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Counterfeit books “shipped and sold by Amazon”?

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

#31

Post by lawkwok »

mariomariomario wrote: post #24

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 part…

This is probably old news to seasoned Seller Central users, but I was surprised how easy it was to "take over" product pages from already existing products.

Our sales figures definitely weren't high. I think it may have been related to how much stock we had for all the sizes of the product.

Soon the product images and descriptions we provided became the canonical version and overrode whatever was there before. Even previous customer reviews from other sellers would continue to be shown on was what now basically our product page.

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

#32

Post by willis936 »

guiambros wrote: post #13

I had the same problem with " The Hundred-Page Machine Learning Book " [1]; the default (cheaper by a few pennies) option via Amazon Prime was sold by a 3rd party selling counterfeit copies. I purchased another copy from Amazon directly to compare, and you could clearly see the difference in the quality of the printing, colors, cover page. Also some pages were different, so it seems the counterfeit used an earlier dr…

This happened to me too for a $100 textbook. It took me weeks but I got my money back and emailed the details to the publisher.

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

#33

Post by 2ion »

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.

Oh, when I open Twitter in Firefox on Android tweets fail to load in 95% of the cases, however the Twitter site itself loads fine enough to show me a Retry button I can press to fail at loading the tweet again. All the while accessing via 'app' and even embedded tweets on 3rd-party sites load fine. Can't recall when this started; must have been some time in 2018.

On the desktop (in Firefox also, same addons and addon config too) things always work (as far as that can be said for a site as horribly slow as theirs).

They have been completely below the bar in terms of UX for a long time now, at least for me. They used to have a lean, good/available and fast site, and now they don't.

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

#34

Post by rietta »

I have been a frequent Amazon customer since 2000 and no longer order anything expensive or safety related (including things like USB chargers or any baby related furniture) from Amazon. I just no longer trust them at all to not be shipping counterfeit or unsafe goods. I've even started going to Best Buy to purchase certain peripherals that I needed on short notice because of this. Besides, at the rate my wife has bought stuff and then sent it back - paying the return shipping fee - we would come out ahead shopping local anyway for her cloths and things.

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

#35

Post by techsupporter »

my_first_acct wrote: post #21
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…

I've gone (back) to Target and Barnes and Noble for items that smaller shops don't sell. It has a lot to do with both of them being less than half a mile from where I live so I can walk there with ease, but both also still have very wide product availability and offer pickup from store for free or inexpensive rates.

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

#36

Post by nextos »

mariomariomario wrote: post #24

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 part…

This is sadly so true.

I have stopped using Amazon after 15 years due to the unacceptably high rate of counterfeit, grey market or used items I got on a daily basis.

It's totally insane. I have even emailed Jeff Bezos and got into the trouble of talking to all middle managers. They don't care.

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

#37

Post by rietta »

Just this year, one of my team members ordered a Blue Yeti microphone off Amazon. We were in a WebRTC meeting when it arrived and I watched him excitedly open it and his facial expression turn sour because it was a glass jar in a Blue Yeti box!!! The sadder part is he left it in the kitchen at his home with the intention of dealing with it later and his dad, not knowing what it was threw it out with the garbage. There was nothing my team member could do or return to Amazon to prove of the fraud. He ended up buying again from another retailer, completely out of the money spent on the first order.

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

#38

Post by mffnbs »

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 always thought this was some sort of rate limiting that twitter applies to visits from aggregators like reddit or hn. I'm not sure how I originally made that assumption, though.

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

#39

Post by buckminster »

kadoban wrote: post #16
RandomBacon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> maybe Just do it. You'll sleep better at night, and you'll have a higher chance of waking up. I no longer buy any products from Amazon anymore that's made to go in, on, or protect my body.

Add most electronics, IMO, especially things like memory cards and hard drives.

I bought a hard drive from Amazon about four years ago. It came in a large cardboard box half full of packing paper. The unprotected drive was rattling round in the empty half of the box. Never again. That's the last thing I bought there.

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

#40

Post by mc32 »

mariomariomario wrote: post #24

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 part…

Can people who know they got a knock-off return the item for a legit copy? Don’t know if the counterfeit volume is high enough to force Amazon to care...
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