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Counterfeit books “shipped and sold by Amazon”?

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

#121

Post by beerandt »

didibus wrote: post #103
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…

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…

Except go read the seller's forums. Sellers who (claim to) opt out are constantly complaining that their product still gets mixed in. Even sellers who do their own asin / personal barcodes have problems with it.

Amazon is either ignoring the preference when it suits them, or has significant flaws in how they're implementing the policy.

Either way, they're destroying their brand reputation.

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

#122

Post by DiabloD3 »

beerandt wrote: post #70
toast0 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Sam's Club is Walmart, though.

I can buy Sam's Club brands and/or sizes first party through Walmart.com, and I could do so before the Jet.com-ification of the Walmart website... it just wasn't well known until recently.

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

#123

Post by TylerE »

jhbadger wrote: post #110
ikeboy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The one thing that really frustrates me is how poorly they curate editions. This is especially bad with translated works. Like - you're on the hardcopy version of a nice, modern translation, then you click over to the e-book version and it's some random bowlderdized public domain version from 150 years ago.

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

#125

Post by stephencanon »

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…

Certainly makes for a convenient excuse for Amazon.

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

#126

Post by 4A414B56 »

shawnz wrote: post #118
noodlesUK wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can’t identify which seller your product came from. That’s the whole problem here.

But when you return the defective product, Amazon can see what seller it came from.

Counterfeit products are still a huge problem on their platform. Great QC.

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

#127

Post by 4A414B56 »

TylerE wrote: post #123
jhbadger wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The one thing that really frustrates me is how poorly they curate editions. This is especially bad with translated works. Like - you're on the hardcopy version of a nice, modern translation, then you click over to the e-book version and it's some random bowlderdized public domain version from 150 years ago.

This is a problem with everything being sold on amazon. I read reviews for a stamp (dates for ISO8601) and very few of the reviews are relevant to the product I was looking at. Almost none of them made sense for the product I was viewing, actually.

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

#128

Post by heavyset_go »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #20
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.

I was recently looking for some dusk masks to have handy due to fires in my area. It's such a clusterfuck when you look on Amazon. They have special labels like "Amazon's choice" or "Editor Recommended" which have nothing to do with the efficacy of the mask. A lot of masks make claims about being NIOSH approved and N95 certified, but they don't provide the approval numbers and NIOSH has no records of the manufacturer…

> A lot of masks make claims about being NIOSH approved and N95 certified, but they don't provide the approval numbers and NIOSH has no records of the manufacturer. I even saw some masks that supplied an invalid NIOSH approval number (it had been revoked in 2014).

IMO, this is criminal.

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

#129

Post by ansible »

markus_zhang wrote: post #79

I have also noticed a decline of book quality since a few years ago. I'm not a frequent buyer but I noticed that two books that I purchased were either not clearly cut or have ALL characters badly printed. Both were purchased directly from Amazon. I'm really reluctant to purchase any $50+ technical books from Amazon nowadays. I mean it does have some decent discount but the probability to get a low quality book is to…

I don't know if I'll buy any more technical books anymore, even in electronic form.

O'Reilly doesn't sell e-books directly, which made me mad. You can get their subscription service, or buy the paper version. I ended up buying the book I wanted from Google.

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

#130

Post by beerandt »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #122
beerandt wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Sam's Club is Walmart, though. I can buy Sam's Club brands and/or sizes first party through Walmart.com, and I could do so before the Jet.com-ification of the Walmart website... it just wasn't well known until recently.

I know... that's part of what makes it so interesting.

There are still 3rd party sellers somehow selling Walmarts own product cheaper via Sam's Club. Or sometimes for products that aren't available on both public facing sites. (Sam's and Walmart)

Which is probably why Walmart made the effort to better integrate the brands.

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