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Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

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Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#151

Post by stryk »

hop wrote: post #71
NathanKP wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm what about brand gating then? Have you been able to try that out?

Almost everytime we contact them, we ask them to lock our products down. It's a mystery how sellers get Brand Gating, but there is plenty in the forums about it. That's part of the reason this was written, hopefully someone there can do something about it.

Hey man, this is a bit off-topic for this thread, but I have to mention that I got one of the Elevation Lab Anchor under-desk mounts when they were on sell for like 10 bucks a week or so ago. It's great, it works better than I was expecting (my main concern was the longevity of the adhesive, but I did some research into the 3M VHB and it's legit!)

Now for the part that's not off topic: to remind myself how long ago I bought it, I just clicked on the product link from my order confirmation e-mail from Amazon. I landed at a listing for the product, but "Sold by suiningdonghanjiaju Co Ltd" (not making the name up). That's not right I know for a fact that when I placed the order it was listed properly as "Sold by Elevation Lab". I just clicked around some more and eventually I got to the listing that is "sold by Elevation Lab" but both of those pages have the gray 'you bought this item on...' box at the top. That seems.... off that doesn't pass the sniff test.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#152

Post by 8note »

prepend wrote: post #36
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…

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…

getting input data for counterfeiting is difficult. A good amount of bad actor behaviour is really easy to detect; customers will notice almost certainly notice if their package doesn't show up.

Counterfeits however, are difficult; somebody has to notice, and care that the thing is a counterfeit, and if this is the first time I'm buying one of these anchors, how am I to know how nice the seams are supposed to be? if it works, I'm happy.

To get around image section though, all you need is a real box of the thing. you can just buy a bunch of it and repackage, and sell the original separately.

(just for reference, the cloud guys are relying on us for a lot of their detection, not the other way around)

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#153

Post by 8note »

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.

it's pretty cost effective for the counterfeiters to be mechanical Turks, or pay people to be mechanical Turks.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#154

Post by candiodari »

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.

No ?

Let me find the first 10 links matching "Chromecast". [1]

ONLY the 1st and 3rd links don't have misleading/deliberately confusing or outright stolen trademarks on them (but they aren't chromecasts). Examples include the "G" on 5 and 6 in the font Google uses or the Youtube logo on 7. Examples of outright stolen trademarks include links 2, 4, 8, 9 and 10 all have the Chrome logo.

For completeness, the (only) actual link to Chromecasts on amazon is here [3].

The first and third links are weird, as in they're an entirely different product category from a Chromecast. Why are they even in there ? They are very much not chromecasts.

I would like to point out that if you are looking for a Chromecast, ALL of those products will be sorely disappointing. 1 and 3 don't even support streaming web content to them in any way, and all the others are chinese wireless display mirroring devices, some are even low-res versions.

None of them have anywhere near the compatibility or functionality that Chromecast provides. If you buy these and expect them to do what a Chromecast does, you'll be sorely disappointed.

If this is what happens to Google, imagine what will happen to you on Amazon to the inventors of fidget spinners, or those cubes. The web is full of articles and forum complaints about fake products on amazon. Link to the trend [2].

Links when searching "Chromecast"

1. Fire TV stick with Alexa ...

2. Wifi Display Dongle,Wishpower HDMI 1080P Mini Display Receiver TV Miracast DLNA AirMirror Airplay for IOS/Android/Windows/Mac

3. Roku Express | 5X more powerful HD Streaming (2017)

4. WiFi Display Dongle,Wishpower 2018 WiFi Wireless 1080P Mini Display Receiver HDMI TV Miracast DLNA Airplay for IOS/Android/Windows/Mac(New Version)

5. 2018 Cymocho G5 Wireless Wifi Display Dongle, HDMI 1080P TV Receiver Adapter, Support Google Chrome for YouTube Miracast Airplay DLNA TV Stick for Android/ Mac/ iOS / Windows

6. Wecast E68 Wireless Wifi Display Dongle TV Receiver Adapter 1080P Full HD support Google Chromecast for Netflix YouTube miracast airplay DLNA TV Stick for Android/ Mac/ iOS / Windows

7. 1080P HDMI Adapter Wireless Display, PTView Miracast Dongle, 2.4G Streaming Media Share Player, Mirroring Receiver TV Stick, Airplay Dina For iPhone, iPad, MacBook, Samsung, LG, Android, Smart Phones

8. WiFi Wireless Display Dongle Receiver 1080P HDMI TV Stick Miracast Media Streamer for Phone TV Support Miracast & Airplay & DLNA

9. WIFI Display Dongle, WiFi Wireless 1080P Mini Display Receiver HDMI TV Miracast DLNA Airplay for IOS/Android

10. Miracast Wireless Display Adapter,Iphone Dongle 1080P Hdmi,TV Receiver Stick,Toneseas Streaming Media Player,Airplay DLNA for Ipad Macbook Laptop Samsung Android Smart Phones - Business Gift

[1] https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3...

[2] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=amazon%2...

[3] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015UKRNGS

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#155

Post by johnpowell »

exolymph wrote: post #17
mullingitover wrote: post #15

My mileage apparently varies, because I've been shopping heavily on Amazon for years and have never had a counterfeit item show up on my doorstep.

That you know of.

I use this stuff for my fishtank that conditions the water. It is primarily for removing chlorine. So I got a bottle off of amazon. A few months later I am at the pet store and they carry the same stuff. I notice the bottle in the pet store has the label printed directly on the bottle. The one I got from Amazon was what looked like the same label but was just a sticker.

So I buy the one at the pet store and a water test kit. I test both bottles and the one from amazon did the same to remove the chlorine as just letting water sit out did. While the one from the pet store did what I was expecting.

The stuff is a clear liquid and has no odor.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#156

Post by discoursism »

prepend wrote: post #146
discoursism wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's see some stats. Let's see some action plans. Let's get all these sellers' horror stories out of my various feeds. Where's all that? Not sure if you're aware, but Amazon's doing pretty OK by all publicly available signs. To the extent what's bothering you is even a real issue, it's not bothering anyone else enough to stop them shopping on Amazon. I doubt Amazon feels much pressure to post action plans to satis…

Ultimately this harms them. People said the same thing about Comcast sucking for years. It’s finally starting to catch up with them and will take decades to go out of business. See also other shitty companies that made money.

https://www.google.com/search?q=comcast&safe=off&rlz=1C1CHBF...

? I mean it may be true that they will some day go out of business. In fact it's all but certain. But I don't think you could really say it's because of effect that is visible today.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#157

Post by prepend »

URSpider94 wrote: post #144
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…

You are missing the point. They are not creating a new product that is a copy of the original, they are registering with Amazon as a supplier of the genuine product, but shipping counterfeits into the warehouse. They are then pricing their counterfeits dynamically so that they always get the “buy box”. There’s no machine learning to do. The only way to find the counterfeit is to inspect each shipment by hand vs a ref…

If an existing seller is listing the product that already exists. It can be examined against other listings and be reviewed. If it’s a brand new seller then interview the seller. It’s not perfect but will provide incremental improvement.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#158

Post by jpindar »

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…

There's a joke that if you're considering making something but think it would cost too much or take too long, just send the design out to some Chinese companies for a quote, but don't order any. Then wait a week or so for it to show up on Alibaba, buy a bunch and resell them under your own brand.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#159

Post by ggg9990 »

vanilla_nut wrote: post #76
dionian wrote: post #4

I ordered an instant pot on amazon. instant pot box shows up, with mfr.s packaging.... I opened it and similar-looking - but much cheaper - chinese knockoff was in box. if amazon's customer service wasnt so good i would have dropped them already. (I know it's not them making the mistake, but still..) however I buy stuff there much less frequently now since i have no way to know if I'm getting counterfeits for certain…

This is a really important point that Amazon seems to completely ignore: counterfeit goods aren't just a ripoff, they're downright dangerous . A fake instant pot could burn your house down or scald you when it fails to depressurize properly; a fake phone charger could overheat and catch your bedsheets on fire; a fake smoke alarm could fail to detect smoke properly and not activate in time to save someone's life. I ca…

This is why after having a kid I shifted my purchasing 90% from Amazon to 90% from Target even though I have to drive 15 minutes to the Target. Amazon was the lazy mans approach.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#160

Post by jpindar »

ceejayoz wrote: post #91
Spooky23 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

File a credit card dispute.

That's a great option until you realize they can close your Amazon account for chargebacks, which in my case would mean the loss of thousands of dollars worth of Kindle books.

You know you can download them and remove the DRM.
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