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Counterfeit books “shipped and sold by Amazon”?

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

#81

Post by oarsinsync »

msbarnett wrote: post #65
ikeboy wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From the tweets by the authors, the current situation is the bad seller is amazon.com. This is apparently not a commingling problem. Amazon is sourcing illegal counterfeit products directly.

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

#82

Post by msbarnett »

oarsinsync wrote: post #81
msbarnett wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From the tweets by the authors, the current situation is the bad seller is amazon.com. This is apparently not a commingling problem. Amazon is sourcing illegal counterfeit products directly.

Link to the tweet that claims Amazon are themselves buying counterfeits from suppliers? Are you sure you’re not misunderstanding the situation re: comingling?

It’s precisely because of commingling that, just because you buy a book “Shipped From and Sold By Amazon” you have no guarantee that the book they ship to you was actually bought and entered into their inventory by them. Their books and every other “fulfilled by Amazon” sellers’ are treated as completely fungible by their fulfilment centres.

“Ships From and Sold by Amazon” doesn’t really mean anything re: the actual book you receive, which could easily be one that came into their system from Bob’s Big Store of Counterfeit Bullshit.

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

#83

Post by beerandt »

ceejayoz wrote: post #75
beerandt wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd imagine customs can identify "that came on a boat from China but says 'made in USA'" more easily than "the internal electronics in that charger aren't up to snuff".

I'm sure. It's just become so normal to doubt every aspect of a product, that it's strange to have some element of consistency.

Of course the label of origin still isn't likely to match what was on the product page. But that's almost a plus in helping to ID fakes.

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

#84

Post by msbarnett »

ikeboy wrote: post #71
msbarnett wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Easy for who? Amazon knows which seller sent in the inventory for every order, so they know to punish the right seller when a complaint comes in. You are correct that customers could themselves choose better sellers, but most customers don't care and prefer cheaper over more reliable. That effect is not enough to help "enormously".

> Amazon knows which seller sent in the inventory for every order, so they know to punish the right seller when a complaint comes in.

Huuuuge citation needed.

It’s precisely because of comingling that they don’t have the ability to do this: they put multiple sellers goods, including their own, in the same storage bins, provided they have the same UPC. By what means do you suggest they can distinguish Seller A’s widget in Bin 37624 from Seller B’s? They do not appear to attach any additional tracking stickers to their goods.

And they do not have a formal system for complaining about counterfeit goods. They don’t even offer it as a distinct option on returns — probably quite purposefully. All you can do is request a return for some vaguely-related reason and manually add a note about it being counterfeit. They’re clearly not attempting to automate identification of bad goods, let alone removal of bad actors.

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

#85

Post by axaxs »

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.

It's worse than that...they provide a reload button even that does absolutely nothing, requiring you to manually reload the page. With all the money they've spent on engineering, it's mystifying why their system is such a dumpster fire.

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

#86

Post by my_first_acct »

ikeboy wrote: post #71
msbarnett wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Easy for who? Amazon knows which seller sent in the inventory for every order, so they know to punish the right seller when a complaint comes in. You are correct that customers could themselves choose better sellers, but most customers don't care and prefer cheaper over more reliable. That effect is not enough to help "enormously".

> ...so they know to punish the right seller when a complaint comes in.

Since (according to others in this thread) the Amazon "Reason for return" menu does not provide the option "Item is counterfeit", it does not sound like Amazon is very interested in receiving these sorts of complaints. So I have to wonder how interested Amazon is in punishing the sellers of counterfeit items. If you close your ears to bad news, you won't hear any.

> You are correct that customers could themselves choose better sellers...

That's right. For items where genuineness really matters, I choose the seller "Sold by Walmart" at walmart.com. There are no reliable sellers at amazon.com, not even "Sold by Amazon". Which is a shame.

P.S. Reply to msbarnett, since I can't reply directly: Amazon does not literally put all identical items into a single physical bin, so it is at least feasible for them to keep track of which item came from which seller, if they choose to. I recommend that you (and other readers) take a tour of an Amazon fulfillment center: https://www.aboutamazon.com/amazon-fulfillment-center-tours/ It's pretty interesting.

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

#87

Post by beerandt »

perspective1 wrote: post #74
billpollock wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you're thinking Amazon separates its own SKUs from third party SKUs. That's not the case, it's all comingled.

The only way to be somewhat sure, is to find a 3rd party seller who doesn't use Fulfilled by Amazon.

Amazon has managed to completely invert the original hierarchy of seller trust.

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

#88

Post by ikeboy »

msbarnett wrote: post #84
ikeboy wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy for who? Amazon knows which seller sent in the inventory for every order, so they know to punish the right seller when a complaint comes in. You are correct that customers could themselves choose better sellers, but most customers don't care and prefer cheaper over more reliable. That effect is not enough to help "enormously".

> Amazon knows which seller sent in the inventory for every order, so they know to punish the right seller when a complaint comes in. Huuuuge citation needed. It’s precisely because of comingling that they don’t have the ability to do this: they put multiple sellers goods, including their own, in the same storage bins, provided they have the same UPC. By what means do you suggest they can distinguish Seller A’s widge…

I link to it every single thread like this, but here goes:

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/200141480?...

"For inventory tracked with the manufacturer barcode, each seller’s sourced inventory of the same ASIN is stored separately in our fulfillment centers. We can also track the original seller of each unit."

Previous discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20549623, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13952939, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12062856

This is the biggest misconception about Amazon I've seen, and has been for years, at least on HN.

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

#89

Post by ikeboy »

my_first_acct wrote: post #86
ikeboy wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy for who? Amazon knows which seller sent in the inventory for every order, so they know to punish the right seller when a complaint comes in. You are correct that customers could themselves choose better sellers, but most customers don't care and prefer cheaper over more reliable. That effect is not enough to help "enormously".

> ...so they know to punish the right seller when a complaint comes in. Since (according to others in this thread) the Amazon "Reason for return" menu does not provide the option "Item is counterfeit", it does not sound like Amazon is very interested in receiving these sorts of complaints. So I have to wonder how interested Amazon is in punishing the sellers of counterfeit items. If you close your ears to bad news, y…

It has "not as described" as an option. You can put in text explaining what wasn't as described: if it has keywords like "counterfeit" or similar, it will go into that seller's CCR (counterfeit complaint rate), and sellers with a bad CCR get suspended.

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

#90

Post by my_first_acct »

ikeboy wrote: post #89
my_first_acct wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...so they know to punish the right seller when a complaint comes in. Since (according to others in this thread) the Amazon "Reason for return" menu does not provide the option "Item is counterfeit", it does not sound like Amazon is very interested in receiving these sorts of complaints. So I have to wonder how interested Amazon is in punishing the sellers of counterfeit items. If you close your ears to bad news, y…

It has "not as described" as an option. You can put in text explaining what wasn't as described: if it has keywords like "counterfeit" or similar, it will go into that seller's CCR (counterfeit complaint rate), and sellers with a bad CCR get suspended.

Good to know. Thanks.
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