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

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

#151
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. It's typically legal as decided by the US Supreme Court in 2013 Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons. (6-3 decision with a rather atypical split.) Added: Basically the decision affirmed that first sale doctrine applied.

Wow, that is useful information! Ne'er again will I buy a text without reading the fine print. Lesson learned.

And I've bought an Indian version of a textbook for about 20% of the price of the "regular" edition that was perfectly adequate for my needs. So, if you're implying that Amazon shouldn't sell these, I don't agree. They're legal and they're good enough for a lot of people. (As I recall, in my case, it was obviously not the US version.)

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

#152
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…

Did the fake shipping code have a destination as your house? I'd expect they'd be able to check that.

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

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why worry about being banned? Why would you want to continue to do business with a company that treats you like this? When I get to the point where I am contemplating a CC chargeback, the bridge is already burned.

Because Amazon is no longer a simple bookseller. It's a diversified mega-corporation that is big enough that the average individual will want to think twice before getting on its bad side. What if you want to host something on AWS? Stream on Twitch? Shop at an Amazon Go? Keep listening to your Audible library? What if you're using home automation equipment that's tethered to a cloud service and Amazon acquires the co…

Other megacorps like Google have already demonstrated that ability to cancel all your services for violating terms on just one.

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

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why worry about being banned? Why would you want to continue to do business with a company that treats you like this? When I get to the point where I am contemplating a CC chargeback, the bridge is already burned.

Because Amazon is no longer a simple bookseller. It's a diversified mega-corporation that is big enough that the average individual will want to think twice before getting on its bad side. What if you want to host something on AWS? Stream on Twitch? Shop at an Amazon Go? Keep listening to your Audible library? What if you're using home automation equipment that's tethered to a cloud service and Amazon acquires the co…

Exactly. I am an amazon affiliate and use other amazon services as my business. The bridge has been burned for me as a consumer to continue shopping with them personally or with my business, but it's too risky to upset the beast if that somehow triggers an impact to my livelihood on the other end. I would love nothing more than to phase Amazon out of my life along with Google but that is increasingly difficult to do.

How many processes are in place at Amazon to fight chargebacks? How do we know it won't trigger anything? How do I know they won't retroactively make a decision months or years later? Thats the risk I can't take.

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

#155
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Amazon is no longer a simple bookseller. It's a diversified mega-corporation that is big enough that the average individual will want to think twice before getting on its bad side. What if you want to host something on AWS? Stream on Twitch? Shop at an Amazon Go? Keep listening to your Audible library? What if you're using home automation equipment that's tethered to a cloud service and Amazon acquires the co…

Other megacorps like Google have already demonstrated that ability to cancel all your services for violating terms on just one.

And to top it off theres no support channel or humans in the process to "appeal" their decision. The only luck you have is being semi-famous enough to get your experience in the headlines before an exec lets you back in.

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

#156
post #152
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…

Did the fake shipping code have a destination as your house? I'd expect they'd be able to check that.

Nope. The latest seller reviews has 80 other people that also received fake tracking in the last 30 days. Amazon's response is that they asked the seller to prove they shipped it or refunded me. That was 2 weeks ago and apparently Amazon is still "investigating". You would think a quick check of the tracking, look at recent seller reviews, lack of response from the seller would be an open and shut case. Apparently the seller is smarter than we all thought and knows something about this process with Amazon and the effort to get our money back. Can't imagine they don't up with something in the end.

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

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That story looks bogus. Snopes [1] says: > Neither Sinar Harian nor its English-language peer the New Strait Times asserted that the youngster was electrocuted by the earphones he was wearing, but that was the conclusion reached by a number of international publications, including widely-read U.S.-based Vice and Teen Vogue, both of whom aggregated the story. ... > As an emergency room doctor, Uren& stopped short of c…

There's been multiple reports of people dying through headphones. Maybe they're all bogus, but considering an ER doctor presumably knows nothing about electronics, I'll disregard his opinion. Instead I'll listen to what an electronics engineer thinks about counterfeit chargers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi-b9k-0KfE

Here's a high profile case from Australia a few years ago.

https://www.smh.com.au/business/consumer-affairs/store-which...

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

#158
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’m in the US at the moment, road tripping around, never quite sure where I’ll be, even a few days out. Hence why It’s easier to buy local, than via any online store. But searching for products in the local area / at local stores is nearly impossible. Using google is useless, everything is e-commerce listings. And even if you search many local stores directly they make it nearly impossible to determine if the product…

I suppose people just don't want you to know, so you're forced to browse?

At one point I considered doing this as a business - paying people to walk through the store recording video that's then used to fill out a catalogue. Maybe offer it as a service to businesses.

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

#159
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?

kfwhp is right. It is not even conceivable that anyone is buying a book for the sake of having a No Starch Press book. Everyone buying a book is buying it for the content.

It is conceivable that someone might think that No Starch Press books offer a quality premium that might justify a higher price. In the case where that higher quality is thought to occur in the contents, that's still not relevant. In the case where the higher quality comes from the better physical quality of the book, it is relevant, but that is a negligible part of the market for books of any type, even those that do come in collectible editions.

Consider an example: I own a copy of https://www.eastonpress.com/prod/EB8/2720043/Rudyard-Kipling... .

If someone were selling imitations of this that fell apart after a month or so, I would indeed consider that to be defrauding the buyer. Easton Press' entire reason for being is to sell existing books at a higher physical quality than you can normally get.

But Kipling's work is available in every form factor, from free ebooks at Project Gutenberg through cheap paperbacks to high-end collectibles. If Easton Press were the only party legally allowed to sell this book, I would no longer be willing to say that cheap imitations were defrauding the customer. I'd assume that people buying the cheaper versions were just trying to read the book. With only one vendor, there is no signal that the customer wanted physical quality, and overwhelmingly they don't, so there is no reason to assume that they do.

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

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Amazon is no longer a simple bookseller. It's a diversified mega-corporation that is big enough that the average individual will want to think twice before getting on its bad side. What if you want to host something on AWS? Stream on Twitch? Shop at an Amazon Go? Keep listening to your Audible library? What if you're using home automation equipment that's tethered to a cloud service and Amazon acquires the co…

Exactly. I am an amazon affiliate and use other amazon services as my business. The bridge has been burned for me as a consumer to continue shopping with them personally or with my business, but it's too risky to upset the beast if that somehow triggers an impact to my livelihood on the other end. I would love nothing more than to phase Amazon out of my life along with Google but that is increasingly difficult to do.…

I didn't consider the case where you're not just a consumer. Will they kill your (presumably totally separate and isolated) business account due to a charge-back on your consumer account? How do they even know it's the same person?

Even if so, I'd argue if your business is so utterly dependent on a single company's service, that's a huge risk and you ought to be be taking steps to diversify or self-host some things. We've all read those "Company X changed algorithm Y and my business is over!" stories.

As a pure consumer, I stand by my statement: If you're going to charge back a credit card transaction, you're past the point of ever wanting to do business with them again, so shouldn't care what they do to your account.

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