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Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

blog.aboutamazon.com

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Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#111

Post by ThePowerOfFuet »

jbay808 wrote: post #49
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious about the incentive that leads to this. If you're going to print and sell counterfeit textbooks, why not use the actual content? Surely nearly every copy with a random other book will be returned. Is it possible that they meant to include the right content, but they counterfeit lots of books and have low quality control? My best guess is that they can easily grab a copy of a book's cover online, but actua…

I was also very confused. If you're going to sell a fake book, why not just fill it with blank pages? Why go to the extra effort? Did they really think I wasn't going to notice when I opened it and it was full of information about hamsters? Were they hoping I'd just put it on my bookshelf and never actually read it? We concluded that they probably run some kind of big automated print-on-demand counterfeiting operatio…

Amazon also prints many books on demand; could it simply have been a fuck-up at the printing facility, swapping covers for two print jobs?

Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#112

Post by throwaway_jobs »

raverbashing wrote: post #91
throwaway_jobs wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have a simpler explanation for that. Someone bought the tooling (injection moulds?), in an auction maybe But the company never sold them, so even they from the beginning reasonably believed they had in fact manufactured the slide. Had they sold the molds (which I don’t think a company would do bearing their mark without selling the actual mark as well) it would have actually helped their defense and helped them c…

Ah, those details were not clear from the original story. They could have assumed (at the start of the process) that it could have been a pre-dissolution built slide. But if they admit that, during the dissolution process their machinery wasn't sold that definitely goes against my theory.

FWIW I think your comment was in good faith and at minimum intellectually curious.

I asked my colleague similar questions when hearing about the case.

Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#113

Post by baybal2 »

rckoepke wrote: post #11

The categories of things that I've received counterfeit versions of on Amazon have been truly mind-blowing. It's been replacement HEPA filters, cat toys, even breakfast cereal. It's not just earphones/mics, batteries, usb cables, flash drives, extension cords, and other electronics. Who counterfeits breakfast cereal??? I've had this issue with both Quaker Oats and Raisin Bran. The scale of fraud is magnificent. And i…

> Who counterfeits breakfast cereal??? I've had this issue with both Quaker Oats and Raisin Bran. The scale of fraud is magnificent. And it really gaslights consumers; it took me forever to actually accept that I was eating an off-brand imitation of my favorite cereals.

Take a look on what is going in China for a fast forward look into the future.

What you see in China now is exactly that. Pro counterfeiters mostly make money on rarely contested, or completely uncontested, hard to trace, abandoned, or obscure niches. Nobody nowadays buys into Abibas, but quite a few seekers of highly hyped boutique stuff often buy into exotic goods fakes.

And on the other end of the spectrum, there are fake foods, and fake daily use goods, things few people would even mind being fake, or bothering to check for that.

Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#114

Post by tintor »

rckoepke wrote: post #11

The categories of things that I've received counterfeit versions of on Amazon have been truly mind-blowing. It's been replacement HEPA filters, cat toys, even breakfast cereal. It's not just earphones/mics, batteries, usb cables, flash drives, extension cords, and other electronics. Who counterfeits breakfast cereal??? I've had this issue with both Quaker Oats and Raisin Bran. The scale of fraud is magnificent. And i…

I would never buy online food or anything similar from Amazon, only directly from the manufacturer.

Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#115

Post by hitpointdrew »

throwaway_jobs wrote: post #34
rckoepke wrote: post #11

The categories of things that I've received counterfeit versions of on Amazon have been truly mind-blowing. It's been replacement HEPA filters, cat toys, even breakfast cereal. It's not just earphones/mics, batteries, usb cables, flash drives, extension cords, and other electronics. Who counterfeits breakfast cereal??? I've had this issue with both Quaker Oats and Raisin Bran. The scale of fraud is magnificent. And i…

Here is one (plus the story of a defective product lawsuit behind it). A water slide. The type that bolts down into concrete for use with pools. If the first thing in your mind is...isn’t that something from the 70’s/80’s...yes it is. So the counterfeiter must have molded the entire slide (complete with the company logo that was embossed into the slide itself) thing is that company was dissolved back in the 80’s. So…

> One day Amazon is going to get smacked with such a lawsuit resulting in billions in punitive damages, then and only then will you see real effort on their part to curb this behavior.

IIRC at least one person (probably more) has died already from counterfeits on Amazon. I read one where I guy died in a motorcycle crash, it was found that his helmet (which he bought off Amazon) was a fraud and wasn't/didn't meet DOT standards, even though it had the DOT sticker.

Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#117

Post by panitaxx »

I started buying clothing from the brand itself (eg shoes directly from adidas, etc). Some appliances also direct. I sometimes buy food from Walmart but only if they are the retailer (they don't seem to commingle inventories). I bought some ssd directly from Samsung site. Another problem with amazon is the sheer quantity of not-counterfeit but cheap unknown knockoffs. It seems more like an expensive AliExpress.

Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#118

Post by kube-system »

snarf21 wrote: post #41
rckoepke wrote: post #11

The categories of things that I've received counterfeit versions of on Amazon have been truly mind-blowing. It's been replacement HEPA filters, cat toys, even breakfast cereal. It's not just earphones/mics, batteries, usb cables, flash drives, extension cords, and other electronics. Who counterfeits breakfast cereal??? I've had this issue with both Quaker Oats and Raisin Bran. The scale of fraud is magnificent. And i…

The issue is so simple to solve and they don't have to have a crimes unit to do it. Simply segment reviews and ratings based on seller. All you have to do is have each seller put a scannable sticker on each product based each batch going through intake. You can even still colocate. Then all the returns and bad reviews go to the right person and they can just get banned. This is not rocket surgery.

Amazon has a program for this:

https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency

Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#119

Post by throwawayiionqz »

throwawayiionqz wrote: post #29

I ordered a well-known baby-bottom cream. The product gave her never-expanding rashes for a few days. Then I realized the color slightly differs from the same cream bought at the local pharmacy, and that many 1 star reviews also report knockoffs version of the cream. In some cases review pictures show that the packaging itself is clearly fake. I write a 1-star review explaining the above, and saying that the anxious…

To add some context, the "critical" reviews of the product [1] describes multiple instances of the problem.

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Aquaphor-Healing-Ointment-Advanced-Pr...

Edit: Searching with "yellow" or "fake" brings more reviews with the same issue. In the mean time parents keep receiving it and applying it on their newborn.

Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#120

Post by wombat-man »

rckoepke wrote: post #11

The categories of things that I've received counterfeit versions of on Amazon have been truly mind-blowing. It's been replacement HEPA filters, cat toys, even breakfast cereal. It's not just earphones/mics, batteries, usb cables, flash drives, extension cords, and other electronics. Who counterfeits breakfast cereal??? I've had this issue with both Quaker Oats and Raisin Bran. The scale of fraud is magnificent. And i…

This is one of the reasons I don't buy a lot of stuff from amazon anymore. I don't have a printer to make return labels and easy returns are cold comfort. At the end of the day I just prefer to go in person to a store or order from a big box store. As long as you stay away from their weird 3rd party sellers, I feel pretty sure I'm getting real cereal or whatever.
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