Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#221

Post by ryantgtg » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 10:29 PM UTC

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…

A little over a year ago I listed some garments from my girlfriend's clothing line. Unless someone broke into our garage and stole the stock, then no one else could ever sell these products. I created the listings, did the brand registry, and we still were not able to get the Buy button on the listings. Something about not being an established seller, and that other sellers might come in and offer the same product. If that wasn't dumb enough, we also weren't allowed to buy advertising for three months. So amazon wanted us to just kick back for three months, paying the seller fee on products that no one will find and that don't have a buy button.

So, I completely agree with the headline of this article. The whole listing process was catered to listing existing products, and the policies did not make sense for sellers who completely control their product.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#222

Post by enknamel » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 10:48 PM UTC

> And Jeff Bezos, if you're reading this, come on - this is day 2 activity.

That is a serious burn. It really drives home the point of how serious this issue is.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#223

Post by alok-g » Sat, Mar 03, 2018, 9:13 AM UTC

hop wrote: post #58

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…

You really think the author of the post (me) doesn't communicate regularly with the Brand Registry team? Day 5 for them to do anything on this latest one.

Have you looked at Amazon Transparency as yet?

https://digiday.com/marketing/amazon-grows-transparency-prog...

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#224

Post by astura » Sat, Mar 03, 2018, 4:58 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?

Everything! I mean everything! There's fakes of literally everything. Including items you wouldn't think would be profitable to fake.

Books, CD, electronics, baby products, stationary, personal care products including condoms, toys,...

Take a look at this cup. Would you know if Amazon sent you a fake if it's your only Yeti cup? http://www.wideopenspaces.com/fake-yeti-ramblers-on-the-rise...

Many/Most of the time it's going to be difficult to tell unless you have the real version already and do side by side comparison.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#225

Post by astura » Sat, Mar 03, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

amluto wrote: post #79

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…

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…

They make more money being a platform and logics company thank they do being a retailer.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#226

Post by strathmeyer » Sun, Mar 04, 2018, 3:26 AM UTC

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…

My experience is that the brand registry is used by manufacturers to prevent others from selling their product so that they can artificially inflate the price. Why would a company whose products aren't being sold on Amazon need to register their brand there.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#227

Post by vanilla_nut » Sun, Mar 04, 2018, 4:29 AM UTC

d0lph wrote: post #216

vanilla_nut wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Agree with the rest, but the US is not highly litigious, common misconception, probably created by corporations trying to defend themselves from "frivolous lawsuits".

Out of curiosity, what countries are more litigious than the US and why? I've always been told that the US is unusually litigious, but if I'm wrong about that I'd like to know better.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#228

Post by chaostheory » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 11:54 PM UTC

amluto wrote: post #79

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…

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…

Is filtering products to only sold by Amazon not safe anymore?

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#229

Post by ilamont » Tue, Mar 06, 2018, 1:29 PM UTC

jnbiche wrote: post #48

I've become quite disenchanted with Amazon because of this counterfeit issue along with the fake review problem. In addition, Amazon customer service -- traditionally excellent -- has only been good to acceptable recently (they've started using Chinese agents who don't really seem to understand American customer service and also sometimes struggle with English). I really wanted to drop Prime this year, but the wife u…

Chinese agents? Are you sure? I thought most overseas customer service was outsourced to Phillipines or India ... or to Amazon's AIs.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#230

Post by d0lph » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 3:46 PM UTC

vanilla_nut wrote: post #227

d0lph wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with the rest, but the US is not highly litigious, common misconception, probably created by corporations trying to defend themselves from "frivolous lawsuits".

Out of curiosity, what countries are more litigious than the US and why? I've always been told that the US is unusually litigious, but if I'm wrong about that I'd like to know better.

In this list, the US is #5, curiously having more lawyers per capita. https://www.clements.com/resources/articles/The-Most-Litigio...