Counterfeit books “shipped and sold by Amazon”? • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by beerandt » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 11:37 PM UTC

hellcow wrote: post #46

rietta wrote: post #34

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 bo…

Yup, agreed 100%. I recently purchased 2 Lenovo 65w USB-C chargers. One came shrink-wrapped in a legitimate Lenovo box. The other was in a plain cardboard box with a prominent "Made in China" as its only branding. These were sold from the very same product page. When I told Amazon, I had to go to UPS to return the fake product to them to receive my refund, so not only do I have to purchase it again (obviously not fro…

For whatever reason, the counterfeiters have no problem lying about anything, except the "Made in China" label.

I'm sure there's a good reason for this, but it's been the only consistent red-flag I've encountered.

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

#62

Post by nordsieck » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 11:37 PM UTC

toast0 wrote: post #50

beerandt wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why, IMHO, Walmart will eventually win this aspect of the online shopping war. Supply chain control. Amazon may continue to dominate AWS and even the 3rd party marketplace, but they've already ruined their brand reputation as a supplier. Edit: Sold and shipped 3rd party marketplace may survive.

Unfortunately, Walmart has integrated a 3rd party marketplace onto their site too; so who knows when they will start fulfilled by Walmart and comingling. There's also persistent stories of Walmart demanding lower priced items and being ok with the lower quality, not always with different UPCs.

> so who knows when they will start fulfilled by Walmart and comingling.

Fulfillment is just fine (indeed - beneficial to small businesses) as long as there is no inventory co-mingling.

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

#63

Post by Typhon » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 11:40 PM UTC

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…

There's plenty of small online stores selling all kinds of stuff. Recently I had ordered smoked paprika from Amazon UK because I can't find any where I live (France). I got regular paprika. So I ordered from a specialized online spice store, got my paprika and vowed never to order anything from Amazon ever again.

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

#64

Post by catalogia » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 11:41 PM UTC

JohnTHaller wrote: post #25

notelonmusk wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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

$ lost serving non-JS users It's spiteful.

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

#65

Post by msbarnett » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 11:41 PM UTC

ikeboy wrote: post #60

dbcurtis wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they don't care enough to actually stop co-mingling stock, which would nearly eliminate the problem.

It wouldn't help significantly. People would still get counterfeits when buying from bad sellers.

What? That would help enormously. If they stopped commingling it would be easy to quickly identify and eliminate bad sellers. Consumers would also have the option of sticking to a known-good seller like Amazon and be able to trust that they weren’t going to get some comingled bullshit copy.

That’s a pretty damn far cry from the current situation.

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

#66

Post by billpollock » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 11:41 PM UTC

lawkwok wrote: post #31

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 p…

We've had a very similar experience. On more than one book our product pages were replaced with images from the counterfeit. In a certain way it was quite funny. Ultimately it was very frustrating

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

#67

Post by billpollock » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 11:43 PM UTC

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…

Unfortunately this case may be a bit different. When you order this book by pressing just the Buy button, as in shipped and sold by Amazon, you get the counterfeit.

I know because I ordered two copies last week. Both came and both were counterfeit.

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

#68

Post by beerandt » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 11:44 PM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #56

beerandt wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why, IMHO, Walmart will eventually win this aspect of the online shopping war. Supply chain control. Amazon may continue to dominate AWS and even the 3rd party marketplace, but they've already ruined their brand reputation as a supplier. Edit: Sold and shipped 3rd party marketplace may survive.

Walmart has ... issues ... with their supply chain for their physical stores. Part of the problem is that they're big enough to enable Walmart-specific versions of products.

As someone who hates this practice, including store-brand labels (ie Sam's Choice)...

At this point I'll happily take the Walmart-specific version over the risk of an Amazon supplied product.

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

#69

Post by newnewpdro » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 11:45 PM UTC

beerandt wrote: post #45

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 why, IMHO, Walmart will eventually win this aspect of the online shopping war. Supply chain control. Amazon may continue to dominate AWS and even the 3rd party marketplace, but they've already ruined their brand reputation as a supplier. Edit: Sold and shipped 3rd party marketplace may survive.

It's not like shopping at Wal-Mart isn't without its own kinds of bait and switch practices.

There was a time when I went to Wal-Mart to buy a new package of cheap cotton ankle socks every month or so, incrementally replenishing my cache, over the period of about a year.

The exact same brand, make, and size of socks, what were ostensibly identical, would vary in their constituent materials at what seemed to be random. One month they'd be ~80% cotton. The next month ~80% polyester. For what appeared to be the same damn product.

I don't know if this is something the big brands do in cooperation with Wal-Mart, or if it's entirely out of Wal-Mart's control and something Hanes/FTL has started doing independently. But next time you see packages for socks, check out the contents. In Wal-Mart the contents are printed on an adhesive-backed sticker. They use a sticker because it gets switched all the time, presumably to whatever was the cheapest recipe/supplier at the time. There's basically no persistence to what the SKU actually represents.

The Wal-Mart advantage, in my opinion, is that I have the opportunity to actually scrutinize the instance I will take home of the thing I'm purchasing, before doing so.

With Amazon I can't possibly know if they'll send me the 80% cotton or 80% polyester variant of the same SKU.

I've noticed similar practices with canned fish. Depending on what day of the week it is, the same canned fish e.g. beachcliff sardines in water, will have salt or won't have salt in the ingredients list. It seems to correlate with the country of origin. Same SKU, different ingredients. You have to look really closely at the package to notice it, but you definitely notice it when eating the stuff.

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

#70

Post by beerandt » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 11:47 PM UTC

toast0 wrote: post #50

beerandt wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why, IMHO, Walmart will eventually win this aspect of the online shopping war. Supply chain control. Amazon may continue to dominate AWS and even the 3rd party marketplace, but they've already ruined their brand reputation as a supplier. Edit: Sold and shipped 3rd party marketplace may survive.

Unfortunately, Walmart has integrated a 3rd party marketplace onto their site too; so who knows when they will start fulfilled by Walmart and comingling. There's also persistent stories of Walmart demanding lower priced items and being ok with the lower quality, not always with different UPCs.

The funny thing about Walmart 3rd party, is it always seems to be drop shipped by a competitor, and comes in a clearly branded box. I've gotten boxes from Newegg, Target, Wayfair, and even Sam's Club.

Still a better option than Amazon (for now, at least).