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Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

blog.aboutamazon.com

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Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#191

Post by chrischen »

jtbayly wrote: post #181
chrischen wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is a direct beneficiary though. I’m not sure why they are not the seller. In that case can’t they just setup shell companies to sell shoddy, fake, or illegal items, take 99% of the profit, and claim they are not the seller?

No. The primary beneficiary is the seller. If you want to sue somebody you have to sue the seller. That’s what precedent says, anyway. Yes, Amazon could setup shell corporations, but if they got tracked back to Amazon, that would be the end of the company. Why not just setup a bunch of side businesses producing and selling legal things (like their batteries, clothes, etc. brands) and collect all the profit there, whi…

I guess that latter situation is my point. Even if they are not the primary beneficiary they are a large beneficiary of all these illicit products. I'd imagine that they are probably not a minor beneficiary either since they probably get a huge chunk of the sale off these mostly commodity products. For each cheap plastic widget they sell probably the majority goes to advertising + Amazon Prime + warehousing + shipping + customer support, and I'd imagine the actual a manufacturer gets the short end of that stick.

Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#192

Post by BurningFrog »

awakeasleep wrote: post #79
ummonk wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Second this - this needs to be litigated.

How many hours a week would a person need to dedicate to starting a lawsuit about something like this? Anyone have experience? Even if a law firm would do 100% of the work & charge on contingency, I bet it still takes 100+ hours for the average joe to research and find the firm to do that.

Ask a lawyer friend to refer you. They're pretty good at that. I imagine an initial 1/2 hour conversation will clarify a lot and cost nothing.

If you don't have a lawyer friend, find a friend who does.

Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#193

Post by jtbayly »

chrischen wrote: post #191
jtbayly wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The primary beneficiary is the seller. If you want to sue somebody you have to sue the seller. That’s what precedent says, anyway. Yes, Amazon could setup shell corporations, but if they got tracked back to Amazon, that would be the end of the company. Why not just setup a bunch of side businesses producing and selling legal things (like their batteries, clothes, etc. brands) and collect all the profit there, whi…

I guess that latter situation is my point. Even if they are not the primary beneficiary they are a large beneficiary of all these illicit products. I'd imagine that they are probably not a minor beneficiary either since they probably get a huge chunk of the sale off these mostly commodity products. For each cheap plastic widget they sell probably the majority goes to advertising + Amazon Prime + warehousing + shippin…

I agree that it’s horrible, but I only wanted to explain that lawsuits have already been tried many times.

Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#194

Post by bdowling »

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…

I assume this is the same defective water slide case:

https://www.casebriefs.com/blog/law/civil-procedure/civil-pr...

Here, the issue was whether the defendant manufacturer could amend their pleading to deny manufacturing the defective water slide after they had initially admitted it. The court found that they could. Subsequently, a special jury found that the defendant did not manufacture the water slide and the judge granted summary judgment for the defendant.

If I recall correctly, it was the installer that had gone out of business or was otherwise unreachable and the water slide was unmarked as to the true manufacturer, which left the plaintiffs (or their insurers) out of luck.

Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#195

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

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 comment demonstrates just how far Amazon has gone to shift the Overton Window[1] toward accepting counterfeits and outright fraud.

People will actually go out of their way to say things like "I don't mind being defrauded, I don't mind having my time wasted, I don't being fucking GASTLIGHTED, because I can just return the item(s) with ease."

Nothing against you personally.

But fuck that!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#197

Post by bobmaxup »

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…

I'll never order something I put on or in my body from Amazon again.

Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#198

Post by vayr »

gwittel wrote: post #27

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…

This is a hard problem to fix. The last statistic I read was that 52% of all items sold on Amazon were 3rd party sellers. Imagine even if 1% of the items by 3rd sellers were counterfeit, that's still millions of items.

I don't envy Amazon's position right now. They should have thought about this issue before opening 3rd party sellers but now they're dealing with the consequence in a huge scale

Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#199

Post by vayr »

ciarannolan wrote: post #44
gwittel wrote: post #27

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…

>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. Right, and for the reasons you listed, they simple do not care. They care only about appearing to care. As someone else linked in this thread, they announce some bullshit "investigative team" like this every 6 months or so.

I don't think they don't care -- this is a huge source of negative press & goes against company culture of putting the Customer above ALL else (including employees & their well being lol)

The problem is just that even a tiny percentage of bad-actors still make up millions of sales at Amazon's scale.

Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#200

Post by joering2 »

xphilter wrote: post #185
throwaway_jobs wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Impossible. Congress has given amazon a get-out-of-jail-free-card in rye form of an arbitration clause with no stare decisis and no public access to the harm or outcome.

Amazon strategically places their offices where most important Senators reside, creating thousands of jobs in process and getting simple leverage - either you do what Mr. Bezos says, or we will move our warehouse to another state. And then good luck during next election cycle, but don't run on "master of job creations" when you just caused your state 25,000 amazon jobs.

welcome to Kleptocracy.

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