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Amazon Caught Selling Counterfeits of Publisher’s Computer Books–Again

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131–140 of 172 posts

Re: Amazon Caught Selling Counterfeits of Publisher’s Computer Books–Again

#131

How isnt Amazon liable for this / sued? If Walmart did the same there would be various lawsuits

They are probably liable, but it's also not intentional behavior which means less damages - so it's not worth being the first person to sue them. This is just Amazon being sloppy and not having any reasonable checks or controls on their print service.

After they've been officially warned, you may be able to make a good case that it's "intentional"

Re: Amazon Caught Selling Counterfeits of Publisher’s Computer Books–Again

#132
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I find ebay to be much better than Amazon for buying. I can read the seller reviews and I know they're generally legitimate. Particularly the negative reviews, which is all I need to see if I want to know what the seller does wrong, if anything. I can look up a seller to make sure he's sourced an item properly, for example, newegg sells SD cards on ebay so I know newegg is sourcing SD cards properly and I'm…

The best part about Ebay is that if you do get a fraud item and can prove it Ebay simply refunds you and you can keep whatever you got since it wasn't what was advertised. Amazon to the best of my knowledge does make you return items for refunds even when they are frauds.

in some jurisdictions it is required to destroy these frauds

Re: Amazon Caught Selling Counterfeits of Publisher’s Computer Books–Again

#133
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I purchased some wire cutters a year or two ago from Amazon and they were fine for the speaker wire I was cutting... Until this year when I tried to cut a guitar string with them and found a perfect guitar gauged hole in my snips every time I tried to cut. I was irate, having paid $10 for these. So I go online to leave a review and warn people off... only to find that the seller "no longer existed". They absolutely d…

inexpensive wire snips are usually only good for cutting copper wire, though. they aren't made of hardened steel, which is necessary for cutting the steel guitar strings.

Yep, came here to say the same thing. "Hard wire cutter" is a tool you need to own apart from "wire cutter."

If you ever try to cut a spring, you will get the same issue.

Re: Amazon Caught Selling Counterfeits of Publisher’s Computer Books–Again

#134
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an implication that you're defrauding the person buying the counterfeit item. That's not true here; the person being "defrauded" is the copyright owner.

The buyer purchased a book that claims to be, and is marketed as, a No Starch Press book. No Starch Press books are known for their physical quality and their lay-flat binding. These books were lower quality and did not have a lay-flat binding. How is that not defrauding the buyer?

You are right for the cases where the buyer cares about the quality of the book. But most of the time we only care about the words inside the book.

Re: Amazon Caught Selling Counterfeits of Publisher’s Computer Books–Again

#135
post #83

I am currently caught up in an amazon scam. The third party seller listed items, put in fake shipping, item never arrived. It's been over a month and I am still fighting amazon to get my money back. They have an "A to Z guarantee" which doesn't work, at least not in my case. The seller didn't even need to sell counterfeit items without running off with my money. Amazon customer support has no idea what to do since th…

I’ve never had success with “A to Z” refunds, to the point it seems designed not to work — and instead, actively use Amazon’s brand loyalty to enable fraud. I wonder, was my trust as a customer who spends thousands of dollars a year ever worth more than $20 to Amazon? Because they sure were quick enough to throw it away over $20, when one of their business partners defrauded me via their website. (PS — if you work at…

Its ironic as well because the customer service agents kept saying if this was an Amazon purchase they would have refunded me. Kept reassuring me that this wouldn't have been an issue if you purchased with us, we would have taken care of this. But I kept telling them this still IS Amazon. They just deflected like it has nothing to do with them.

Re: Amazon Caught Selling Counterfeits of Publisher’s Computer Books–Again

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is partly why business is done on the golf course. Plausible deniability is quite lucrative.

> This is partly why business is done on the golf course. What do you mean?

Conversations on a golf course, or over dinner or drinks aren't recorded and auditable so everyone has plausible deniability over what was said or instructed.

Re: Amazon Caught Selling Counterfeits of Publisher’s Computer Books–Again

#137
post #4

The counterfeit and review manipulation issues have rendered Amazon unpleasant enough for me that buying local is something I've started to enjoy again. I trust the merchant to have performed some kind of vetting for merchandise sold on premise, and the price is often good or (interestingly enough) even better than on Amazon. Often enough local is still more expensive, but it beats browsing Amazon for an hour, siftin…

I purchased some wire cutters a year or two ago from Amazon and they were fine for the speaker wire I was cutting... Until this year when I tried to cut a guitar string with them and found a perfect guitar gauged hole in my snips every time I tried to cut. I was irate, having paid $10 for these. So I go online to leave a review and warn people off... only to find that the seller "no longer existed". They absolutely d…

A good pair of dikes starts at about $80 and goes up from there. Don't use them to cut anything but copper wire. :)

Re: Amazon Caught Selling Counterfeits of Publisher’s Computer Books–Again

#138
post #26

Totally, this. As a case in point, my "Digital Image Processing and Analysis: Human and Computer Vision Applications with CVIPtools, Second Edition" text book stated right on the cover that the book was "Not for sale in the US" (or something to that effect). Seemed odd, then I read the intro in which the author was excited that he finally convinced the publisher to print in color. My book was not in color (super grea…

Your situation has nothing to do with Amazon or counterfeit books. The "not for sale in US" editions are international editions that are usually made with cheaper materials and sometimes with different graphics to avoid royalties. These books usually have the content and are usually in black and white but sometimes there are slight content changes. It's not usually the best idea to buy one of these unless you know it…

If it comes in a box that says "Amazon" on the side, then it has everything to do with Amazon.

Re: Amazon Caught Selling Counterfeits of Publisher’s Computer Books–Again

#139
post #37

Surely this should be an easy fix for them to be able to detect counterfeit books being created? If they are anything like other on demand self publishing platforms, you upload a pdf or similar file to create the book, and surely it's not beyond the wit of those at amazon to create an ml based system that would be able to detect similar files to those of legitimate books that they already carry and flag them to the l…

I can guarantee that Amazon has the brainpower to solve this problem. They just don't have any real incentive to.

3rd person, nearly useless anecdote: I have heard around Seattle that this is “the biggest issue we have” in the minds of Amazon employees.

Re: Amazon Caught Selling Counterfeits of Publisher’s Computer Books–Again

#140
Amazon is my site of last resort (read: less that $100 per year). I'll check it for the reviews (but am always mindful they could be bogus), and to get a general sense for price. I purposely us BN.com or just about anywhere else for books.

I can't allow myself to be a regular Amazon customer. Its ethics and practices leave me feeling dirtier than I want to feel.

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