emodendroket »

Zigurd wrote: post #122
tw04 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I'm curious how you came to the conclusion they're major employers where their warehouses are. As far as I can tell each warehouse is about 1,000 full-time jobs. If I look at a list of warehouse locations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Amazon.com_locations They're pretty much universally a rounding error for total population and jobs in their respective metro areas.

1,000 full time employees is pretty big these days. The highly touted Carrier deal amounted to maybe 700 jobs. Elizabeth Warren made an announcement about the big new Amazon distribution center in Fall River. It's supposedly Amazon's biggest, and I recall it was about 1,000 jobs. So they are doing more with the same headcount.

Fall River is also extremely economically depressed. I thought that was a typical case but the list of locations suggests maybe that's not entirely true.

Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers

#130

Post by usrusr »

jghn wrote: post #27
phil21 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that it can say "Sold by Amazon" and still be co-mingled stock some third party seller tossed the same SKU on. So there is no way to even know who the actual seller is. Amazon could end this particular fraud literally overnight by no longer co-mingling, but I suspect that would be wildly expensive for them to do. Your method is fine for actual accounts selling scammy things - the problem is when those…

Right. My bet has been that they've done the math and handling returns works out to be cheaper for them than stopping the comingling issue. Another aspect is that it's not always obvious that you wound up with a counterfeit. I've had products where the longevity was not what I expected and when I look more closely it was in fact a fake. However by that point it isn't worth returning.

My bet is that they do it for speed. "Hey, an identical item exists in a warehouse much closer, fast delivery means happy customer, what could possibly go wrong." That does not have to the explanation, but the commingling could be the logical outcome of tying the bonus of a really successful person to a single metric.
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