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Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

blog.aboutamazon.com

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Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#101

Post by jacques_chester »

ConcernedCoder wrote: post #62
jacques_chester wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn’t this going to be true of any “pure” retailer? No. First-party retailers don't generally commingle stock with other third-party retailers. They typically have few suppliers, often one supplier, for each good. That's for many reasons, but it also makes it easy for them to identify who sent them counterfeits. Amazon is discovering what old-fashioned retailers learned long ago: customers do not give a fuck who, u…

yes! and have you thought about working in politics?

I did and eventually ran against my former boss (and came second last).

I wasn't very good at it. But I learned a lot.

Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#102

Post by jacques_chester »

bcassedy wrote: post #47
jacques_chester wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn’t this going to be true of any “pure” retailer? No. First-party retailers don't generally commingle stock with other third-party retailers. They typically have few suppliers, often one supplier, for each good. That's for many reasons, but it also makes it easy for them to identify who sent them counterfeits. Amazon is discovering what old-fashioned retailers learned long ago: customers do not give a fuck who, u…

Walmart's online store is a mess of 3rd party options now too. I went looking for hair clippers at the start of the pandemic and all I could find were no-name brands offered by third party vendors on their website.

Well then. From my comfortable seat outside the arena, this seems like a squandered opportunity for Wal-Mart.

(Also: is it Walmart or Wal-Mart?)

Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#103

Post by chihuahua »

rckoepke wrote: post #50
julianozen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really interested to hear how you figured out the breakfast was fake

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…

Malt-o-meal makes excellent imitations of name-brand cereals. For example, Golden Puffs = Kellogg's Honey Smacks -- completely indistinguishable, but much cheaper. They make about 30 different kinds of cereal.

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

Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#104

Post by dublinben »

ckastner wrote: post #52

I've said this before: they should look at how the finance industry deals / has been dealing with bad actors for decades before they engage in a business relationship with a client. Assign every vendor some risk category based on their profile, for example: projected annual revenue, country of incorporation, products sold. A mom-and-pop store located somewhere in Iowa selling pillow cases would probably be low-risk,…

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.

Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#105

Post by legitster »

I have yet to have an issue with a counterfeit - my main problem are the pages and pages of crappy listings. I was trying to find a child's bike helmet the other day, and it's hundreds of brands I have never heard of, with no safety information, and all look virtually indistinguishable from each other except for weird logos plastered on them. (Kamugo? Galf? LERUJIFL? Turboske? OUWOER? LANOVAGEAR?)

I ended up driving to Wal-Mart for a Bell helmet that cost the same.

Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#106

Post by jnwatson »

BurningFrog wrote: post #33
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…

This sounds litigation ready!

The copied brand owner would likely be very interested. That's direct harm to the brand.

Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#107

Post by rckoepke »

dylan604 wrote: post #92
lozaning wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A date string and or a string specified by amazon at the time of shipment creation signed with some sort of private key should fix this I think.

You're assuming they want to fix the problem

Not sure that level of snark is appropriate for HN. Not that I explicitly disagree with you, of course. It's just we gotta have a higher bar around here. I'd love to see substantial elaboration on the topic that adds to the discussion.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Comments should be more thoughtful and substantive, not less.

> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.

Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#108

Post by throwawayiionqz »

elliekelly wrote: post #100
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…

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 allergies, you know not to buy this product again. With Amazon you can't even conclude anything about the official product because you might have used a knockoff.

You can just conclude to stay away from Amazon for baby care products.

Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#109

Post by esaym »

No joke, if I need food items from online, I try to go with ebay before amazon. I trust old/nearly expired or half opened boxes from some obscure ebay user before getting anything editable from amazon. If people are counterfeiting oral-b toothbrushes, I'm sure they are counterfeiting vanilla extract and gourmet chocolate.

Re: Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit

#110

Post by throwaway_jobs »

tux1968 wrote: post #99
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…

That's interesting, how do you sue a company that hasn't been in business for 20 or 30 years?

It’s a jurisdictional question so it really depends (I couldn’t tell you in this case, I didn’t work on it personally).

In my opinion it’s even more odd they defended (in at least some jurisdictions a dissolved entity has no standing to bring or defend lawsuits), but even if you could defend, why, time, costs, no ability to pay/collect. Something I always wondered to myself but literally as I wrote the last sentence it hit me...I’m guessing they were insured At the time they were in business selling the slides, so if the plaintiff sued and got a default then they could in theory move to join the insurer and collect against the insurer, so likely it was the insurer behind the scenes paying to represent the dissolved company.

On the flip side I had another colleague work on the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill case at the time it finally ended, let’s just estimate the litigation being over 10 years. During the litigation many of the damaged businesses were dissolved while the litigation was pending and apparently many of those that were dissolved may not have been able to collect as a result.

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