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Counterfeit books “shipped and sold by Amazon”?

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

#101

Post by nextos »

paulcole wrote: post #98
nextos wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How could you identify a grey market item? And what/how much were you ordering that this was a daily issue?

At some point I was using Amazon for almost all shopping. Obviously daily is an oxymoron, but it'd happen several times a month.

I can identify grey market items easily. Buy an item in Amazon UK of product X and get version packed to be sold in Italy (with all labels in Italian) or Russian (with all labels in Russian), instead of the UK version. This is because some smart supplier is doing arbitrage.

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

#102

Post by wenc »

ohgreatwtf wrote: post #94

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07B452QQS/ Check this product out. It's made in a chinese guy's garage in northern california using equipment he imported in 2014. It doesn't have legitimate GMP or FDA licensing. This is the kind of problem we are talking about. And the issue is worse than it appears, just as toast0 mentioned, because the same exact product with same product page and AMAZON barcode, NO UPC, is also…

I wonder if we could catch counterfeits by checking a code against some sort of ledger on the manufacturer's end, and do this at scale.

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

#103

Post by didibus »

ikeboy wrote: post #88
msbarnett wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.ycombinat…

Wow, HN is really turning into a hive mind. First time I see someone post this. Thanks for this data point.

With this in place, it seems vendors get to choose if they want commingling or not. Would be nice to provide a checkout option to buyers as well, like choose a slower shipping but guarantee your getting the item from the vendor. Or even if it asked you... getting item from alternate vendor will ship faster? Is that okay? And mentioned the alternate vendor.

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

#104

Post by gray_-_wolf »

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

That is simply not true in this case. All I need to get twitter readable with no-script is this ublock origin rule:

    ! 7/24/2019 https://twitter.com
    twitter.com##form.NoScriptForm
The data (tweets) are there already, they just intentionally hide it.

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

#105

Post by my_first_acct »

ikeboy wrote: post #91
my_first_acct wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good to know. Thanks.

The exact thresholds aren't known, but they're pretty low: https://www.awesomedynamic.com/amazon-prime-wardrobe/ mentions thresholds of 30 PPM (and 500 PPM for just Materially Different Complaint Rate) to get into some seller program. Presumably the threshold rate for suspension is an order of magnitude or so higher than that. 500 PPM would be one complaint every 2,000 orders.

A facetious/serious question: If "Sold by Amazon" had too high a rate of reported counterfeits, could it be kicked off the Amazon platform?

But seriously, my point is that "Sold by Amazon" should have a counterfeit rate of near zero. I'm willing to help QC third-party sellers. But "Sold by Amazon" should do its own QC. Just as "Sold by Walmart" does (for now).

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

#106

Post by ikeboy »

beerandt wrote: post #99
ikeboy wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.ycombinat…

I know they claim that, and it may be their official policy, but it obviously is not working in practice. Either that, or it's become direct fraud in their part. And it may work to benefit Amazon in finding problematic sellers, and it may scare most legit sellers to never supply fake products. But it doesn't seem to do anything to actually benefit sellers or buyers, at this point. For one, I suspect resold returned i…

You don't see the counterfactual where Amazon didn't enforce much and counterfeiting was much more prevalent. Without knowing how much counterfeiting would take place without enforcement, you can't say enforcement is useless.

I see the other side: I was suspended after false counterfeit complaints from tp-link, and was forced to sue them in federal court. In my case, Amazon suspended me despite having provided extensive proof of authenticity, simply because the brand didn't want me to legally resell their product and was willing to lie about it.

I agree that returns are a weakness, where counterfeits can enter the supply chain. But returns are a low percentage of sales, and counterfeit returns (fraud) are a low percentage of returns. Seems like a relatively small problem.

Multiple quantity from different sellers shouldn't be combined. If they're in the same warehouse they would just ship from the same seller. I don't know for sure how Amazon handles it but again, doesn't seem like a huge problem.

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

#107

Post by mariomariomario »

ikeboy wrote: post #88
msbarnett wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.ycombinat…

This is true, except it doesn't help the problem at hand. The problem at hand being that people are still receiving counterfeit products in the meantime.

Knowing how Seller Performance works, they aren't about to close off a listing that is doing $nn-K revenue per month because of a couple of copyright reports. The economics simply don't make sense for Amazon to poison the inventory of a seller because of a couple of reports, to fix this problem Amazon truly needs to figure out a way to verify the validity of inventory sent in to their warehouses.

That's a question that I don't have an answer to, but I do hope that someone from Amazon is really working on it. Inventory commingling and a myriad of other issues present in the processes of selling on Amazon are the reason that I decided to not pursue FBA further.

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

#108

Post by ikeboy »

my_first_acct wrote: post #105
ikeboy wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exact thresholds aren't known, but they're pretty low: https://www.awesomedynamic.com/amazon-prime-wardrobe/ mentions thresholds of 30 PPM (and 500 PPM for just Materially Different Complaint Rate) to get into some seller program. Presumably the threshold rate for suspension is an order of magnitude or so higher than that. 500 PPM would be one complaint every 2,000 orders.

A facetious/serious question: If "Sold by Amazon" had too high a rate of reported counterfeits, could it be kicked off the Amazon platform? But seriously, my point is that "Sold by Amazon" should have a counterfeit rate of near zero. I'm willing to help QC third-party sellers. But "Sold by Amazon" should do its own QC. Just as "Sold by Walmart" does (for now).

Sold by Amazon probably does have a very low rate. They're many times bigger than any third party seller, so the absolute number of counterfeits is probably higher.

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

#109

Post by didibus »

> 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.

> To fulfill your orders exclusively with your inventory, you can switch to the Amazon barcode at any time (see Changing your barcode setting below).

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

It seems vendors can choose to have their items commingled or not. Commingling allows them to possibly offer faster deliveries, and they don't need to add extra barcodes to their products.

Even if comingling is enabled, it seems it's not exactly what HN had made me believe. Amazon still tracks and separately manage each seller's inventory, but might choose to ship you another's seller item if it is closer to you for faster delivery. Again, sellers can opt out of this if they don't want it.

It seems some products aren't allowed to be commingled:

> To qualify, products must: Be in new condition. Have only one scannable barcode that is matched to one ASIN in the Amazon catalog. Have no expiration date. Not be consumable or topical products such as skin creams, shampoos, or cosmetics. Not be dangerous goods.

I think beyond offering sellers the option to opt out of comingling, I'd like to see it offered to buyers as well. At checkout, it could let me know that I have the choice to get it from my chosen vendor's stock which would result in X days delivery time. Or to get it from alternate vendor Y for Z faster days delivery.

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

#110

Post by jhbadger »

ikeboy wrote: post #43
lawkwok wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Product reviews are meant to be of the product, so it shouldn't matter which seller it is if you're all selling the same product.

Even for non-counterfeit books, Amazon defines "product" too broadly -- reviews for a book tend to combine both the printed and Kindle versions and you'll see people complaining about the formatting of the Kindle version on the page for the printed copy.
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