It's infuriatingly difficult to buy anything of quality on Amazon. I really hope they improve the situation.
Their EC2 servers are pretty good quality.
Amazon's Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse
51–60 of 134 posts
Re: Amazon's Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse
#52The biggest problem with Amazon reviews is that they'll let you post a review of something you never bought! Sure, they do add the "verified purchase" tag for things you bought; but for calculating the aggregate stats, etc. Amazon will cleverly ignore the fact that you could just be talking out your ass (or selling reviews). I find this very dirty on their part, and it's something that can be fixed with 1 line of code.
Re: Amazon's Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse
#53Amazon sellers could stand to look at their collective bargaining power.
Re: Amazon's Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly this. The article mentions that they basically take all the same products and put them together. So seller B's fake item may be sold as seller A's real item and seller A gets blamed for their fake stuff. It's gotten so bad with certain groups of items I don't even try. Sunglasses, handbags, all the usual stuff you'd expect. My anecdote: I like gold colored Ray-Ban aviators with a brown or dark polarized lens.…
I understand the frustration, you can easily end up buying from a chinese seller if you aren't playing attention. But I have a hard time understanding how you were fooled three times. https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B000EYP57K/ref=dp_ol... Buy from Amazon - the second choice. Pretty sure that is the default purchase option on the main page as well.
Amazon considers all stock of the same product to be identical and exchangeable.
If you order from Seller A on "Fulfilled by Amazon", then Amazon will ship you from the nearest warehouse that has the same product, even if it's technically stock of Seller B.
And Seller B might have handed a crate of counterfeits to Amazon. Angering both the customer and Seller A who has no way to actually enforce the quality of what they sell on Amazon.
Re: Amazon's Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
The knockoff razor blades, however, are not nearly as sharp as the real ones.
I've purchased Feather and Derby blades on Amazon and they're stupid sharp. Which brands have you had bad luck with? Assuming DESR here.
I mean actual counterfeits. Like the packaging says Schick but they are much worse quality and clearly not authentic if you look closely. I got my money back easily, but still an unpleasant experience.
Re: Amazon's Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse
#56It's infuriatingly difficult to buy anything of quality on Amazon. I really hope they improve the situation.
Their EC2 servers are pretty good quality.
This reminds of something I read - apparently, for whatever reason, not all EC2 instances of the same class perform the same.
So, some large AWS customers (like Netflix) keep spawning instance, run some benchmarks on them, then if the instance is in top X% as far as performance goes, they keep it; otherwise they drop it.
Which means that, what a regular customer gets, is an instance that someone (or multiple someones) found not good enough and dropped ;]
Re: Amazon's Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly this. The article mentions that they basically take all the same products and put them together. So seller B's fake item may be sold as seller A's real item and seller A gets blamed for their fake stuff. It's gotten so bad with certain groups of items I don't even try. Sunglasses, handbags, all the usual stuff you'd expect. My anecdote: I like gold colored Ray-Ban aviators with a brown or dark polarized lens.…
I understand the frustration, you can easily end up buying from a chinese seller if you aren't playing attention. But I have a hard time understanding how you were fooled three times. https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B000EYP57K/ref=dp_ol... Buy from Amazon - the second choice. Pretty sure that is the default purchase option on the main page as well.
Clearly you do not understand how Amazon Warehouses work
Just because you buy someing from Seller A, even if Seller A is Amazon LLC, you may not be getting stock from Seller A
If I am A retailer selling SuperWidget 55, and I ship Amazon 100 Genuine SuperWidget's to store in their warehouse for amazon to ship to my customers (aka Amazon Fulfillment Service) . Then another competitor ship 100 Fake SuperWidgets to amazons warehouse. All Amazon records is they have 200 SuperWidgets.
When a Customer orders a SuperWidget, they will get what ever SuperWidget is closest to their location, and a random one from that location, it may not be my SuperWidget but one of the 100 fake ones, even though the customer selected to order from me.
So then the next question is why would a retailer use Amazon Fulfillment, well if you want to get any Prime buyers you must, as if you do not use Amazon Fulfillment your orders are not "Prime Eligible" which eliminates a huge number of consumers.
Re: Amazon's Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly this. The article mentions that they basically take all the same products and put them together. So seller B's fake item may be sold as seller A's real item and seller A gets blamed for their fake stuff. It's gotten so bad with certain groups of items I don't even try. Sunglasses, handbags, all the usual stuff you'd expect. My anecdote: I like gold colored Ray-Ban aviators with a brown or dark polarized lens.…
I understand the frustration, you can easily end up buying from a chinese seller if you aren't playing attention. But I have a hard time understanding how you were fooled three times. https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B000EYP57K/ref=dp_ol... Buy from Amazon - the second choice. Pretty sure that is the default purchase option on the main page as well.
I wasn't fooled, I returned them saying they were counterfeit and they shipped out a new pair. Three different times they were fakes and then I cancelled my order. The seller was Amazon, not some weird 3rd party- but because of the co-mingling of stock you can't be sure what you're getting or where it came from.
Re: Amazon's Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse
#59Firms should start using serial numbers for their products that can be verifiable on the web and in fact could be registered with the manufacturer.
A totally different and important problem is counterfeit drugs. There are ways to battle counterfeit drugs.
Re: Amazon's Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse
#60This has become a frustrating part of shopping on Amazon, to the point that I typically filter to only show things sold by Amazon themselves. Too many of the marketplace items are fake crap with paid-for reviews. Since they're mixed in together by default, the effort in trying to discern good from bad makes for a pretty crummy experience overall.
This will not always save you. If a company uses the "Fulfilled by Amazon" service they ship their stuff to amazon and it is co mingled with all of the other SKU's purporting to be the same item, including Amazons own stock
It has gotten to the point where the only stuff I buy on Amazon is stuff where I don't care about brand names.
If getting a genuine brand name item (e.g. an Apple charger) is important, I will buy it at a local retailer. And even then I'm not always sure, but I assume that places like Target have enough control in their procurement to not end up selling fakes.