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

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

#251

Post by irrational » Mon, Oct 14, 2019, 1:32 PM UTC

Shipped and sold by Amazon is meaningless. Just search for "Amazon 3rd party commingling" Basically everything with the same UPC or SKU code is put into the same bin in the warehouses, regardless of where it came from. So legit and counterfeit inventory is stored in the same bin. When you order something it is the luck of the draw (literally) what you will get.

This is a problem for anything Amazon sells, not just books. I play board games and counterfeit board games are very very common. So much so that I wouldn't recommend anyone buy a boardgame from Amazon. Buy them from Cool Stuff Inc, Miniature Market, Cardhaus, etc. instead.

Incidentally, just this past week we allowed our Prime membership to lapse and don't plan on renewing it. With problems like this one, its just not worth it anymore.

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

#252

Post by criddell » Mon, Oct 14, 2019, 1:33 PM UTC

nextos wrote: post #36

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.

My family gets several Amazon packages every week and I don't think we've received a single counterfeit or gray market item. We have had other problems with our orders but Amazon has always fixed the problem very quickly.

Some problems they seem unable to fix. I have a Nespresso machine and a few times now I've ordered a decaff selection and every single time they send me the caffeinated version of whatever I order. I call them and they refund the order. They've probably sent 16 sleeves of coffee for free (worth around $150) and have never sent the product I've actually ordered. It feels a little wrong to take advantage of their incompetence like this, but hey, free coffee!

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

#253

Post by xkcd-sucks » Mon, Oct 14, 2019, 1:41 PM UTC

wenc wrote: post #102

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.

Some brands, like FiiO (high end audio gear made by a Chinese company), have a web portal for checking authenticity of UUID "serial" codes

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

#254

Post by godarni » Mon, Oct 14, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC

toxik wrote: post #216

emerongi wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What they also do is that they sell a quality product for 1-2 years, get good reviews and then switch to inferior materials. Luckily the review system can catch this, as long as you look at recent reviews and the seller isn't buying any new reviews.

I find this happening everywhere. Loss leader, great product, next season the product cost the same and is now crap. Anecdote: in my country they sell Toppits brand cling film, and it used to be great. Now it’s absolutely useless! Doesn’t self adhere at all.

Not familiar with that brand of cling wrap, but they probably reformulated from PVDC to LDPE like Saran did due to toxicity concerns.

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

#255

Post by klyrs » Mon, Oct 14, 2019, 2:05 PM UTC

billpollock wrote: post #66

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…

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

This sounds very much like amazon is actively participating in conspiracy to mail fraud, across state lines. Have you called the FBI?

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

#256

Post by sithadmin » Mon, Oct 14, 2019, 2:20 PM UTC

philjohn wrote: post #212

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…

Indeed - and there have been cases of dangerous goods being shipped, e.g. counterfeit chargers. I've stopped buying things from Amazon and instead gone back to using bricks and mortar stores with online presences and do click and collect, there's just too much crap to sift through these days.

I've found that (at least when it comes to lower-end electronics) even brick and mortars appear to have supply chain problems that allow counterfeit items into stores en masse. In the USA, I've encountered things like counterfeit Microsoft mice at Microcenter, and counterfeit Audio Technica earbuds at Fry's Electronics (both confirmed as fakes by the manufacturer). I'm starting to suspect there are other cases of this that I simply haven't noticed.

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

#257

Post by sithadmin » Mon, Oct 14, 2019, 2:25 PM UTC

xkcd-sucks wrote: post #253

wenc wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some brands, like FiiO (high end audio gear made by a Chinese company), have a web portal for checking authenticity of UUID "serial" codes

Many pharmaceutical manufacturers offer the same sort of online verification portal, especially for products sold outside the USA.

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

#258

Post by lmpostor » Mon, Oct 14, 2019, 2:25 PM UTC

jakobegger wrote: post #196

swang wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thanks for this. when they released their new twitter version, i started getting all these pages where it would error out and none of the reload buttons would work. couldn't search the cause for this very well. i can't believe the resolution to this is to force users to reload yet again to load the site... ugh.

Whenever I get that error on my iPhone, I can just press the browsers reload button, and it works. (The reload button displayed on the page does not work)

lmao and I thought it was just the apps I was using, glad to know it is Twitter

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

#259

Post by astura » Mon, Oct 14, 2019, 2:31 PM UTC

buildbot wrote: post #183

buckminster wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They ship everything like that, including 30k cameras

And glass products.

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

#260

Post by astura » Mon, Oct 14, 2019, 2:35 PM UTC

zifnab06 wrote: post #203

blibble wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

similarly when I needed to replace my smoke alarm batteries I considered buying replacements off amazon (9V ones are pretty expensive) I decided against as I didn't want some counterfeit ripoff with weird failure modes if this sort of consumer behaviour becomes common it will be the death knell for their retail business

I debated Amazon for this but decided to go to a hardware store instead. Found out they make smoke alarms with 10 year lithium batteries now, and they're not that much more expensive.

In some states (NY is one) those 10 year battery ones are the only ones legal to sell.

https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2019/04/01/n...