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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

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wanted to make the same comment, but for some reason assumed I was an outlier. I badly want to see only Prime and only sold by Amazon directly. Fulfilled by Amazon might be a OK alternative if I have a hard time finding something. Otherwise I am happy to pay extra to get it from Amazon itself. To me the "market place" aspect has just been undermining their brand and has been a nuisance. First because you hadn't bee…

> If I buy from Amazon, I want to buy from Amazon, not some place I've never heard of. If I book Lufthansa I want to fly Lufthansa and not Delta or American. Exactly. So the mystifying thing is: why do they keep making it harder and harder for the consumers to do so? My thought: the have no fucking clue. They are not A/B tester ninjas, but rather clueless idiots.

They do it because it makes them tons of money.

Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers

#192
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…

> There is no way you can be selling the genuine product at that price and be making a profit. Am I missing where the ad says it's a genuine Apple product? I see that it says "compatible", but that's clearly a fake to me. Not that it wouldn't trick some people, but I can't really blame Amazon for that. It's a knockoff. I think if someone goes onto Amazon and buys a phone charger for half the price of a genuine charge…

The name of the product says "Apple" and includes an Apple model number. I see nothing, other than the shady price, to indicate it's not genuine.

Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers

#193

I private label. Amazon's respose process for this is completely broken. Right now we are having several entities jump on; as part of our process for getting counterfieters off of our listibgs we make test buys; probably 10 buyers have sent exactly the same email, including a weird space between a word and a comma. Want to know how truly bad it is? Look at this listing: https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00DVKJ…

What conclusion should be drawn from that listing?

Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers

#194
post #119
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing happened to me. The funny thing is that the Samsung website sends you an Amazon seller. I noticed this the second time I needed a battery. The batteries look identical. The only difference was that the counterfeit battery only lasted a couple months.

While I agree that buying phone batteries is a lottery on Amazon, in this case you might have got a genuine battery which had simply been in storage for a long time (which applies to batteries for any phone that's out of production). Li-Ion batteries won't necessarily work after being stored unless they were charged to a specific level and stored in a very specific way. And you have to go back and check the charge an…

Mine actually was counterfeit. I could tell because the phone comes up with the message "please replace your unauthorized battery with a genuine battery" and the phone wouldn't work. My phone is at that point where it starts working slow for no reason despite all the free memory. I've been using samsung phones since 2005 but now I'm never getting another samsung.

Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just fakes. I bought a new, high-end, fulfilled-by-amazon kitchen aid mixer for my ex-girlfriend. It looked legitimate, but it had clearly been re-boxed at some point, was missing parts, and had grease all over it. IIRC, it wasn't sealed in a normal way either. Amazon accepted our return, and like you I just went straight to the manufacturer to make the purchase again.

What is Amazon thinking? They're slowly destroying their brand.

I pretty much don't buy anything expensive from Amazon anymore. I've been slowly going back to B&M or ordering direct from manufacturers. Even if you do get the correct item, I've had enough things damaged during shipping that I'd rather just buy the thing from a store and drive it home myself. I still buy from Amazon, but only cheap and non-fragile things.

Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers

#197
post #12

I've had new several hard drives turn out to be in fact refurbished (and in one case quickly failed). I got refunds but nothing beyond that, even with in one case offering evidence that this looked like deliberate fraud due to half-cleared SMART stats.

God, I had a Seagate drive that failed a few years ago, they lost track of how long the warranty was supposed to be (5 years) and I had to fight with them to get them to replace it, then they sent me a refurb that had bad sectors, then they sent me a second refurb with more bad sectors after I asked for a brand new drive…

Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers

#198

I bought some Pokemon bracelets (yeah .. I know) for some family members. I have a big suspicion that they are counterfeit. The boxes had asian writing on them, and it did not seem Nintendo-like. The device itself has horrible connectivity with the game and phones - almost unusable. I'm pretty ticked off. As a consumer, I had no good way to verify that the device is not counterfeit. For similar situations, I actually…

It's 100% counterfeit. Never buy Japanese game/anime merchandise on Amazon.com (Amazon.co.jp is probably ok) or Ebay. There are specialized Japan-based stores like AmiAmi which never sell counterfeits.

Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers

#199
post #151

We canceled prime for this very problem.

I also canceled my prime due to this and them intentionally making it hard to purchase only ships and sold by Amazon.com items. That and commingling their inventory means I have more to worry about, and I'd rather just use Costco/Target/Walmart/Apple for whatever I need, or just go straight to manufacturer's website.
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