Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#201

Post by coatmatter » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 11:45 AM UTC

dahdum wrote: post #13

jeffwilcox wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this especially in the power charger category... Apple power chargers I end up always just having to go to the Apple Store for now. Sigh. I want to use Amazon, but have had so many sketchy "Apple" products sent my way.

It’s outright dangerous to buy that type of product from Amazon, even if you buy “ships and sold from amazon” their inventory mixing means you can get counterfeits just as easily. If selling fake solar eclipse glasses didn’t hit them with the clue bat, I’m not sure what will.

This is good article you've probably already read on the topic of counterfeit eclipse glasses: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/09/science/eclipse-glasses-r...

Perhaps the worst thing in my mind about the lack of education (for one reason of another) with reference to eclipse glasses is that good pairs can easily be shared around with minimal planning (I always buy extra new pairs as souvenirs more than anything). The partial phases just aren't things that anyone stares at for minutes on end, and totality requires that eclipse glasses be removed.

Hopefully there'll be more experience at hand and education by 2024 to avoid a repeat of 2017 (which in the grand scheme, was mostly isolated cases of poor outcomes - for most people, the biggest risk would have been driving to an eclipse site).

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#202

Post by coatmatter » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 11:47 AM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #200

oldcynic wrote: post #6

This is ruling out Amazon for so many categories of product and has been going on for years. Yet they don't seem to be bothered. So now I look on Amazon, then see if I can buy direct or from a different retailer.

Amazon isn't my first choice anymore. Not just because of the risk of fake products (I buy from ebay and Wish). But also because of the incomprehensible range of "add on" only items; prime only items; and then variable prices for shipping.

Do eBay and Wish have better reputations as far as genuine products go?

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#203

Post by mathgenius » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 12:03 PM UTC

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 don't want to buy books from Amazon anymore. I'm perfectly capable of "pirating" a copy myself and printing it. I want the real thing, not another cheap print out.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#204

Post by KWD » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 12:25 PM UTC

fencepost wrote: post #33

The writer advises people to "look at the seller," but Amazon's commingling of products means that doing so is often useless. I believe I've also seen mention that there's a way to prevent that by assigning your own numbers and paying Amazon more, but for something like this where there is only one legitimate supplier I'm not sure it would do any good. (edit: NathanKP posted relevant links as I was posting) What's am…

When I learned of the commingling they do I changed my mind about using FBA to list some products. It has also changed my mind on products I purchase when I see others are selling it FBA. Though I still use Amazon a lot, I have also increased my local shopping for products I would previously have just purchased from Amazon.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#205

Post by dalbasal » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 12:26 PM UTC

A large chunk of the most important and/or profitable tech businesses are really private “markets.” That is, they don’t just sell goods and services. I would put all advertising businesses in that category too

Amazon is an obvious (and very literal) example, as are app stores. But, Youtube is another example. People post videos. People watch videos. People place ads on videos. Google is at the centre coordinating this stuff.

Very few markets are cleverly designed or run. Adwords was an example of a clever one. The auction, is the centrepiece and it reached its current state pretty early in adwords’ history. It was designed cleverly, with a ton of attention to incentives and 2nd order effects.

Youtube, as a marketplace, is terribly designed. The “monetisation” systems are almost designed to produce spam, and discourage unique “maker” content. The differentials in earnings of similar content on youtube, vs any other medium are immense.

Why does a podcast, TV show or other medium (lets assume it’s the same content) make so much more than a youtube channel. How is it possible that a million views a week is not enough to pay for a 2-man basement operation?

The big boys need to get some economists on board, good ones.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#206

Post by yoz-y » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 1:06 PM UTC

btgeekboy wrote: post #177

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…

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?

Anything and everything probably, it can be seen even in reviews. I was looking up some gloves and often the reviews are split 50/50 between great and complete garbage. I assume that the unlucky half got counterfeits. Recently I have bought some plastic plates to put under a flower pot. The dimensions were completely wrong: as in, the advertised plate was for a pot of 22 cm in diameter and this was even printed twice on the plate itself - it was not even 18cm large. This was on a product with over 4.5 star average.

I still buy stuff on amazon because returns are very simple, but I got into habit of immediately returning anything which is not good enough. I feel that most of the stuff one can buy there is garbage.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#207

Post by CamelCaseName » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 2:02 PM UTC

You should not have left a one star review on your competition. That's a surefire way to land in hot water if they report you.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#208

Post by jpindar » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 2:16 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #199

jpindar wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know you can download them and remove the DRM.

Has the latest DRM been cracked yet?

I don't know if the new DRM that is applied to the books as they are on the device has been cracked, but there are links to download books to a computer (on the "Manage Your Content and Devices" Amazon page), and those can be unlocked by a Calibre plugin.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#209

Post by bambax » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 2:27 PM UTC

bambax wrote: post #174

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 h…

> which, sorry, isn’t surprising coming from an Amazon employee

This is in fact a little unfair (can't edit anymore so I reply to myself). In my experience Amazon employees are very courteous and want to help; the problem is, they usually don't know how the system works and can only read back policies (that are otherwise available to anyone -- we can read!)

Maybe it's just a lack of training (not their fault), or maybe nobody really knows how all the parts of the system work together. Anyway it's incredibly difficult to get a clear answer.

And seller performance is the worst, because they never answer or do any follow-up.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#210

Post by ceejayoz » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 2:47 PM UTC

Keverw wrote: post #110

ceejayoz wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I tend to treat listings that say "this isn't a Chromecast" as cheap knock-offs, not counterfeits. The logo may be a trademark infringement, but I'm iffy on calling it counterfeit.