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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

#211

Post by sk5t »

AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #207
bonestamp2 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon isn't going to take this seriously until a major company gets burned and the FBI gets involved. Then Amazon will experience what every other company does that gets burned for selling counterfeit goods... the FBI will raid their warehouse and hold all the inventory as evidence until they complete their investigation. Like you said, Amazon doesn't seem concerned that they're selling counterfeit goods -- probably…

> hold all the inventory as evidence With the FBA situation, why would amazon even care? Amazon will just tell the seller, "X from your inventory was just sized by the FBI, talk to them if you want it back" The seller has no leverage against Amazon, Amazon is out no money, Amazon will just get another shipment of counterfeit widgets the next day.

Amazon might care when entire warehouses are locked down for investigation. It's systemic after all.

Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers

#212

Post by jessriedel »

jmcdiesel wrote: post #126
jessriedel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 3.7…

I'd rather have that data than not have it. But of course, it's Amazon's platform.

Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers

#213

Post by Buge »

emodendroket wrote: post #154
amsilprotag wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a great Bloomberg Decrypted podcast a couple weeks ago weighing the costs and benefits for a small town in offering a multi-million dollar subsidy for thousands of low-skill Amazon warehouse jobs. Is it really worth subsidizing at all when the government will have to fund various welfare programs to cover the difference between the ~$10.00/hr paid and a livable wage? But since towns compete and prestige is…

The New York Times also did a big piece showing that these deals were almost always bad ones. The thing is that politicians have a simply ideological commitment to not intervene more directly.

The politicians do intervene directly

>cities compete to offer the biggest tax

So it would be actually better if they did less intervening, by not offering tax breaks to Amazon.

Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers

#214

Post by double0jimb0 »

crazygringo wrote: post #114

Is there anyone here who can shed some light as to why ? It's impossible for me to believe that it's part of Amazon's strategy to encourage, or even allow, counterfeits -- it might be fine for a smaller company, but it appears to be doing real brand damage at this point. Yet Amazon shows no signs of stopping it -- this has been going on for years. Is it just a really hard problem for some reason that isn't obvious? (…

Manufacturers selling direct via ecommerce is a very new phenomenon (last 10 years). Before Amazon, there was an entrenched network of distributors and exclusive contracts in both directions of the supply chain. Amazon has busted this wide open.

It is important to understand that FBA largely pushes the administration and supply chain overhead down to small time individual resellers, utilizing their willingness to do free labor.

Amazon encouraged this behavior, gave blind eye to counterfeiters, and making ecommerce too hard to ignore for mfgs to compete on directly.

IP has never been efficient to enforce, old school exclusive/protective contracts masked this, but now the emperor has no clothes.

Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers

#215

Post by justinclift »

justinclift wrote: post #160

There used to be plenty of counterfeit Intel network cards on Amazon.co.uk (and .com). Unsure about other Amazon subdomains. After receiving a chinese knock off card instead of the real thing, I complained to Amazon. Even after rounds of communication with them, trying to alert them to the problem all they did was tell me to contact "Trading Standards" (the uk body). I've barely bought from Amazon since then, and I u…

In case it's interesting, this is what the counterfeit card looked like:

https://justinclift.fedorapeople.org/Counterfeit%20Intel%20c...

Obviously using Intel branding (there are other photo's in the same directory, mostly just other angles though).

Amazon didn't care.

Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers

#216

Post by notgood »

mdp wrote: post #176
tiglionabbit wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple does not sell any products through Amazon. All Apple products listed on Amazon are through third parties.

This isn't very clear when you see pages like this - https://www.amazon.com/Apple/b/ref=w_bl_hsx_s_wi_web_2528944... Also, some Apple products are shipped and sold by Amazon, not third parties - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00W5Q06VU/ref=s9_dcacsd_b... I'm surprised Apple hasn't taken any action against them for this.

Apple taking action against one of its biggest merchants in the US? you must be joking right?

Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers

#217

Post by mynameisvlad »

AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #207
bonestamp2 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon isn't going to take this seriously until a major company gets burned and the FBI gets involved. Then Amazon will experience what every other company does that gets burned for selling counterfeit goods... the FBI will raid their warehouse and hold all the inventory as evidence until they complete their investigation. Like you said, Amazon doesn't seem concerned that they're selling counterfeit goods -- probably…

> hold all the inventory as evidence With the FBA situation, why would amazon even care? Amazon will just tell the seller, "X from your inventory was just sized by the FBI, talk to them if you want it back" The seller has no leverage against Amazon, Amazon is out no money, Amazon will just get another shipment of counterfeit widgets the next day.

I believe FBA stock is comingled with other FBA and Amazon.com stock for the same SKU in the warehouse.

Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers

#218

Post by mynameisvlad »

mikeash wrote: post #184
Zigurd wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

1,000 jobs is about what the American economy creates every two hours. Politicians tout these deals because they know that most voters are clueless about the magnitudes involved.

You can't​ directly compare 1000 jobs in the entirety of the US and 1000 jobs in a small town with nothing else going on.

Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers

#219

Post by OneOneOneOne »

robotjosh wrote: post #19
Lasher wrote: post #4

I purchased Quickbooks Pro 2017 (PC) on Amazon last week, said it was "sold by Intuit" so wasn't even supposed to be an FBA (fulfilled by Amazon). Figured if it costs no more I might as well get the physical disk. What showed up was a DVD case with a very clearly photocopied cover for a Mac version with a Verbatim CDR inside and a hacked version of the software. Amazon processed the refund just fine but didn't seem p…

I bought a phone battery on amazon. Looked legit, was the top result for my phone. It was counterfeit and wouldn't work. I don't even know how to get a battery because the phone stores didn't have it anymore. Can't trust amazon.

Try ebay. They seem to take negative feedback more seriously.

Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers

#220

Post by twhb »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #72
Lasher wrote: post #4

I purchased Quickbooks Pro 2017 (PC) on Amazon last week, said it was "sold by Intuit" so wasn't even supposed to be an FBA (fulfilled by Amazon). Figured if it costs no more I might as well get the physical disk. What showed up was a DVD case with a very clearly photocopied cover for a Mac version with a Verbatim CDR inside and a hacked version of the software. Amazon processed the refund just fine but didn't seem p…

Amazon isn't going to take this seriously until a major company gets burned and the FBI gets involved. Then Amazon will experience what every other company does that gets burned for selling counterfeit goods... the FBI will raid their warehouse and hold all the inventory as evidence until they complete their investigation. Like you said, Amazon doesn't seem concerned that they're selling counterfeit goods -- probably…

I am sure that other significant business losses will also cause Amazon to take action, like understanding how many sales they're losing for lack of trust. So I ask everybody reading this: next time you get ripped off, make sure your contact understands that you aren't just returning the product, you are re-purchasing it elsewhere because you can no longer trust Amazon with this.
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