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Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

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Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#41

Post by [deleted] »

finolex1 wrote: post #30
privateSFacct wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is to generate choices / alternatives. If you go the government involvement route you ossify industries and actually can make it harder for folks to compete. Funeral home chains were famous for pushing for lots of crazy regs that only a system with big economies of scale could meet to push out smaller independents. In some cities like SF zoning hoops mean that only folks with HUGE pockets / attorneys and lo…

There are lots of alternatives for each category of products - Zappos for shoes/clothes, Mouser for electrical components, etc. though there is no one competitor to Amazon that is as comprehensive as it is. Edit: Turns out Zappos is owned by Amazon. But my point still stands if we replace it with something else.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#42

Post by skuthus »

finolex1 wrote: post #30
privateSFacct wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is to generate choices / alternatives. If you go the government involvement route you ossify industries and actually can make it harder for folks to compete. Funeral home chains were famous for pushing for lots of crazy regs that only a system with big economies of scale could meet to push out smaller independents. In some cities like SF zoning hoops mean that only folks with HUGE pockets / attorneys and lo…

There are lots of alternatives for each category of products - Zappos for shoes/clothes, Mouser for electrical components, etc. though there is no one competitor to Amazon that is as comprehensive as it is. Edit: Turns out Zappos is owned by Amazon. But my point still stands if we replace it with something else.

I had not heard of Mouser until this moment - thank you!

Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#43

Post by dv_dt »

benologist wrote: post #16

Amazon's decision to employ lawyers and lobbyists instead of oversight resulted in a public black market they openly run but are not responsible for profiting from. I am excited to see which state will have the first Amazon fulfillment center crawling with feds. They have to raid one eventually to get to the bottom of the lead, the counterfeits etc. How is Amazon preventing the EPA or the FTC from doing their job and…

Inequality is back to the time of robber barons of industry, and so too is the lawlessness of many of the industry practices, where we are in the same state where technology and scale of organization are outrunning the philosophical theories of government operation to regulate them.

Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#44

Post by fma »

DownGoat wrote: post #14
rasz wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one side of the equation, the other is people ordering the real thing, repackaging it with fake from aliexpress and returning for full refund. More enterprising folks sign up as Amazon supplier, register for some expensive products, ship real thing once or twice and then start throwing more and more fakes into their shipments, all nicely co-mingled by Amazon.

Was it not also a thing that if you let Amazon keep your stock as a supplier, customer might get another suppliers item as they were kept together? So if I ordered a book from Amazon from AmazingVendor, Amazon might actually send me an item from ScummyVendor's stock which sold the same book.

Yes. Which is why I never order food items from Amazon. It's a common tactic for people to buy items close to expiring at a discount, turn around and do FBA. It gets comingled w/ items sold by sellers who source the products legitimately.

Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#45

Post by jklinger410 »

nikolay wrote: post #35

Except that Amazon is no longer the cheapest source for many products. Their outrageous storage and fulfillment fees make most of their pricing higher than local store deals or even manufacturer's own websites.

Came here for this. Amazon actually buries the cheapest price products in many searches I have done.

eBay is not any better at this point. They are all squeezing to show higher priced products so they can make more money, obviously.

Hate to say this but Walmart still seems committed to providing the lowest prices.

Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#46

Post by Spooky23 »

privateSFacct wrote: post #29
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish somebody would straight compete with them rather than all the complaining to politicians. One doesn't exclude the other.

The point is to generate choices / alternatives. If you go the government involvement route you ossify industries and actually can make it harder for folks to compete. Funeral home chains were famous for pushing for lots of crazy regs that only a system with big economies of scale could meet to push out smaller independents. In some cities like SF zoning hoops mean that only folks with HUGE pockets / attorneys and lo…

Regulating that a retailer selling genuine products is nothing at all like zoning or funeral homes.

We need to empower states to regulate Amazon like any other retailer or have reasonable federal standards. In some cases states can apply the death penalty to retailers (revoking sales tax license) if they are perpetuating a fraud. You need regulators with teeth to compel positive behavior from a company are large as Amazon.

Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#47

Post by throwaway35784 »

chadash wrote: post #18

The article talks about fake Hermes bracelets being sold for $25, when a real one is closer to $600. It's obviously a counterfeit. Does Amazon not have any requirement for a human to review a listing before allowing it up for sale?

And they are both worthless pieces of jewelry. Who really cares about fake fake stuff?

Some counterfeit stuff causes real harm though. Counterfeit electronics can catch on fire. Food could poison you.

Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#48

Post by dangus »

izzydata wrote: post #15
AlexandrB wrote: post #11

Amazon's fulfilment has also become shockingly bad. Most items are shipped in lightly-padded manila envelopes resulting in high percentage of damaged goods if you order books[1], CDs/DVDs/BluRays, video games, or anything else where the packaging is part of the product. eBay is a much better experience in this regard. [1] In an ironic twist, I absolutely refuse to buy books from Amazon anymore.

I've received many damaged books from Amazon. Whenever I report the items as being damaged I am prepared with photographs of the damaged goods as proof, but they always send me another one without caring. It just feels so wasteful to save money by mishandling everything to the point where it doesn't even matter if stuff breaks because it is cheaper to try a 2nd time.

But you don't actually know that this practice is wasteful. That all depends on the numbers.

Let's say that Amazon sends out 100 books, and 1 or 2 get damaged. But if they add some extra bit of packaging to every single one of those 100 books, zero will get damaged.

Did this save cost or materials? I don't know, it depends on how much extra packaging was needed, whether the damage was serious enough to initiate a refund/re-send, and whether adding packaging to every single order was less environmentally impactful than having to print and send an extra book to those who received damaged ones.

It's going to be a simple dollar value equation for companies like Amazon, and make no mistake, they have the data and have made these decisions consciously.

Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#49

Post by soylentcola »

kilo_bravo_3 wrote: post #2

>Hermès’s $640 Clic H Bracelet is one of those luxury baubles that’s financially out of reach for most shoppers. So how is it that Amazon shoppers could recently search for the Hermès piece by name and find a bracelet for just $24.99 on the e-commerce giant’s website? I think this is why I've never received anything fake from Amazon. I'm not stupid enough to think I can get something priced at $640 for $25. >Still, P…

Hell, if it was clearly a "designer impostor" and sold as such for a fraction of the price, I'd have no problem with it. Plenty of times I'd be fine with something like that (I think of all the $10 "faux-kley" sunglasses I bought as a teen in the 90's).

IMO, items in the style of expensive designer baubles have their place as long as they a) don't use the real logo/claim to be legit and b) don't cost as much. I don't mean there aren't some IP lawsuits waiting to happen, but that's not my concern.

It's the fakes labeled as genuine articles that need to go. Sell a lookalike Hermes bracelet without logo for $25 instead of $640? Fine by me. Costume jewelry can be fun I'm sure. Same for "Rolax" watches or whatever.

But it's not the $100 item listed at $10 that really sucks, it's the fake that's labeled genuine and still sold for $100 that ruins things and needs to be cracked down on.

Re: Amazon’s quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes

#50

Post by mortenjorck »

There's a lot of emphasis in this article on counterfeits of luxury goods sold at obviously counterfeit prices (like the Hermès for 5% of genuine retail), but not much on the far more insidious (and seemingly pervasive, in my experience) general merchandise counterfeits sold for what is often not a suspiciously big discount.

Categories like kitchen or yard tools are absolutely rife with counterfeits. As an example, search Amazon for Ove Glove heat-resistant oven gloves: The Amazon's-Choice-badged option (which, I know, is chosen by algorithm) yields a product page where the top review complains they received a product without several of the trademark details on the older set they own. The reviewer even acknowledges the difficulty in tracking down genuine Ove Gloves on Amazon! They ultimately resign themselves to defeat: "What a game: I rolled the dice and lost."

Of course, there are also quite sophisticated fakes in categories such as consumer electronics. Fake controllers for game consoles are a standout: Search for the Playstation DualShock 4 controller and you'll find the official product page littered with reviews complaining of an entire continuum of fakes, ranging from obvious to ones that are almost entirely indistinguishable until the knockoff battery stops holding a charge after a few weeks.

I'm not really sure what product categories are still safe to buy on Amazon, given that everything from food to books has varying degrees of counterfeit mixed in. At least something like an iPad should be impossible to fake due to the cryptographic requirements for booting the OS.

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