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Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

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Re: Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

#31

Post by coldpie »

cgriswald wrote: post #7
duxup wrote: post #3

For some foolish reason I had notifications turned on for the Amazon app... it recently offered me a deal on some sort of supplements that seemed kinda strange / made some weird claims. I had never even searched for any kind of supplement or even food / drug items before. Other offers were for what looked like seriously questionable quality things, that were semi related to items that I had searched, but looked like…

Amazon is busy shooting itself in the foot. The problem is, the gun is small and the foot is huge, so they probably don't feel it right now. Supplements (or really anything I put in my mouth) is one of a growing set of classes of items I won't buy on Amazon anymore. That probably doesn't result in much loss for Amazon right now, but what it does do is: 1. Makes me trust Amazon MUCH less, which means I'm much more lik…

I canceled my Prime ages ago, and have pretty much entirely stopped ordering from Amazon. It's impossible to navigate their storefront to find the legit items, and then you hear stories like these where even the legit items are fraudulent. I just can't be bothered. Mostly I buy locally these days, or buy direct from book publishers and electronics manufacturers (or even more often, simply not buy). I've switched to using eBay for one-off items that are hard to find locally. eBay's system was designed from the beginning to make fraud easier to detect.

WRT Prime specifically, it's kind of a self-feeding problem. As Amazon's reputation tanks, you stop buying things, which makes Prime's value also tank.

Re: Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

#33

Post by michaelmrose »

didibus wrote: post #19
mikeash wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is also an extra layer of insecurity. Let’s say I buy a widget sold through Amazon by a trusted manufacturer. Some third party is also selling counterfeits. Amazon considers the two products to be the same, and sends me a counterfeit from the third party. Seems to me that the alternative is simple: mandate that you receive what you ordered, and make the storefront you order from liable for any problems.

I admit that it isn't clear if Amazon can reliably have you choose from what vendor you are buying. That said, not all manufacturer have a storefront. A lot of items can only be purchased through some middleman. And it is hard to validate that a particular vendor is the actual manufacturer and not just pretending to be. So say you wanted that product, and googled for a vendor, and you found xmanifacturer.com. How wou…

It's actually trivial. If someone pretends to be from foo corp you call foo corps official listed number and inquire. If someone is an individual you ask for an identity document like a drivers license and keep that on file and associate that with all sales. You track who sends you widgets. This is trivial to do with increasingly cheap rfid tags.

For reference Walmart individually tags 10pks of cheap socks so it can via a wireless reader count how many Large foobrand packs of socks it has because it can differentiate between pack 5435454545 5435454546.

You can even give the user the ability to choose between getting shipments slightly faster by allowing you to fulfill their order via the closest item and send the info about fulfilling vendor along with the order OR get it slightly slower via the chosen vendor.

Amazon is technically excellent in a lot of ways its hard to imagine this would actually be hard for them they just don't want to.

Re: Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

#34

Post by bmurphy1976 »

michaelmrose wrote: post #26
gshakir wrote: post #15

Amazon has a big counterfeit problem. The reviews are entirely gamed, so can’t trust those any more , even the 2-star or 3-star ones. So I recently dropped Amazon prime and ended up buying popular name brands. Even those you can get price matched with other retailers and Target even gives you 5% percent discount and BestBuy gives you points. Unless you are a person who is not mobile, there are several options now.

Enjoy price matching while you can. Nobody price matches craigslist for example and as Amazon trustworthiness dives towards craiglist levels one wonders if said policies will continue.

Eh? So what. If everybody stops price matching because nobody buys from Amazon anymore because everything they get is compromised, then GOOD. We'll be in a better more honest place.

Re: Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

#35

Post by mikeash »

didibus wrote: post #19
mikeash wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is also an extra layer of insecurity. Let’s say I buy a widget sold through Amazon by a trusted manufacturer. Some third party is also selling counterfeits. Amazon considers the two products to be the same, and sends me a counterfeit from the third party. Seems to me that the alternative is simple: mandate that you receive what you ordered, and make the storefront you order from liable for any problems.

I admit that it isn't clear if Amazon can reliably have you choose from what vendor you are buying. That said, not all manufacturer have a storefront. A lot of items can only be purchased through some middleman. And it is hard to validate that a particular vendor is the actual manufacturer and not just pretending to be. So say you wanted that product, and googled for a vendor, and you found xmanifacturer.com. How wou…

If they’re at the top of the Google search results for “manufacturer” then you’re probably good. Cross check with Wikipedia if you want to be sure.

If you find some random vendor with a cheaper price then you need to make a decision about how much you trust them and how much it’s worth to you.

All of this is pretty standard and expected. The problem with Amazon is that people expect them to be trustworthy, and apparently when it comes to receiving what you order, they often aren’t. People’s defenses against scammers don’t work here because Amazon doesn’t look like one. And yet they will tell you “sold by X” and sell you a product from Y instead without ever telling you.

Stores should be legally liable for what they sell. If they want their suppliers to bear the burden then they can add indemnification to their contracts.

Re: Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

#36

Post by ceejayoz »

michaelmrose wrote: post #25
throw20102010 wrote: post #10

Amazon needs to stop with inventory comingling. They know it and refuse to stop, so they are culpable. I'm sure it would hurt their logistics to stop, but it also hurts cigarette companies to not advertise to children and we made that a law. It is ridiculous that you can order a supplement where it says "sold by Proctor and Gamble, fulfilled by Amazon" on the product listing, and then receive a counterfeit product th…

The doctrine of first sale means you can't keep people from reselling your branded products and if you don't offer your products on Amazon at this point others will offer fakes and with Amazons cooperation acquire your customers while offering them cheaper competitors products. Its a lovely situation to say the least. All strategies are sub optimal. Logically we need a law forcing them to divulge who your actual prod…

The doctrine of first sale means people can re-sell your products.

It does not mean you have a right to do so on Amazon.

Re: Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

#37

Post by ilikehurdles »

gshakir wrote: post #15

Amazon has a big counterfeit problem. The reviews are entirely gamed, so can’t trust those any more , even the 2-star or 3-star ones. So I recently dropped Amazon prime and ended up buying popular name brands. Even those you can get price matched with other retailers and Target even gives you 5% percent discount and BestBuy gives you points. Unless you are a person who is not mobile, there are several options now.

I'll occasionally buy some more expensive or more complex items from amazon, and never anything that I'll be putting on or in my body. Otherwise I'll order directly from manufacturer or head into a store. If it werent for the Whole Foods discounts I'd have absolutely no reason to pay for Prime.

Re: Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

#38

Post by skierguy »

felipemnoa wrote: post #20
therein wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normally I'd just upvote and continue on my way but with the expectation that maybe someone from Amazon is reading and thinking "surely not everyone feels that way". We all feel this way. Inventory co-mingling will have major long term costs. If you think about it, it is pretty crazy how big of a reputation hit Amazon has taken in the last few years.

Ditto

Same here

Re: Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

#39

Post by gamblor956 »

michaelmrose wrote: post #25
throw20102010 wrote: post #10

Amazon needs to stop with inventory comingling. They know it and refuse to stop, so they are culpable. I'm sure it would hurt their logistics to stop, but it also hurts cigarette companies to not advertise to children and we made that a law. It is ridiculous that you can order a supplement where it says "sold by Proctor and Gamble, fulfilled by Amazon" on the product listing, and then receive a counterfeit product th…

The doctrine of first sale means you can't keep people from reselling your branded products and if you don't offer your products on Amazon at this point others will offer fakes and with Amazons cooperation acquire your customers while offering them cheaper competitors products. Its a lovely situation to say the least. All strategies are sub optimal. Logically we need a law forcing them to divulge who your actual prod…

The issue isn't reselling branded products.

The issue is selling fake products as a branded products. Amazon makes this easy to do by commingling inventory and not matching/tracking sellers to inventory items.

This fact by itself would probably make Amazon liable for product liability claims in any court in the US, it's traditional CDA liability sheild notwithstanding.

EDIT: Products liability law is complicated, but generally even if Amazon wouldn't be treated as a seller, they could still be held liable for their negligence in providing the wrong/defective item out of their (commingled) inventory. Amazon doesn't match sellers to inventory items so they have literally no way to defend themselves from such a suit especially if the seller can show that they provide products straight from the manufacturer but Amazon commingled with other sellers' inventory. (I'm aware of several such suits that were almost immediately settled by Amazon with NDAs attached.)

Re: Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

#40

Post by zaroth »

ceejayoz wrote: post #36
michaelmrose wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The doctrine of first sale means you can't keep people from reselling your branded products and if you don't offer your products on Amazon at this point others will offer fakes and with Amazons cooperation acquire your customers while offering them cheaper competitors products. Its a lovely situation to say the least. All strategies are sub optimal. Logically we need a law forcing them to divulge who your actual prod…

The doctrine of first sale means people can re-sell your products. It does not mean you have a right to do so on Amazon .

Or more to the point, you cannot claim they are being sold directly from the manufacturer.
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