131–140 of 247 posts
Too many incentives are aligned within Amazon to continue to ignore counterfeits sold on their marketplace, and the only way I'll believe that such a unit is effective against such incentives is with independent audits.
If this was an honest attempt to clean house, surely Amazon would welcome audits with open arms.
Are fake listings a problem? Absolutely. But is it the primary issue? I'm not so sure. It seems like Amazon is doing all sorts of things but not actually addressing the root -- inventory co-mingling + sketchy 3rd party sellers that can come back overnight. Simply ending inventory co-mingling would likely handle a substantial portion of counterfeits since Amazon is sourcing their stock through standard channels. Amazo…
Politicians are tough on crime unless it's corporate crime I guess.
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This sounds litigation ready!
The copied brand owner would likely be very interested. That's direct harm to the brand.
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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Yeah, great question. Basically wrong flavor and texture. Visually looked quite similar but just had a cardboard consistency. Repeatedly compared vs. grocery store bought over a few months span of alternating purchases to confirm. It was somehow both immediately obvious and also subtle. My girlfriend eventually confirmed that something didn't seem right with it, so we started buying back-to-back orders alternating fr…
You're sure it was not a storage condition or age issue? I think you might be right in your theory that it was made by the correct company but intended for a different market and was made with a different formulation. Perhaps there's some arbitrage opportunity there. I guess I don't understand why someone would try to counterfeit something like cereal. Seems like it would be hard to get enough scale to make it worth…
Cereal is cheap, like really cheap, and name brand cereals like Raisin Bran go for nearly $9 a box.
If you've ever been in a discount store, or a liquidator with a consumer facing outlet, tons of counterfeit food, toiletries, etc flood their shelves.
Both the counterfeiter and the retailer benefit from selling counterfeit goods, and sometimes consumers either don't care or don't have enough information to tell the difference.
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Do you still have the counterfeit tube? It might be worthwhile to get in touch with your Attorney General’s Office. Doubly so if your AG is up for re-election. I imagine a lot of Attorneys General would jump at the chance to stand up to Amazon in defense of poor little baby bottoms and a media-friendly fact pattern like this could help bring about much-needed change at Amazon across all product categories.
Before calling the AG on this, how do you make sure that fake is fake in the first place? The major hurdle is that you do not even know and cannot know. Maybe the product is actually legit and the visual difference comes from temperature or whatever, and the rash appeared for a different reason. One avenue may be to contact the manufacturer with the lot number. If you try a new product and baby develops rashes or all…
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Do you still have the counterfeit tube? It might be worthwhile to get in touch with your Attorney General’s Office. Doubly so if your AG is up for re-election. I imagine a lot of Attorneys General would jump at the chance to stand up to Amazon in defense of poor little baby bottoms and a media-friendly fact pattern like this could help bring about much-needed change at Amazon across all product categories.
Before calling the AG on this, how do you make sure that fake is fake in the first place? The major hurdle is that you do not even know and cannot know. Maybe the product is actually legit and the visual difference comes from temperature or whatever, and the rash appeared for a different reason. One avenue may be to contact the manufacturer with the lot number. If you try a new product and baby develops rashes or all…
You have enough evidence to form a reasonable suspicion that you were sold a counterfeit item, and that it harmed your child. At this point, it would be the AG's job to figure out whether or not the product is fake, and whether or not follow up on your report.
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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…
As I understand it Amazon isn’t liable which to me makes no sense as it relates to defective products (everyone in the supply chain of a defective product should be jointly and severely liable).
I don’t care if it’s a 3rd party seller, Amazon should be liable as it hosts the product for sale, connects buyer/seller, processes payments, typically stores (and commingled) the products, and probably delivers the product.
The thing about punitive damages is they are a punishment, so eventually there will be a case where The jury hears how Amazon knowingly and willfully continued selling 3rd party items it knew were fake and dangerous (Fake DOT helmets; expired baby formula; fake baby car seats; exploding electronics; etc...)and the jury is going to drop the hammer. Even billions In punitive damages wouldn’t be a surprise, Amazon will appeal and it will come down to 10’s or 100’s of millions, but that’s when they will take real action to stop this. But it’s going to take time for this to happen.
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Speaking of incentives, why would Amazon want to place such onerous restrictions on their suppliers? Are consumers supposed to demand this? Would regulation require it? Amazon's success at being "the everything store" is fundamentally opposed to vetting their suppliers like this.
> why would Amazon want to place such onerous restrictions on their suppliers? Because they have a massive counterfeiting problem, as evident by this submission. To reiterate, what I suggested would only be onerous for the highest-risk suppliers. > Amazon's success at being "the everything store" is fundamentally opposed to vetting their suppliers like this. Certainly, Amazon is also fundamentally opposed to customer…
You can't even select "This item is a counterfeit/I suspect this item is a counterfeit" when filing for a return.
Surely if they cared about their customers becoming victims of counterfeiters, they'd give the customers who did become victims of counterfeiters on Amazon's marketplace the ability to return and report such items accordingly.
During my last return of a counterfeit item, I had to lie about the reason for the return during the return process. I had to choose between the vaguely related, but Amazon-approved, platitudes of "Wrong item was sent", "Inaccurate website description" or "Item defective or doesn't work".