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Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

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Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#101

Post by gae_supeu »

sdrothrock wrote: post #66
shard wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some counterpoints and comments. 1. So many legit items come from China that as a consumer you can't dismiss something out of hand just because it came from China. 3. Huawei is a Chinese name, Xiaomi is a Chinese name. See #1. 4. This is a legitimate point. The company did not optimize their name for a non-Chinese audience. I think the main thrust of why that comment has racist tones is because it feels like the main…

Great comments, but I think I disagree with some of them. :) > 1. So many legit items come from China that as a consumer you can't dismiss something out of hand just because it came from China. This is true, but I don't think it's a counterpoint. Regardless of how many legitimate products come out of China, the fact remains that the huge, huge majority of counterfeit products are from China. So if you're looking at a…

> > Actually, I don't know if you did it on purpose, but nihaobaobaomao is a great name... It's very cute and sounds like "Hello bundle kitty"... > You caught me. :P > I couldn't bring myself to type something really stereotypically racist.

Hello cat buns!? Of course that's racist; accusing people of eating cats....

:)

(Yeah, that's how I read bao at first...)

More seriously, consider Fenix or Anker; they have "short professional" names, but are not particularly western (esp. the spelling). Both are newer companies, based in China, sell fairly heavily on Amazon, and are frankly some of the best providers of their product niches.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#102

Post by prepend »

sk5t wrote: post #78
prepend wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree in general, but literally all you have to do is reverse image search new product listings against existing products and then add a call out to manually review this. This isn’t even complicated stuff. To get fancy you could compare against the millions of known frauds and apply that to new products. The thing that bugs me is that they do nothing. This stupid “it’s all on you to register your brand and yadda ya…

If simple image matching is effective, scammers will just rotate/warp/tint their images. These techniques might also take the legs out from an MT approach. Sellers might also get a product online with one image, then later change to another/reorganize the album.

Perhaps, but that’s harder than you think. Look at all the shit Getty does to find images that have alters, changes, stuff like that.

My point is that they aren’t doing anything. You point out a couple of edge conditions as a reason not to try. Even reducing fakes by 20% would be great.

If this cost Amazon money they would be trying to stop it.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#103

Post by prepend »

megy wrote: post #88
prepend wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is Amazon not actively seeking out patterns of counterfeiters and suggesting this to sellers. Just doing simple image machine learning should get 90% of scammers. He AWS team is great about this. Looking for abnormalities. Looking for posted AWS keys. Proactively. The retail guys need to get some of the cloud guy smarts. Or ethics. Either/or will help stop this. I don’t sell, but I can barely buy from amazon beca…

> simple image machine learning When did this become an acceptable statement?

A couple years ago.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#104

Post by Keverw »

I always thought the counterfeit good program was fulfillment by Amazon mixing items with the same UPC code.

I ordered a power supply once and it had all chinese writing on it, and plus it didn't power up unless I kept turning it and fiddled with the connector. Was concerned, so sent it back. Didn't want it to catch on fire. It had a English brand name on the listing though too.

I was looking at new earpods, and even in the reviews people mentioned they got fakes. https://www.amazon.com/Apple-MD827LL-EarPods-Remote-Mic/dp/B... - I went to a local walmart instead and bought it online. Even Walmart, NewEgg and Sears website's have the same program as Amazon with counterfeits.

I don't trust them as much as I did when shopping online. The NBC nightly news did a story about this last week. https://youtu.be/klbPhwE44hI

"Ships from and sold by Amazon" I guess to look for... I still use Amazon for AWS and Kindle though... But for Physical products I feel like I got to be more careful. Edit: It looks like from "0xcde4c3db" Post, it still can happen even if sold by Amazon. Wow.

One of the things they recommended to do is to buy directly from the brand's website, which is kinda annoying since need a bunch of accounts, and Amazon Prime is a nice benefit too you can't use externally. Which is a great thing for digital nomads who don't want to wait for a package in the same area too long.

Another thing is fake memory too. SD Cards and flash drives. If you search "2TB USB flash drive" on Amazon and scroll down some. There's some 2-2.5 star ones where some of the reviews mention it's fake. One of them even mentioned no company currently makes a 2TB USB Flash drives. However they do make 2TB USB SSD's.

Plus I wouldn't want to try your luck with some of these items, as if you they are fake and you return it. I'm unsure if Amazon counts those returns towards the total returns before they close your account. I wouldn't want to risk it and be proactive. If i'm unsure about a item, it's less of a headache to just buy elsewhere.

I hope they solve this somehow, as Amazon is really convenience and I really want to trust them more. There's really no other online store like them that's a one stop for all. Still like Amazon but got to be more careful with all these stories lately.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#105

Post by alex_anglin »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #72
fpvracing wrote: post #18

I designed a hardware product but haven't brought it to market because even if it is successful, Chinese manufacturers will reverse engineer it and then have a cheaper clone on the market within weeks, long before I can recoup even the cost of manufacturing, let alone make a profit. And since I can't afford to pursue legal action, it seems pointless to manufacture the product, and everybody loses. I wonder how much i…

If you're not going to manufacture the product yourself, have you considered either: - doing a Kickstarter to get people to prepay? That way at least your first batch can be paid for before you shell out any money, OR - just giving away the design so at least your product sees the light of day, even if there's no financial gain for you?

> - just giving away the design so at least your product sees the light of day, even if there's no financial gain for you?

Do you work for free?

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#106

Post by mapgrep »

NathanKP wrote: post #24

Full disclosure I work for Amazon (on the web services side). The author of this article clearly doesn't know much about selling on Amazon, because what he is asking for is possible. It's called the Amazon Brand Registry. You can contact the infringment team using the details here and initiate the process of getting your brand / ASIN locked so that other people can't sell it without your permission: https://www.amazo…

You didn’t even read his post before replying. He specifically mentions Brand Registry.

Sad to see this poor level of attention to a well written customer complaint from Amazon.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#107

Post by tzs »

sitkack wrote: post #65

They sold me a counterfeit Horowitz and Hill [0], since it was outside of the return window the support person basically said, "you have an interesting memento". [0] https://artofelectronics.net/the-book/counterfeit-editions/

I assume mine is counterfeit, since it was $42.50 for the hardback, from a seller on AbeBooks (College Booksstore of Newark, Delaware) who no longer appears to exist.

If it is a counterfeit, it is flawless as far as I can tell. It has none of the physical problems listed on that link. They only thing suspicious is the price.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#108

Post by rahimnathwani »

alex_anglin wrote: post #105
rahimnathwani wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're not going to manufacture the product yourself, have you considered either: - doing a Kickstarter to get people to prepay? That way at least your first batch can be paid for before you shell out any money, OR - just giving away the design so at least your product sees the light of day, even if there's no financial gain for you?

> - just giving away the design so at least your product sees the light of day, even if there's no financial gain for you? Do you work for free?

fpvracing has already worked for free: spent effort to design a product, without any revenue, and apparently now having given up hope of getting any revenue.

I made two suggestions: one of which might provide a path to revenue, and another which, whilst providing no revenue, would also cost nothing, and require virtually no additional effort beyond that already expended.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#109

Post by nsx147 »

I have sold on Amazon for about 3 years now, over 2000+ skus FBA. The items I sell are pretty easy to counterfeit (much easier than OPs). There have been plenty of sellers come in and undercut price and subsequently destroy my products ratings because customers received fakes.

I started moving my products into the Brand Registry and all of a sudden the counterfeit sellers started disappearing...and now they don't exist anymore. So at one point a few years ago I was on this guys side and was starting to write up cease & desists but I believe Amazon is getting better at it. Haven't seen any counterfeit sellers on my listings that last for more than 30 days in a while.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#110

Post by Keverw »

ceejayoz wrote: post #93
bitmapbrother wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is the new eBay as I like to say. Ever try searching for a Chromecast on Amazon? The number of Chinese counterfeits available is staggering. https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_1_6?url=search-alias... And since Amazon profits from these third party sellers they are complicit.

Those don't look like counterfeits.

https://www.amazon.com/Display-Wishpower-Receiver-Miracast-A...

Wishpower is the brand, yet Chrome logo. Supports Airplay, I thought that was Apple exclusive? 2.3 stars.

Does seem odd to me, unless by some coincidence they licensed the Chrome logo from Google and Airplay from Apple and then also happened to get badly reviewed.

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