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

Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

elevationlab.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 230 posts

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#31

Post by drharby »

freyir wrote: post #12
dionian wrote: post #4

I ordered an instant pot on amazon. instant pot box shows up, with mfr.s packaging.... I opened it and similar-looking - but much cheaper - chinese knockoff was in box. if amazon's customer service wasnt so good i would have dropped them already. (I know it's not them making the mistake, but still..) however I buy stuff there much less frequently now since i have no way to know if I'm getting counterfeits for certain…

It's strange that a company sells its customers counterfeit goods, and we still praise them for "good customer service."

Is it?

Customer service is independent from the primary business transaction being executed.

They are fucking up but compensate through good cust. Service.

Seems like a policy decision, as fighting it costs more than the break fix

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#33

Post by fencepost »

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 amazing to me is that these days I'd consider eBay a safer option for a lot of purchases - at least there I know what seller I'm dealing with.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#34

Post by [deleted] »

fpvracing wrote: post #18

I designed a hardware product but haven't brought it to market because even if it is successful, Chinese manufacturers will reverse engineer it and then have a cheaper clone on the market within weeks, long before I can recoup even the cost of manufacturing, let alone make a profit. And since I can't afford to pursue legal action, it seems pointless to manufacture the product, and everybody loses. I wonder how much i…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#36

Post by prepend »

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 because of all the scam copies and fake reviews.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#37

Post by Spooky23 »

dionian wrote: post #4

I ordered an instant pot on amazon. instant pot box shows up, with mfr.s packaging.... I opened it and similar-looking - but much cheaper - chinese knockoff was in box. if amazon's customer service wasnt so good i would have dropped them already. (I know it's not them making the mistake, but still..) however I buy stuff there much less frequently now since i have no way to know if I'm getting counterfeits for certain…

What part of selling a fake and probably dangerous appliance is good customer service?

My favorite thing about Amazon is that they screw up and ship me things that I don’t order a few times year.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#38

Post by krapp »

fpvracing wrote: post #18

I designed a hardware product but haven't brought it to market because even if it is successful, Chinese manufacturers will reverse engineer it and then have a cheaper clone on the market within weeks, long before I can recoup even the cost of manufacturing, let alone make a profit. And since I can't afford to pursue legal action, it seems pointless to manufacture the product, and everybody loses. I wonder how much i…

So hire a Chinese company to manufacture it on the cheap to begin with. Isn't that what everyone does anyway?

The market doesn't care about who has the best idea, or who had it first, it only cares about who comes to market with the best deal for the consumer.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#39

Post by lostapathy »

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…

I have actually worked with people to pursue this and we got nowhere. The counterfeits just came online under a fake upc and amazon wouldn’t take any more action.

We gave up and just tell customers anything with our brand on amazon is a fake.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#40

Post by prepend »

fpvracing wrote: post #18

I designed a hardware product but haven't brought it to market because even if it is successful, Chinese manufacturers will reverse engineer it and then have a cheaper clone on the market within weeks, long before I can recoup even the cost of manufacturing, let alone make a profit. And since I can't afford to pursue legal action, it seems pointless to manufacture the product, and everybody loses. I wonder how much i…

Cool, then open source it to screw the scammers and make a harder to fake product next time.

Sorry.

Post reply on HN