If I get one more bullshit Apple magsafe charger I am cancelling my amazon account.
Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers
261–270 of 364 posts
Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's tens of millions of dollars in salaries injected into the local economy from one employer, not to mention the other additions like local taxes and utility spending. 1000 jobs is significant.
Wait, WHAT? The average Amazon warehouse worker makes $13/hr. That's ~$27,000/yr BEFORE taxes. In other words: any employee making that salary and actually trying to raise a family is collecting more from the government than they're paying in. They aren't contributing anything to the local economy, they're draining it just like Walmart.
How does an Amazon warehouse drain money from a local economy? Purchases at Wal-mart export your money outside of a local economy, but the presence of an Amazon warehouse doesn't really change the number of purchases you'll be making at Amazon in your town.
Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
Correct to not comingle your stuff with others costs extra. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13932231
And that's where I think Amazon open themselves up to fraud charges. They should never comingle goods under any circumstances, and they certainly shouldn't be deriving revenue from doing so. Amazon seems to be acting as a counterfeit goods launderer.
They like commingling because it allows them to ship goods faster. Your product ships from the closest wearhouse.
Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers
#264I 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…
Can't the review system help deal with this problem? I always check reviews of the product and vendor to make sure it's legit. Only a few could get burned before the vendor is flagged as a counterfeiter which would stop further purchases. That should reduce the amount of money you could make scamming people and make it a less viable criminal business. Amazon also seems diligent in refunding people as well. So the sol…
It's done. Reviews for both products and sellers already exist.
Commingling inventory entirely muddles things.
It's not always possible to tell you received a counterfeit, especially if you were not expecting it as a possibility.
Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers
#265Is 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? (…
>Shady practices don't seem like their thing at all.
Ummmm... Is this sarcasm? They are so shady "Amazon controversies" has its own Wikipedia page!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com_controversies
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...
Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Amazon is a powerful company with friends in high places.
Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't even buy from any third party sellers, including fulfilled by Amazon, for this reason. Amazons response has been wholly inadequate thus far. Brands are destroyed because people get counterfeit crap and review the entire product/brand. Why can't Amazon show the merchant used for every review and let people aggregate the reviews of each product by the merchant and product? Right now you have to check the overal…
> I don't even buy from any third party sellers, including fulfilled by Amazon, for this reason. Except, according from the information in the article, this doesn't matter: > Shipped and sold by Amazon.com means that the product is shipped and sold by Amazon Retail (via Vendor Central or Vendor Express) directly. Basically, the manufacturer sends product to Amazon.com at a set price through a traditional PO process.…
You're right, but that would be easy to fix for Amazon: don't let new vendors commingle.
New vendors should have a probation period of, say, a year, where they can only sell their own inventory (through FBA if they so choose, of course); then the reviews would reflect their real quality.
Amazon is extremely strict on vendor identity: you can't have multiple accounts tied to the same business or bank account or credit card -- but they don't mind if you sell utter crap or counterfeit goods. That's strange.
Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers
#268Earlier 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…
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.
As someone else here pointed out, most people don't realize they're getting counterfeit items.
Anecdotally, most of the people I've spoken to regarding this haven't even considered that something they get from Amazon might be counterfeit. Many don't really understand the 3rd-party seller system, Fulfilled by Amazon, etc.
You think Amazon is clueless? They're not. They know they're shipping counterfeits. They've done the math, and it's making them money.
I don't think we'll see a significant change unless there's a lot more bad publicity, or the government gets involved.
Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
Try buying any Apple accessories. I wanted to buy the genuine Apple headphones, but it's absolutely impossible to on Amazon. "Sold by Apple" product shows up from a seller in Boston, clearly counterfeit. Report it to Amazon and they suggest mailing it back for a refund. Zero concern that the seller is labeling their goods as genuine Apple and then sending knock-offs. Prior to this I got a set of grey market Gillette…
Amazon gets those reports all the time, and they have very low-skill people reviewing them. FBA sellers have many horror stories in the opposite direction: they're falsely reported as counterfeit and they don't commingle, but some Amazon lackey is just clicking through the cases and assuming that suspensions are justified, probably without even reading them. The long and short is that Amazon is not popular with anyon…
I think the problem is, Amazon is still growing like crazy, so any attrition due to bad products is drowned in the sea of new customers.
Eventually that will change, but it could take a long time.
Re: Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers
#270At their growth rate, they can afford to have a small fraction of counterfeit items. The costs to Amazon are minuscule. However, they could and should do more to prevent it.