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Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

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Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#71

Post by hop »

NathanKP wrote: post #67
hop wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hmm what about brand gating then? Have you been able to try that out?

Almost everytime we contact them, we ask them to lock our products down. It's a mystery how sellers get Brand Gating, but there is plenty in the forums about it. That's part of the reason this was written, hopefully someone there can do something about it.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#72

Post by rahimnathwani »

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…

If you're not going to manufacture the product yourself, have you considered either:

- doing a Kickstarter to get people to prepay? That way at least your first batch can be paid for before you shell out any money, OR

- just giving away the design so at least your product sees the light of day, even if there's no financial gain for you?

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#74

Post by prepend »

discoursism wrote: post #63
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…

This is reminding me every PHB who ever said, "it'll just take a day or two." "It's just a little machine learning."

I agree in general, but literally all you have to do is reverse image search new product listings against existing products and then add a call out to manually review this. This isn’t even complicated stuff.

To get fancy you could compare against the millions of known frauds and apply that to new products.

The thing that bugs me is that they do nothing. This stupid “it’s all on you to register your brand and yadda yadda” would be cool if they also coupled that with a ton of effort and smarts to stamp out counterfeiters.

I mean they run mechanical Turk, they could just manually review shit.

They should keep a running log of how they think this is important and all the things they try.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#75

Post by Terretta »

NathanKP wrote: post #61
Terretta wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read your own link? "We do not enforce ... Detail Page Ownership ... Exclusive or Selective Distribution." As long as the counterfeit is good enough, don't bother complaining: "Other sellers can list their items for sale against pages that you have created or added your copyrighted images to. However, we do require sellers to list only against detail pages that exactly match their items. If you believe seller…

Brand Registry is the first step to applying for brand gating which does stop other people from selling your ASIN on Amazon: https://www.helium10.com/blog/selling-on-amazon/brand-gating...

This should be the default.

"Suzi Hixon - Private Label Lawyer - Providing strategic business and legal guidance for the proactive protection and enforcement of your Amazon listings and private label brands."

How bad must be the Amazon problem be that there's an industry dedicated to trying to deal with it?

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#76

Post by vanilla_nut »

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…

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 can't believe there hasn't been a slew of lawsuits over this, especially in the highly litigious culture of the US. Could I just be mistaken in thinking this is such a serious problem? Or has Amazon just been lucky?

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#77

Post by chii »

maxxxxx wrote: post #59
drharby wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You can't call this good. They are fucking up on purpose and have made a calculation that most people won't notice and it's cheaper to refund the few that do. That's terrible customer and feels very unethical.

> most people won't notice

if a customer doesn't notice it's a knockoff, then it's not a knockoff?

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#78

Post by sk5t »

prepend wrote: post #74
discoursism wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is reminding me every PHB who ever said, "it'll just take a day or two." "It's just a little machine learning."

I agree in general, but literally all you have to do is reverse image search new product listings against existing products and then add a call out to manually review this. This isn’t even complicated stuff. To get fancy you could compare against the millions of known frauds and apply that to new products. The thing that bugs me is that they do nothing. This stupid “it’s all on you to register your brand and yadda ya…

If simple image matching is effective, scammers will just rotate/warp/tint their images. These techniques might also take the legs out from an MT approach. Sellers might also get a product online with one image, then later change to another/reorganize the album.

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#79

Post by amluto »

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.

So why doesn't Amazon go back closer to their original model? I wouldn't mind seeing a strong built-in preference for genuine Amazon listings and a very clear indication that I'm about to order from some random-ass seller.

(Also, I'm quite surprised that there hasn't been a giant trademark infringement and/or copyright infringement lawsuit against Amazon? Amazon.com de facto sells all kinds of counterfeit goods. I wouldn't be surprised if a judge wouldn't let them hide behind the "it wasn't us -- it was a third party" defense.)

Re: Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting

#80

Post by bitmapbrother »

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 is the new eBay as I like to say. Ever try searching for a Chromecast on Amazon? The number of Chinese counterfeits available is staggering.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_1_6?url=search-alias...

And since Amazon profits from these third party sellers they are complicit.

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