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Amazon Liable for Defective Third-Party Products Rules CA Appellate Court

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Re: Amazon Liable for Defective Third-Party Products Rules CA Appellate Court

#151

Post by epanchin »

xoxoy wrote: post #60

Shopping on Amazon has become unbearable for like 95% of categories these days. The experience is like rummaging through some shady tourist market with a dozen stall owners trying to scam you. The pricing is all whack with lots of counterfeits that have gamed the ranking and review systems. It’s just not worth trying to filter and find things that are actually competitively priced and sold directly by Amazon. Have no…

I now use amazon to buy Anker products and that's it. I recently was shopping for a heart rate monitor - the Wahoo TICKR X was out of stock everywhere except Amazon. I couldn't get over the feeling that it was in stock only because it was fake, so ordered a Garmin from a bike store instead. There is no store I trust less.

Re: Amazon Liable for Defective Third-Party Products Rules CA Appellate Court

#152

Post by yomly »

heavyset_go wrote: post #110
an_opabinia wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has Amazon systemically refuses refunds for people who try to return counterfeit goods? It definitely doesn’t care if you don’t even notice. But they do the returns if you ask. The former is what needs to change.

You can't even report that the reason for your return is that you suspect or know that the item you received is counterfeit during the return process. If Amazon cared about a problem this big, they would collect metrics from customers on it.

When I left Amazon the fastest growing team in the country was the antifraud team and they already had like 2 floors of agents working on it. But I also heard that issues which hadn't occured 3 times in a row were dropped on the floor because of Amazon's scale.

This was quite a few years ago now, I can only imagine Amazon is spending more money on the problem now vs then.

not to defend Amazon, but maybe the scale of the problem is too big - maybe there is a long tail of fraudsters similar to the long tail of illicit content on youtube.

Re: Amazon Liable for Defective Third-Party Products Rules CA Appellate Court

#153

Post by yomly »

x0x0 wrote: post #97
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only within their refund period. I have had so many products break down after their return window. Most recent example: Expensive chargers which stopped work within a few months. The seller’s page was gone. Customer support was of no use. This seems to be a common pattern. Fly by night sellers whose pages disappear within a few days.

"duracell" cr2032s -- those little pancake batteries for your car keyfob -- that die within 4 months. Which is weird, because the duracells at my hardware store last like 5 years.

When you buy these fakes from Amazon are they sold by Amazon? Or are they 3P sellers?

Or is the problem that FBA sellers are infecting legitimate "sold by Amazon" inventory?

Re: Amazon Liable for Defective Third-Party Products Rules CA Appellate Court

#154

Post by manderley »

manigandham wrote: post #127
vkou wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I buy a widget from Amazon, I'm not actually getting a widget from some particular merchant on Amazon. I'm getting a widget that was pulled out of a co-mingled inventory box at some Amazon warehouse. Amazon owns the entire shopping experience, end-to-end. They run the website. They design the website. They handle payments. They advertise the items ("Customers who bought Foo also bought Bar"). They handle shippin…

No, you buy direct from Amazon or from 3rd-party sellers. These sellers can store and ship by themselves, or pay to have it stored and shipped by Amazon (this is called FBA - Fulfilled by Amazon) because it's faster and qualifies immediately for Prime which customers want. You can tell the difference when you buy, it's just not blatantly obviously unless the main Amazon listing is out of stock and you click on the "o…

What that person is saying is that you can apparently get co-mingled inventory by a third-party even when buying from Amazon itself.

Re: Amazon Liable for Defective Third-Party Products Rules CA Appellate Court

#155

Post by johnchristopher »

jarym wrote: post #9

Common sense. Amazon want to ‘own’ the customer relationship and go to great lengths to that end then it follows they will have to ‘own’ any liability too. Imagine you went into a retail store with a faulty product and they were to try fob you off saying you need to go to their supplier/wholesaler/manufacturer. It mostly doesn’t work that way thanks to most consumer protection laws in place.

It happened once to me.

I bought a Sonata Antec PC case ~15 years ago. Quite expensive, first (and last) time I shelled out so much for a case.

The PSU was weird, it didn't work with my new mobo but did work with an older one. Got the mobo sent back for checking (I had to pay extra fees for “repairs“, bought in the same shop), came back okay.

A week of intense pondering with one of my friend on the floor of my bedroom. Two weeks top of back and forth with the shop.

Then it hit us: the 24watts 4-pin sugar was missing internal cabling. This explained the hit and off working.

Back to the store with the case and the PSU (again). I am told they won't replace it because it's not an hidden defect, it's a “physical damage” and I'd have to send it back myself to the manufacturer and they can't do anything.

I bought a 20€ no-name PSU on the spot and never again bought anything from this shop.

To this day I am still using all the clot I have on people asking for PC advice to convince them not to go there.

Re: Amazon Liable for Defective Third-Party Products Rules CA Appellate Court

#156

Post by yummypaint »

icebergwarrior wrote: post #109
ComputerGuru wrote: post #65

I’ve finally figured out how to buy non-counterfeit items on Amazon: try selling it yourself and see if Amazon says 3rd party listings are allowed. In the very few cases where you’re not allowed to proceed to create a listing, it is safe to purchase.

I see this type of comment all the time, but I've never purchased anything but legitimate items off of Amazon. What are you buying that you consistently run into fakes / knockoffs?

I would never buy any discreet component of any kind from online marketplaces in general. It's gotten so bad that sometimes you just get packaging with no silicon inside. For some components the prevalence of fraud is nearly 100%. Supply chain integrity is a majorly underappreciated value of traditional vendors.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23815839

Re: Amazon Liable for Defective Third-Party Products Rules CA Appellate Court

#157

Post by b112 »

b112 wrote: post #150
freeone3000 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Co-mingling with counterfeits seems to not be present in Canada - most merchants don't want to deal with filling out customs forms, FBA barely exists here, and most items sold on Amazon.ca are either sold by the manufacturer or by Amazon.ca. still a ton of unknown brands doing self-sales, but you're at much less risk of counterfeits so far.

Eh? I run into FBA all the time on .ca. It is rarer than on .com, I agree there, but barely exists seems inaccurate. What does annoy, are all the reshippers which charge sometimes even 10x more for a product. 4x the price is typical. All they do is list a product on .ca, from .com, and wait for an order. Then they buy from .com, receive amd reship. Amazon just seems so shady. Sneaky. As if their entire platform is ge…

An example of something I checked, before ordering from .com:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07ZZ3W2H8/

versus:

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07ZZ3W2H8/

I've occasionally seen such listings at 10x, but commonly 2x-3x is common (as with this listing, after exchange). You also lose all 'shipped by Amazon' protections, and if the listing at .ca was FBA, you'd have free shipping in .ca.

(As a note for .com / US users, Prime membership on .ca does not give any discount when shipping to Canada from .com, as Prime membership is restricted to the .XX property which you buy it on. EG, .ca in my case.

Nor does buying a .com prime membership help, for that only gives speed/discounts/free shipping for US addresses.

When I travel to the US for the winter, I basically have to axe my .ca prime membership, and buy a .com membership. So as a result, I don't buy yearly memberships. And when I travel to/from, I cancel .ca early, and .com early, upon return.

It's not like I order a lot of stuff 3 days before leaving, or while traveling, or the second I arrive.

A result of all this is that Amazon loses out on sometimes 4 months of Prime membership, which they would have if it just worked everywhere.

Re: Amazon Liable for Defective Third-Party Products Rules CA Appellate Court

#158

Post by pjmlp »

johnchristopher wrote: post #155
jarym wrote: post #9

Common sense. Amazon want to ‘own’ the customer relationship and go to great lengths to that end then it follows they will have to ‘own’ any liability too. Imagine you went into a retail store with a faulty product and they were to try fob you off saying you need to go to their supplier/wholesaler/manufacturer. It mostly doesn’t work that way thanks to most consumer protection laws in place.

It happened once to me. I bought a Sonata Antec PC case ~15 years ago. Quite expensive, first (and last) time I shelled out so much for a case. The PSU was weird, it didn't work with my new mobo but did work with an older one. Got the mobo sent back for checking (I had to pay extra fees for “repairs“, bought in the same shop), came back okay. A week of intense pondering with one of my friend on the floor of my bedroo…

In many countries that is sorted out via the consumer protection agency, links below for the German and Portuguese ones.

https://www.verbraucherzentrale.de/

https://www.consumidor.gov.pt/

And across Europe we have, https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/consumers/reso...

Usually those pesky shops get gently very quickly if you are willing to bring them into the fight.

Re: Amazon Liable for Defective Third-Party Products Rules CA Appellate Court

#159

Post by imglorp »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #93
stickfigure wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine you went into a retail store with a faulty product I understand where you are coming from, but there are lots of consignment stores and flea markets, at least in the middle parts of the US. The person you pay at the front counter simply records the transaction for the merchant. Amazon is a sort of cross between traditional retail and a consignment store, so it's not obvious (or "common sense") where product…

This is laid out in the judgement[1]. In California, if you are an integral part between the manufacturer and the consumer, especially if you are the one that "owns the relationship" you are on the hook for strict liability. [1] Starting from Page 17 -- https://cases.justia.com/california/court-of-appeal/2020-d07...

Then maybe this return policy will only apply to buyers in CA?

Re: Amazon Liable for Defective Third-Party Products Rules CA Appellate Court

#160

Post by cletus »

The next logical step here is that Amazon is also liable for the counterfeit products they sell and seemingly do absolutely nothing to police.

Consumers currently get blamed for this (eg [1]), sometimes through absolutely no fault of their own. Imagine walking into into Best Buy or Macys, buying something, and then getting in trouble for buying counterfeit goods.

Just watch how quickly that problem gets solved once Amazon is liable.

These companies really want the best of both worlds. Amazon wants to own the customer relationship but have none of the responsibilities ("we're a third party marketplace"). Uber wants to control what drivers do (as in, not drive for Lyft at the same time) but not have them as employees. Airbnb wants to run (illegal) hotels by arguing they aren't running hotels and it's really the hosts who are responsible.

It's all kind of ridiculous.

[1]: https://www.racked.com/2018/1/8/16849298/amazon-counterfeits...

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