Counterfeits on Amazon cost Warren bird feeder business $1.5M • Hacker News Board

Re: Counterfeits on Amazon cost Warren bird feeder business $1.5M

#71

Post by lotsofpulp » Wed, Dec 25, 2019, 11:58 PM UTC

occamrazor wrote: post #30

lotsofpulp wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they cared, they would let you filter for items only sold by Amazon.com and not commingle inventory. What they really want is for others to take all the inventory risk and liability and take a 15% cut of all purchases. They used to let you filter for items sold by Amazon.com, but they removed it, so I think that clearly proves their goal of being a platform rather than a retailer one can rely on for quality goods,…

I can still filter by vendor, at least on the European websites.

They let you filter by vendor, but they don’t let you choose Amazon.com.

Re: Counterfeits on Amazon cost Warren bird feeder business $1.5M

#72

Post by chmaynard » Wed, Dec 25, 2019, 11:58 PM UTC

The underlying problem, it seems to me, is that Amazon made a decision early on to do very little curation of the products they sell. During the years when they were mostly selling books from established publishers, this wasn't a big issue.

When Amazon began selling everything under the sun, the number of vendors exploded. In retrospect, Amazon should have made a big effort to carefully curate all these vendors and their products before listing them on Amazon.com. But that would have been very expensive and no one was telling Amazon they had do that.

The Amazon approach is to move fast and capture market share, without much regard for product quality or ethical concerns. Unfortunately, the rest of the tech industry seems to be following their lead.

Re: Counterfeits on Amazon cost Warren bird feeder business $1.5M

#73

Post by rladd » Wed, Dec 25, 2019, 11:58 PM UTC

Xamayon wrote: post #61

starpilot wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the cheap quartz movement that it comes with insufficiently accurate?

Accuracy is mostly fine in my experience, but the battery life is often poor and they tend to be relatively loud. I like quiet, so the noise is more than enough reason to swap the movement when easy imho.

I have a $12 Ikea clock that looks rather like a Swiss train clock (not exactly of course) and which keeps nearly perfect time and runs for over a year on one battery.

It is miles better than the $5 Ikea clock, but I see no reason to pay more since the $12 one looks good and runs perfectly well.

Re: Counterfeits on Amazon cost Warren bird feeder business $1.5M

#74

Post by jameson » Wed, Dec 25, 2019, 11:59 PM UTC

Why aren't these counterfeits and/or Amazon getting sued by the original companies?

Isn't this just a market competition if other company's able to make cheaper product out of original idea and does not violate the law?

I was under impression that any product without an IP (copyright, patent, etc) is subject to "counterfeits" case like this.

p.s. I'm not a lawyer

Re: Counterfeits on Amazon cost Warren bird feeder business $1.5M

#75

Post by lozenge » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 12:04 AM UTC

jameson wrote: post #74

Why aren't these counterfeits and/or Amazon getting sued by the original companies? Isn't this just a market competition if other company's able to make cheaper product out of original idea and does not violate the law? I was under impression that any product without an IP (copyright, patent, etc) is subject to "counterfeits" case like this. p.s. I'm not a lawyer

I couldn't read the article due to EU regulations.

The counterfeits are probably from China and China doesn't respect foreign IP, and they can probably open hundreds of shell businesses anyway so suing one or Amazon removing one will not help. Amazon has armies of lawyers and will argue they acted whenever they knew something was counterfeit, but as the website is automated they did not know ahead of time.

Counterfeit means it is violating trademark IP, meaning riding on the quality reputation of the brand while not meeting it.

Re: Counterfeits on Amazon cost Warren bird feeder business $1.5M

#76

Post by dman » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 12:04 AM UTC

ecommerceguy wrote: post #67

>>In a statement on its website, Amazon also said its employees “work hard every day to help ensure all products offered in our store are safe and authentic.” Bullshit. The front line employees that receive inbound product don't enforce any policy and actually Amazon encourages to deal with disputes only after a product is sold, shipped and a customer complains. That's the Bezos way. Fact. Let's discuss grocery produ…

I am surprised Amazon has not run into Food safety issues / lawsuits by now.

Re: Counterfeits on Amazon cost Warren bird feeder business $1.5M

#77

Post by lozenge » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 12:07 AM UTC

the8472 wrote: post #63

melzarei wrote: post #15

Link for EU https://outline.com/zCuTHm

Is this relevant to the EU? I see lots of complaints about amazon on the HN frontpage but they mostly focus on the US. I assume tighter regulation and import tariffs on the other side of the atlantic would result in amazon's product selection looking different and perhaps getting counterfeits in is more onerous.

I haven't had any issues in the UK, and I suspect it's just the same effort to list on US and UK websites so why not go for the bigger site.

Re: Counterfeits on Amazon cost Warren bird feeder business $1.5M

#78

Post by mschuster91 » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 12:16 AM UTC

dman wrote: post #76

ecommerceguy wrote: post #67

>>In a statement on its website, Amazon also said its employees “work hard every day to help ensure all products offered in our store are safe and authentic.” Bullshit. The front line employees that receive inbound product don't enforce any policy and actually Amazon encourages to deal with disputes only after a product is sold, shipped and a customer complains. That's the Bezos way. Fact. Let's discuss grocery produ…

I am surprised Amazon has not run into Food safety issues / lawsuits by now.

Hard to ship fake perishable goods via Amazon. Food fraud is way more lucrative on bigger scales.

Re: Counterfeits on Amazon cost Warren bird feeder business $1.5M

#79

Post by ecommerceguy » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 12:16 AM UTC

dman wrote: post #76

ecommerceguy wrote: post #67

>>In a statement on its website, Amazon also said its employees “work hard every day to help ensure all products offered in our store are safe and authentic.” Bullshit. The front line employees that receive inbound product don't enforce any policy and actually Amazon encourages to deal with disputes only after a product is sold, shipped and a customer complains. That's the Bezos way. Fact. Let's discuss grocery produ…

I am surprised Amazon has not run into Food safety issues / lawsuits by now.

As frequently as I've seen BBQ sauce in glass containers, for instance, 1 starred as shattered on delivery, I am too. To be fair, these items should not have been placed within FBA in the first place, according to "policy". Inbound employees are supposed to filter products for policy violations (specifically in this instance liquid in glass containers over 4ozs). Not the employees fault..?, they are overwhelmed.

Just 1 of many examples we run into as a fulfillment service.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Re: Counterfeits on Amazon cost Warren bird feeder business $1.5M

#80

Post by ecommerceguy » Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 12:17 AM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #78

dman wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am surprised Amazon has not run into Food safety issues / lawsuits by now.

Hard to ship fake perishable goods via Amazon. Food fraud is way more lucrative on bigger scales.

You'd be surprised how much 3rd party grocery is sold via FBA... It's a nice income stream done correctly.