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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

#91

Post by MaxBarraclough »

davinic wrote: post #53
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…

I'm a former marketplace seller. There is a way brands can accomplish this: marketplace items must contain all the features that the original brand provides. So the brand can create, say, a warranty that only applies when purchased form an "authorized seller". Since the company controls who is authorized, no other seller is able to include the warranty, and their offerings are not identical. The difficult part in all…

> marketplace items must contain all the features that the original brand provides

Why should a buyer be expected to trust either Amazon, or the fulfiller, to decide which bait-and-switch sales don't count as bait-and-switch?

It wrongs both the buyer, who doesn't get what they ordered, and the original manufacturer, who is being subjected to something akin to 'passing off' in trademark law. You aren't allowed to hijack someone else's brand to sell your product. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passing_off

Re: Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

#92

Post by earthshot »

ck2 wrote: post #81

there's a new trick/scam on amazon I am not sure if anyone else has noticed yet seems designed to trick not only buyers but also sites like fakespot a vendor lists an item for awhile, something cheap and reliable enough to gather plenty of legit 5-star reviews then they leave the listing and ASIN but delete and change out the photos and the title/text with another item, not even similar item in some cases so the rati…

There's an e-mail thread going around Amazon about this, internally. The scam is that the fraudulent seller finds an item that is real but out of stock from all sellers. The seller than sends in their inventory, and updates the listing because they are now the only seller of that item.

It really sucks, and I hope we find a way to solve this, soon. It's a terrible customer experience.

Re: Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

#93

Post by wyre »

foobiekr wrote: post #32

if risking blinding people during the eclipse due to counterfeit eclipse glasses was not sufficient to get Amazon to change, nothing will do so until someone actually dies.

In that case it might even be cheaper to pay a few million in settlements than it would be to change their ways.

Re: Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

#95

Post by jdietrich »

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…

Amazon are playing a very dangerous game with their brand.

I buy a lot of stuff from AliExpress. I know that there's a fair chance that I'll get some kind of junk, but it's cheap enough that I'm often willing to take the gamble.

Until very recently, Amazon offered the lowest-hassle online shopping experience by a considerable margin. I'd often buy from Amazon without bothering to compare prices, because the convenience of one-click ordering was worth it.

Almost entirely because of Marketplace, Amazon is regressing from a premium retail experience to an AliExpress-style flea market. Every time I click the buy button, I worry about getting a counterfeit product, I worry about the hassle of returning it, I worry about getting banned from Amazon by an algorithm for "abusing" their returns policy. Buying from Amazon isn't a no-brainer any more.

Amazon were so very close to having a total monopoly on my online spending, but they squandered it. They could have secured a loyal and price-insensitive customer, but instead they're driving me away from their platform. Maybe they don't care about being a retailer any more, maybe they're all-in on AWS, but if I were an Amazon shareholder I'd be getting pretty damned nervous.

Re: Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

#96

Post by jrockway »

jdietrich wrote: post #95
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…

Amazon are playing a very dangerous game with their brand. I buy a lot of stuff from AliExpress. I know that there's a fair chance that I'll get some kind of junk, but it's cheap enough that I'm often willing to take the gamble. Until very recently , Amazon offered the lowest-hassle online shopping experience by a considerable margin. I'd often buy from Amazon without bothering to compare prices, because the convenie…

Same. In fact, I basically only use Amazon as an AliExpress with free 2 day shipping. For anything that could be counterfeited (which is really anything these days!), I won't touch them anymore. B&H is the same price and I can always show up at their store and be annoying until they fix my problem.

Re: Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

#97

Post by exolymph »

ar-jan wrote: post #63
elektor wrote: post #24

Knowing how ill-equipped Amazon is for the supplement market, are there any legitimate lab-tested online vendors?

If there's one vendor I'd trust over any others it's Nootropics Depot. They do all their testing in-house, because it is much more reliable than 3rd party lab testing. The owner frequently gives extensive insight into how the supply chains and testing work. Recent example: https://old.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/comments/cength/testing_...

I was about to recommend Nootropics Depot too. Don't get thrown off by the name, anyone, there are plenty of "normal" supplements in addition to the racetams and such.

Re: Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

#98

Post by bcrosby95 »

UseStrict wrote: post #27
cgriswald wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Consciously or not, I've noticed that I too no longer trust Amazon to deliver on sensitive goods due to commingling:' * I don't buy foodstuff or supplements from Amazon * I don't buy things at high risk of exploding (batteries that weren't manufactured by who I expected) * I don't buy high-volume counterfeit products (vacuums, for example) I would rather take the 30 minutes out of my day to drive to a store where I t…

Note that if you have young children, the list of sensitive goods is basically everything considering they try to eat anything they get their hands on at one time or another.

Re: Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

#99

Post by gdulli »

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…

Aside from counterfeiting, it's become a hassle to buy from the marketplace. My last experience was buying a small piece of furniture. There was a problem and it could have been resolved more easily than it was, but as inconveniences came up I had to deal with both Amazon's and the vendor's customer service. And each blamed the other. Ultimately I had to pack up something heavy to be shipped back which I didn't want to do, and if I had to do it it would have been less hassle to take it back somewhere local. Which is how I wish I had made the purchase.

Re: Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

#100

Post by slg »

ajross wrote: post #82
gervu wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like a lot of things that sound an awful lot like fraudulent practices from a lay perspective don't actually reach a useful or provable definition when it comes to legal liability. But saying something is sold by a specific party which I then choose to do business with, then substituting goods that are likely to be from any of numerous other parties, some of which I may be explicitly trying to avoid doing bu…

That phrasing is part of the problem, not the solution. You're conflating the idea of a manufacturer (Proctor & Gamble in this case) with a reseller. Amazon tells you both, but since the retail products are (should be) identical, neither they nor you really care whether or not this particular box came from "Joe's Nutrition" or "Sally's Supplements", and worrying about that distinction is like arguing against the fung…

>Amazon tells you both, but since the retail products are (should be) identical, neither they nor you really care whether or not this particular box came from "Joe's Nutrition" or "Sally's Supplements"

Sounds like it is time for a "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Retail Products" with the first entry being that every item with the same SKU is identical to every other item with that SKU.

You would think at the very least Amazon would need to maintain a chain of custody for each individual item that is meant for human consumption. What happens if there is a Tylenol poisoning [1] like scare with one of these supplements? Would Amazon legitimately have no way to track down the source of the contaminated product? If they can, what would be the possible explanation of not displaying the source to the user beyond "it is cheaper if we don't"?

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tylenol_murders

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