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Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

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Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#171

Post by Bitcoin_McPonzi »

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…

Did you read the article? It says right at the top:

> There is something extremely simple Amazon could do about it. If you have a registered brand in the Brand Registry and don't sell the product wholesale - there could be one box to check for that.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#172

Post by rspeer »

prepend wrote: post #103
megy wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

A couple years ago.

Do you understand that this would have to be something that works reliably, at scale, and can be debugged? The exciting blog posts you've read are not going to solve the whole problem.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#173

Post by xstartup »

asdfasdf1233 wrote: post #166
URSpider94 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

“The only way to find the counterfeit is to inspect each shipment by hand” This is basically what the Amazon transparency program is. Is tracks each item from manufacturer all the way through to your door with unique code scanned along the way. You can use the app to see where it came from.

This tells me why companies do not leave decisions on just developers. If we were in a company, someone had developed a machine learning app by now for a problem which needs no ML in the first place.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#174

Post by bambax »

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…

This is quite a ridiculous comment, which, sorry, isn’t surprising coming from an Amazon employee.

I too sell on Amazon, and I registered my brand with Amazon. I also have a design patent for the main object I’m selling.

Direct counterfeits can get blocked, although you have to send an email to each marketplace (I’m in Europe), and then Amazon stops the sales but doesn’t remove the listing.

But listing hijacking is hard/impossible to get rid of. I have a hijacker who sells a different product (different shape, material, color, and quantities) who’s been sitting on my listing for over 2 weeks, and Amazon won’t do anything about it. « Seller performance » wrtites back canned emails saying that they don’t communicate the result of their investigations... one doubts there’s much investigation going on.

Brand registry is absolutely useless.

The main problem is, Amazon thinks about its marketplace as something where multiple sellers compete on price selling the same items. It doesn’t want unique listing for unique products by unique sellers/manufacturers. It doesn’t like the idea, and it will never spend ressources to enforce it.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#175

Post by cepth »

sabalaba wrote: post #81
NathanKP wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gotcha. Yeah I don't sell on Amazon myself or work on the retail side so I can't speak to the effectiveness on that side. It sounds like something they need to improve upon. Have you looked up Brand Gating too? My (admittedly limited) understanding is that Brand Registry is step #1 and Brand Gating is the next level beyond that: https://www.helium10.com/blog/selling-on-amazon/brand-gating...

Yes, we looked into Brand Registry -- this is my first time seeing the Brand Gating, which looks like it would solve this problem. Thanks for bringing that to my attention. In general, I think there's frustration for smaller companies and brands that Amazon (understandably) doesn't retain resources to support individually.

From my own experiences, and the various answers available on Amazon forums, Brand Gating is a black box. There is no one you can talk to in order to request it, and for now it seems to be an invite-only program.

Somewhat perversely, someone claimed on the forums (I’ll try to add the link if I find the topic), that one way to get brand gated is to buy up the counterfeit products being sold under your listing/ASIN, and document and/or send them into Amazon. It seems that until you’re being widely counterfeited, there really is nothing you can do proactively.

Amazon has been an overall net positive for our company, but the difficulties of trying to get a knowledgeable person to answer pressing questions usually create headaches for me at least once a month. Even as a large volume seller through Amazon Vendor Central, we’ve been given boilerplate legalese about needing to provide photocopies of the certificate of our trademarks in order to initiate DMCA takedowns of stolen or copied images and text. As great as Amazon is for consumers, the vendor support can often make you feel like you’re howling at the wind.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#176

Post by shanghaiaway »

none_to_remain wrote: post #99
amluto wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon's approach here is, IMO, both BS and odd-seeming from a business perspective. Once upon a time, I could go to amazon.com and buy things from Amazon. I trusted Amazon to sell legit goods. But now if I go to amazon.com, it's bizarrely difficult to buy from Amazon, and a large fraction of the goods sold seem to be junk. And Amazon presumably made considerably more money selling things that they sourced themselves…

Amazon doesn't want to be in the retail business, they want to be in the logistics business.

Amazon is and wants to be in the retail business.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#177

Post by btgeekboy »

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…

I see this sort of complaint ("I can barely buy from Amazon because of all the scam copies and fake reviews") somewhat often online, and I don't understand. I've placed 15 orders in 2018 so far (76 in 2017), and I've yet to find a detectable fake. (One of those things was even a printer toner cartridge, which I halfway expected to be fake given the stories you hear.)

What are people buying and receiving fakes of?

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#178

Post by ggg9990 »

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…

Classic techbro. Knows virtually nothing about selling on Amazon; happy to accuse a retailer and author of a detailed blog post of not knowing much about selling on Amazon.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#179

Post by johndough »

asdfasdf1233 wrote: post #161
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…

Amazon is in fact searching for and proactively blocking counterfeiters by using image searching, machine learning, etc. There are literally multiple teams with lots of software engineers working on these problems. Currently entry into brand registry is a requirement for these programs. You would be shocked to see the head count and money Amazon is spending in this area, they are investing heavily.

Since you appear to be an actual person working at amazon and there doesn't seem to be a way to report mass scams, I would appreciate if you could delete all items with the keywords "18650" and "9800" or "9900".

"18650" is a type of lithium battery and capacities above 4000 mah are technically impossible.

Usually the batteries with lower rated capacities are fake, too, but at least this would get rid of the most blatant scams.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Da...

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Da...

There are also many examples of fake power banks, but those have varying form factors, so you'd have to calculate the volume or check the weight to make sure it is technically impossible.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3...

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#180

Post by bryanrasmussen »

cepth wrote: post #175
sabalaba wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we looked into Brand Registry -- this is my first time seeing the Brand Gating, which looks like it would solve this problem. Thanks for bringing that to my attention. In general, I think there's frustration for smaller companies and brands that Amazon (understandably) doesn't retain resources to support individually.

From my own experiences, and the various answers available on Amazon forums, Brand Gating is a black box. There is no one you can talk to in order to request it, and for now it seems to be an invite-only program. Somewhat perversely, someone claimed on the forums (I’ll try to add the link if I find the topic), that one way to get brand gated is to buy up the counterfeit products being sold under your listing/ASIN, an…

why do you need to provide photocopies to initiate DMCA takedowns? I thought one of the complaints about DMCA was that it was ridiculously easy to do to someone, but Amazon has made it difficult for you? I wonder if it would be easier for someone not selling through Amazon and thus not dependent on them.
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