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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

#101

Post by kerkeslager »

I'd like to believe that this is Amazon actually trying to crack down on fake supplements on their website, but it coincides too neatly with a noticeable increase in presence of the Solimo brand, Amazon's own supplement brand.

So Amazon's model here looks like:

1. Allow sellers to sell counterfeit products, so they can take a cut of profits from both legitimate and fake inventory.

2. Copy the best-selling products after they've been product tested, and compete against their own customers (sellers on their platform).

3. Undermine the credibility of their competition by warning that their competitors' products might be counterfeits.

Re: Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

#102

Post by [deleted] »

nordsieck wrote: post #84
jimktrains2 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there are defiantly people delivering stuff our of cars and cargo vans. I haven't had an amazon order come via UPS or FedEx in a while.

>> That would be UPS doing that, not Amazon. > No, there are defiantly people delivering stuff our of cars and cargo vans. I haven't had an amazon order come via UPS or FedEx in a while. That is the delivery person doing that. The worst is when delivery personnel don't ring or knock, they just slap a "tried to deliver" slip on your door because it's faster for them.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

#103

Post by mikeash »

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…

Counterfeiting is going to happen. Typically you deter it by detecting it and punishing the counterfeiters. Commingling defeats this. I guess we can make Amazon inspect everything they receive from third party sellers thoroughly enough to reliably detect counterfeits themselves, but that seems much less likely to happen.

Re: Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

#104

Post by elliekelly »

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 needs to stop with inventory comingling. They know it and refuse to stop, so they are culpable.

An appeals court just recently said this in their ruling on a consumer products liability case. Oberdorf v Amazon I believe.

Edit: Apologies, I was on my phone earlier and I didn't link to the opinion https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca3/18...

Re: Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

#105

Post by gamblor956 »

AnssiH wrote: post #72
gamblor956 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Amazon makes this easy to do by commingling inventory and not matching/tracking sellers to inventory items. That is not correct. Amazon's seller help pages and Amazon spokesperson comment on e.g. this FT Alphaville article https://outline.com/4R7fp6 say that Amazon tracks the original supplier: > The system is purposefully designed so that similar products are not placed next to or near each other, and Amazon can a…

Amazon "says" they can track the original supplier.

In practice, they clearly don't. I've had a client that was the only manufacturer of a product receive fake versions of their own product that was part of Amazon's commingled inventory. This happened last year.

Also, unless Amazon removes tags prior to delivery, there is no mechanism on many items that would allow them to track goods short of maintaining physical separation, which it is abundantly clear that they do not.

Re: Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

#106

Post by amluto »

c3534l wrote: post #70
amluto wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon Logistics is... special. I regularly have packages “delivered”, but they mysteriously show up a day or two after the claimed delivery. I assume this is the logistics “contractors” missing their quota and making up for it later.

That would be UPS doing that, not Amazon.

I really did mean Amazon Logistics.

https://logistics.amazon.com/

As far as I can tell, this is Amazon coopting the gig economy for their own deliveries. The quality of service is predictable. I doubt the delivery people (sorry, Amazon Delivery Service Partner) make a heck of a lot of money.

Re: Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

#107

Post by x0x0 »

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…

I'm in the same place -- Amazon sold me a counterfeit charger. Well, not counterfeit, but with a fake ETL/Intertek -- a UL competitor -- mark. I told their CS and they refunded me, then continued selling the charger with the fake ETL mark.

I moved $40k/year of IT spend from my company off Amazon to BHPhoto.

I also stopped buying any makeup / food / supplements / dog food / dog toys on Amazon.

Hell, I bought my dog's new leash and collar straight from the manufacturer!

Re: Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

#108

Post by garmingps »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #43
ADSSDA wrote: post #4

You'd have to be insane to buy anything you'd put in your body from Amazon. Just this week I received an obviously used item that was "Shipped and sold by amazon.com" and sold as "new". I realize they're trying, but Amazon is clearly failing to control the tide of fakes that is infesting their storefront. I find that for almost anything I search for, the knockoff/fake is actually the Amazon "recommended" item.

> You'd have to be insane to buy anything you'd put in your body from Amazon. Just this week I received an obviously used item that was "Shipped and sold by amazon.com" and sold as "new". I bought a new mp3 player from Fry's once which, oddly enough, turned out to be stocked with a sizeable music library already. I'd still be pretty comfortable buying a candy bar from them though.

I once received a Garmin GPS as a gift (back before cell phones had GPS in them). I took it out of the box and plugged it in and started setting it up. It had a bunch of information in it already, including a "home address" and several trips around Detroit at over 100 miles per hour! I'm pretty sure the gift-giver was not the one who had used it since the home address didn't match, and they were unlikely to be driving there that fast. I'm not sure whether they bought it online or from a retail store.

Re: Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

#109

Post by mikeash »

AnssiH wrote: post #78
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…

Well, one can think of it as follows: 1. You place an order from supplier A. 2. Supplier A buys the unit from supplier B (and pays the balance by transferring another unit A => B). 3. The now supplier A's unit gets sent to you. I.e. somewhat similar to e.g. dropshipping and other such practices which are traditionally perfectly legal. It seems it would be quite hard to argue false advertising on that (as you got the…

There’s a huge and fundamental difference between what you describe and what Amazon is doing. What you describe involves both A and B. A is figuratively putting their name on the product, and they have an incentive to make sure that everything is above board. You are getting it from A, by way of B.

The way Amazon does it, A isn’t involved in the choice of who supplies the product, they just receive the money. They don’t even know who supplied the product, if I understand things correctly. You’re just buying from B, while Amazon says you’re buying from A.

Re: Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

#110

Post by gnicholas »

jrockway wrote: post #96
jdietrich wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

“Free 2 day shipping” = prepaid unlimited 2 day shipping that costs $120, and is bundled with some streaming content.
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