Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 319 posts

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

#231

Post by nas »

Splines wrote: post #209
nas wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I bought this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006OQJO4C/ref=oh_aui_sear...

I'm not sure it is a fake or not. I looks a little "off" to me. Maybe real but intended for a foreign market? Hasn't burnt my house down yet, so that's something.

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

#232

Post by cookiecaper »

ticviking wrote: post #196
cookiecaper wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I will believe that when we see a solid policy designed to actually address this.

I don't think Amazon is going to make a lot of noise about this, because users who are unaware of this issue (which are still the vast majority) would then start to worry. They've sent out some light PR around it in business-oriented press outlets like Forbes.

Ask any FBA seller, especially those who do product arbitrage, and they'll tell you that Amazon is getting very aggressive with account suspensions and requiring a lot of documentation that the seller's original supplier is either the brand owner themselves or an authorized distributor.

I know a guy who did arbitrage with imports (authentic products, but "not authorized" because they were factory overruns). He made some good money for 2-3 months, but almost all of his products got removed for lack of verifiable paper trail and he ended up in a pretty bad spot.

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

#233

Post by sytelus »

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…

Also the funny thing is that most of these fakes have extra-ordinary specs :). So the real ones have lower but true specs and are listed at much higher prices. The consequences is that you can't even see real item until you get to 4th or 5th page!

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

#234

Post by sytelus »

stagbeetle wrote: post #50
komali2 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is go-to strategy for /r/entrepreneur's crowd. If I remember correctly, Tim Ferris even recommends it in "4 Hour Workweek."

It's the go to of the (small-business) entrepreneurs all over the web (TheFastlane, /r/entrepreneur, etc.). I'm fairly certain it started around 4 years ago with Matt Clark's "Amazon Selling Machine." A friend who paid the $1000 let me watch the course and it was a pretty simple (and old) tactic. Buy wholesale and sell at markup. Except this time you would have it under your own "private label" (i.e a Chinese factory…

http://www.audible.com/pd/Business/Amazon-FBA-Blueprint-Audi...

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

#235

Post by gfsadhfsd »

notatoad wrote: post #228
themagician wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Some of the SKUs we don't even sell to anyone else anymore but Amazon. It seems crazy to me that they don't have an easy process to support this. Amazon must have as much to gain by being the sole reseller as you do from them blocking other suppliers. I don't see why they don't offer a one-click agreement that a manufacturer can sign saying essentially "we won't sell this through any other channels if you won't acce…

No: Antitrust.

There's no excuse for Amazon selling and profiting from counterfeits though. Buck stops with them.

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

#237

Post by pmorici »

jasode wrote: post #188
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…

>"Fulfillment by amazon" has led them to comingle inventories The key phrase I look for that I haven't seen discussed in this thread explicitly is: "Ships from and sold by Amazon.com." (That is the current status shown for the No Starch book prompting the thread.)[1] Based on some youtube videos[2] showing FBA stocking bins at the warehouse, I can see where multiple 3rd-party seller using FBA Fulfillment by Amazon ha…

Yeah, I do that too. You used to be able to filter by seller and only view items sold by Amazon I was exceptionally irritated when they removed that ability.

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

#238

Post by ansible »

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 had a similar situation with multi-tools. I was looking for other brands outside of the big ones (Leatherman, SOG, Gerber) to set what my options were. On Amazon, there were a bunch of nearly identical multi-tools sold under different brands names. That turned me off from wanting to buy there at all.

Ending up buying one directly from Leatherman's website.

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

#239

Post by abiox »

danjoc wrote: post #47
UnfalseDesign wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that Google isn't pirating the book. It is being hosted on Google Docs. This is no different than if someone put the PDF on Dropbox and made it public. It isn't Google's pirate link. It is a link to a pirated file that just happens to be hosted on Google Docs. The difference here is that Amazon is actually printing the pirated book. Google is just hosting a file that happens to be made publicly view…

>The difference is that Google isn't pirating the book. Neither is Amazon as I understand it. >It is being hosted on Google Docs. Amazon is just printing the book. >This is no different than if someone put the PDF on Dropbox and made it public. This is exactly what's happening on Amazon. Someone uploaded the pirated file, as their own. Amazon is simply printing the book, and helping you find it via a search interface…

this is reductive to the point of being meaningless.

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

#240

Post by ThrustVectoring »

cookiecaper wrote: post #232
ticviking wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will believe that when we see a solid policy designed to actually address this.

I don't think Amazon is going to make a lot of noise about this, because users who are unaware of this issue (which are still the vast majority) would then start to worry. They've sent out some light PR around it in business-oriented press outlets like Forbes. Ask any FBA seller, especially those who do product arbitrage, and they'll tell you that Amazon is getting very aggressive with account suspensions and requiri…

>authentic products, but "not authorized" because they were factory overruns

These are counterfeit products. When you contract with a factory to make 10K units with your brand on them, they aren't allowed to use your brand to sell any number of "overruns" past that.

Post reply on HN