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Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

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Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#201

Post by ikeboy »

themagician wrote: post #178
blobbers wrote: post #63

Counterfeits in comingled inventory has become pretty common on Amazon these days. "Fulfillment by amazon" has led them to comingle inventories on common products, meaning every seller's product gets jumbled together. I've gotten counterfeit huggies diapers from amazon (invalid serial number for huggies 'points' and different build quality), Mach 3 razor blades, GE MWF Water filters, even a counterfeit baby bath. The…

I've been running into his problem personally. About 25% of our business now is done via Amazon. We sell to Amazon retail directly and also use Amazon FBA internationally. The problem is that "other sellers" keep beating us to the buy box for certain SKUs. Amazon keeps asking us to sell to them for a lower price. The funny thing is, Amazon already gets the lowest price, by far, compared to all other distributors. I k…

They do a lot of brand gating, but not on demand like you'd want.

I don't think you'll gain much from re-skuing products. You'll lose all your reviews and ranking, and at best will get a few months until the counterfeiters find the new listings.

Also, you can't fully close the old ones, so people will still sell on them, there will be multiple search results, bad customer experience, etc.

The better approach is to go after the sellers through Amazon, send infringement notices, etc. Might take some time, but once done they'll be gone forever.

If you'd be interested in having a conversation with me about these issues, we can set something up, email's in my profile. I'm heading back from the ASD show right now and I'll be swamped for a few days but email and we can work something out.

Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#202

Post by mjevans »

chipperyman573 wrote: post #143
jessaustin wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the same process in which Amazon has sold counterfeit NoStarch books, Amazon could also sell counterfeit "Basics" products. At this point, we're pretty sure it has something to do with commingling...

Why would Amazon let anyone sell an Amazon Basics product? It's not a "Basics" category, it's the "Amazon Basics" brand. Nobody else could produce those.

If they aren't the only alternative that comes to my mind is someone /buys/ an actual Amazon Basics product, doesn't open it, and somehow sells it elsewhere while 'returning' a counterfeit product or defective unit to the inventory.

However if they (Amazon) are doing their job then the risk to reward ratio should be far too high on this.

Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#203

Post by AlexandrB »

HoppedUpMenace wrote: post #7

Its ridiculous the amount of energy and effort you have to waste in order to find a product that you don't suspect as being counterfeit on Amazon these days. The other day, I wanted a super bright flashlight that ran on AAA batteries and was of decent quality and price. I had to pour over the millions of listed flashlights, most looking physically identical, with the exception of the brand name printed on the flashli…

I ran into this recently while shopping for SLR filters. The listing on amazon.ca [1] looked pretty legit but price was too good and a few reviewers claimed these were fake. What threw me off in particular is that the seller for these B+W filters is B/W. However once I checked what else B/W was selling alarms went off immediately as it's all kinds of stuff with "BW" in the name, like these cheap security cameras [2].

I'm not sure how the average person has a snowball's chance in hell of spotting stuff like this on Amazon. It's getting very sketchy.

[1] https://www.amazon.ca/XS-Pro-Clear-Filter-Multi-Resistant-Co... [2] https://www.amazon.ca/BWND4S-Definition-FormatTVI-Vari-Focal...

Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#204

Post by ThrustVectoring »

themagician wrote: post #178
blobbers wrote: post #63

Counterfeits in comingled inventory has become pretty common on Amazon these days. "Fulfillment by amazon" has led them to comingle inventories on common products, meaning every seller's product gets jumbled together. I've gotten counterfeit huggies diapers from amazon (invalid serial number for huggies 'points' and different build quality), Mach 3 razor blades, GE MWF Water filters, even a counterfeit baby bath. The…

I've been running into his problem personally. About 25% of our business now is done via Amazon. We sell to Amazon retail directly and also use Amazon FBA internationally. The problem is that "other sellers" keep beating us to the buy box for certain SKUs. Amazon keeps asking us to sell to them for a lower price. The funny thing is, Amazon already gets the lowest price, by far, compared to all other distributors. I k…

>And ideally, actually, I'd like Amazon to offer a feature that essentially "bans" third parties from listing a SKU at the manufacturers request. I'd gladly pay to few thousand a year to ensure that the only one that can sell our products is Amazon themselves.

Isn't this what owning a trademark is for? Can people advertise that they have M&M's for sale without the permission of Mars Candy Inc?

Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#205

Post by mattwinslow »

emaste wrote: post #187
tadblarney wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There's no way to report a counterfeit on Amazon unless you're claiming a violation of your own IP rights" I feel this is problematic - one would think that AMZN would want to at least have a 'heads up' with respect to these issues very quickly to look into them, you know, to protect their brand? Because if Amazon is selling you 'XYZ' and it's a knock-off - they are part of the crime. Rather odd.

I ordered a pair of SD cards from a FBA Amazon seller which turned out to be counterfeit. I used Amazon's contact form to report these, and was told to just initiate a return. I think I chose "Item not as described" as the reason in a drop-down, and entered "Counterfeit" in a comment box, but someone later changed it to some benign-sounding reason. I got a refund on my credit card, but now have the impression that Am…

If you want to ding the seller further, leave a negative feedback response (for the seller) on that order.

Mark the reason as "item not as described" and don't add any additional text that would allow the seller to claim the feedback was "product related / a product review".

Speaking from experience as an FBA seller for the past seven years, those are nearly impossible to dispute with Amazon's seller support staff...even when the buyer is incorrect (ie they contact you via the messaging system and admit to buying the wrong product or misreading the product description). Enough negative feedback ratings and the seller's account can go under review and/or be closed.

Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#206

Post by Splines »

cookiecaper wrote: post #114
blobbers wrote: post #63

Counterfeits in comingled inventory has become pretty common on Amazon these days. "Fulfillment by amazon" has led them to comingle inventories on common products, meaning every seller's product gets jumbled together. I've gotten counterfeit huggies diapers from amazon (invalid serial number for huggies 'points' and different build quality), Mach 3 razor blades, GE MWF Water filters, even a counterfeit baby bath. The…

Amazon offers the option to NOT commingle inventory, but the FBA seller has to opt-in. Somewhat counterintuitively, if you know that the third-party seller has done this, you're safer buying from the trusted FBA seller rather than Amazon.com. Amazon.com will ship you anything that an FBA seller has submitted under the same product identifier. Amazon is getting very strict re: counterfeit and knockoff products, as the…

> if you know that the third-party seller has done this

Is there an easy way to determine this?

Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#208

Post by PhasmaFelis »

jjeaff wrote: post #186
r00fus wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has filed suit against an Amazon supplier as well [1]. Even Apple can't police Amazon's cruft. The issue here remains, if Amazon profits from fake items, why are they not responsible for the outcomes? Do they live in some alternate reality where they don't have to play by the same rules? [1] http://www.computerworld.com/article/3133627/technology-law-...

Yes. They are a "tech" company. It's not breaking the law it's "disrupting". See Uber, Airbnb, etc.

They're not ripping people off, they're Moving Fast And Breaking Things!

Re: Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

#209

Post by Splines »

nas wrote: post #128
benmorris wrote: post #45

Amazon is turning into a mine field for legitimate sellers. I have a customer I work closely with to integrate their customer products into Amazon. They have a catalog of 3,000 stock parking signs listed on Amazon. We took considerable time to buy custom SKUs and get them listed. We discovered in the last month two separate Chinese sellers utilized the Amazon buy box feature and listed on our product page for less mo…

It's a minefield for buyers as well. I have ordered products from Amazon's web site for many years, probably more than 15. Recently, I am getting reluctant to buy because there are so many counterfeit products. As an example, I wanted to by a genuine Lenovo charger for my X230 laptop. If you want to share my pain, try finding the real McCoy on Amazon.com. I also had to replace my keyboard. That was even worse than th…

I would have bought this one: http://a.co/7XcZoUf

Is that one a fake too? Going by the "Lenovo" seller and the fact that the seller also sells a ton of other Lenovo branded stuff makes me feel better, but who knows...

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