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Counterfeit books “shipped and sold by Amazon”?

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Re: Counterfeit books “shipped and sold by Amazon”?

#21

Post by my_first_acct »

onfe wrote: post #7

Amazon leans heavily on convenience to sell lots of stuff. If I have to read a handful of reviews and cross my fingers whenever getting a legitimate product is important, is it really so convenient? So far the market says yes, but I sure would move elsewhere if there was an elsewhere.

There is an elsewhere.

The OP suggests bn.com (Barnes and Noble) for books. I haven't tried them myself. Yet.

For household goods I like walmart.com (the sold-by-Walmart items, not the ones from 3rd-party sellers). Free 2-day shipping (in the US) for orders over $35. A supply chain that (I hope and assume) does not allow 3rd party sellers to introduce counterfeits, unlike the so-called "sold by Amazon" items that are promiscuously commingled with items supplied by 3rd-party sellers.

So for anything where a counterfeit product could pose a health risk, I check walmart.com first.

(I feel a bit strange touting Walmart as the underdog, since it certainly comes with its own set of baggage, but it does seem to be one of the few companies big enough to keep Amazon from gaining a complete monopoly).

Re: Counterfeit books “shipped and sold by Amazon”?

#22

Post by TeMPOraL »

awat wrote: post #5

If I had to take a guess this is related to books that have illegal PDF(s) in the wild. Paired with Amazon making little to no effort to verify product authenticity. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/amazo...

Or legal PDFs. No Starch Press books are regularly featured in Humble Bundles in PDF form, including the book from the Tweet.

Re: Counterfeit books “shipped and sold by Amazon”?

#24

Post by mariomariomario »

This happens because Amazon allows inventory commingling. For example Amazon has their own, legitimate inventory in a West Coast warehouse, and a third party seller has the same inventory with the original UPC manufacturer bar code on it, sitting in an East Coast warehouse. Amazon considers this 1:1 inventory. Amazon will debit their inventory on the West Coast, and credit the inventory that belongs to the third party seller on the East Coast but they will send the inventory from the East Coast to the customer since it's closer to them.

Now in theory this seems like a reasonable approach to deliver products to customers faster, the catch 22 is that third party vendors have clearly taken advantage of Amazon's complete lack of quality control. Third party sellers can sign up for a Seller Central account, and send in counterfeit products with fake bar codes because Amazon doesn't check at all.

I could sit here and talk for hours about mess that is Seller Central. I've dabbled with Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA), and I would never recommend any company use AMZN for third party logistics.

Re: Counterfeit books “shipped and sold by Amazon”?

#25

Post by JohnTHaller »

notelonmusk wrote: post #4
mjfern wrote: post #2

As an aside, why does nearly every Twitter link take you to a page not found thus requiring a reload? This is a terrible user experience that should be easy to fix.

"We've detected that JavaScript is disabled in your browser. Would you like to proceed to legacy Twitter?" > Clicks button > Nothing happens > Right Click Inspect Element > Delete Delete Delete Delete Delete Revenue US$3.04 billion Operating income US$453 million Net income Increase US$1.2 billion Total assets US$10.16 billion Total equity US$6.8 billion > Hmm...

$ to support non-JS users > $ revenue from non-JS users

Re: Counterfeit books “shipped and sold by Amazon”?

#27

Post by isostatic »

crooked-v wrote: post #15
mikece wrote: post #14

I would think a little bit of piracy is okay with Amazon as vetting the authenticity of every seller would be too expensive and time consuming, and making it harder for a seller to get onto Amazon will only encourage the growth of competing platforms. I wonder if Amazon has a policy by which it makes payments to sellers cheated by counterfeit goods so long provided they sign an NDA about it?

This twitter thread is about books being directly sold by Amazon being counterfeit, not seller marketplace items.

Surely that’s nice and easy to use and receive punitive damages?

Re: Counterfeit books “shipped and sold by Amazon”?

#28

Post by droithomme »

danso wrote: post #3

I just ordered a carbon monoxide detector from Amazon, supposedly shipped from the manufacturer. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t immediately think of Amazon’s many counterfeit scandals before ultimately ordering it as I do most things, out of habit. Still, this is a thing for which silent failure is catastrophic, so maybe I’ll send it back tomorrow.

Just get a CO detector chip, along with an organic vapors detector, etc, with I2C protocols, from aliexpress, and jango it into your preexisting DIY R-Pi or etc smart home system, like all hackers do.

Re: Counterfeit books “shipped and sold by Amazon”?

#30

Post by andyfleming »

mjfern wrote: post #2

As an aside, why does nearly every Twitter link take you to a page not found thus requiring a reload? This is a terrible user experience that should be easy to fix.

I’ve specifically noticed it when using the embedded browsers in apps. If I “open in safari”, it will load.
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