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Since the growth of third party sellers there should be no "even Amazon" about it. The image watermark makes it pretty clear it's a 3rd party seller. I do wis

Since the growth of third party sellers there should be no "even Amazon" about it. The image watermark makes it pretty clear it's a 3rd party seller. I do wish Amazon would vet the stuff they permit sale of on their site though.

noxToken 10y ago
This isn't meant to be snarky: How does a company like Amazon, that sells damn near anything you could want, vet everything that they sell in an efficient manner? Even if you vet everything the first time around, what about updates? Software and hardware devices/gadgets are obvious, but this includes other physical goods that undergo a redesign as well.
- FussyZeus 10y ago
  They could at least be _trying_. The impression I get is literally anyone can post literally anything and amazon will put their brand above it. They must realize that their brand is highly legitimizing to any product for sale, and you'd think they would be more interested in maintaining that brand. I mean I wouldn't say Amazon is a byword for quality and value, but at the same time I would say most people would put it above, say, ebay and there really doesn't seem to be much of a difference anymore.
  - noxToken 10y ago
    There are two, maybe three sides to Amazon. There is the main Amazon site that everyone is familiar with. You go to Amazon, buy the product from Amazon, pay Amazon, then receive a shipment from Amazon via carrier. Next is the Amazon seller side. This has two different sides to it. There is the traditional seller model that is akin to eBay's buy-it-now. You go to Amazon, buy from the seller, pay the seller (via Amazon), then receive the shipment from the seller via carrier. The side to the seller is fulfillment. Sellers have the option to use Amazon as a distributor. It's essentially a hybrid model of the two. You go to Amazon, buy from the seller, pay the seller (via Amazon), then receive the shipment from Amazon (that the seller sent to Amazon) via carrier[1]. My point is that Amazon doesn't exactly put their seal of approval above everything. Just most things. [1]: https://services.amazon.com/fulfillment-by-amazon/how-it-works.htm/ref=asus_fba_snav_how https://services.amazon.com/fulfillment-by-amazon/how-it-wor...
    - vertex-four 10y ago
      The point is that buying a thing off Amazon's site that turns out to be something unexpected or a scam devalues Amazon's brand, whether it's vetted by Amazon or not. Amazon make a point of not separating their vetted stuff from their third-party sellers intentionally. If it gets to the point where it's difficult for me to find products of the quality that I want on Amazon, I'm not going to worry about whether it's Sold By Amazon or not - I'm going to find an alternative.
    - FussyZeus 10y ago
      The seal of approval is implied though. They're carrying it in what is effectively their "store." If you bought something out of a Best Buy and it turned out to be full of malware, you'd go back to Best Buy (justifiably) pissed off, and in my mind Best Buy just throwing up their hands and saying "Well we carry a lot of products, we can't check everything" isn't a very good answer.
      - giaour 10y ago
        Isn't that exactly what best buy said about the superfish-infested laptops they sold?
        FussyZeus 10y ago
        True that, but we're not talking an installed SSL cert buried in the system, this guy found it by opening the page and clicking view source. Not exactly well hidden.
        giaour 10y ago
        Yeah, all you have to do is order a camera from a third party seller, open the box, power everything on, visit the admin page, view the source, and then Google the domain name used in what looks like an ad tracker at the bottom of the page.
- 762236 10y ago
  You require the seller to put money into escrow to cover bad customer experiences. This of course makes it harder to become a seller, which could also be a bad thing (for example, to incorporate in some countries requires putting $50k in the bank, which effectively stops quite a few entrepreneurs).
- anexprogrammer 10y ago
  I'm not sure. Perhaps charge a vetting fee until your store established a level of trust. Whilst there are some great 3rd party sellers there's now a huge number of awful ones. Amazon is no longer a site that feels trustworthy. Physical stores have to meet quality and legal requirements on sale of goods and what have you. The retailer can be sued if something isn't as described, or fit for sale. Things can and do get pulled. Mistakes are of course made. Selling a bunch of stuff under the Amazon brand but disclaiming everything (take it up with the seller in China) except their own supply has taken it a little far. They became ebay but somehow still carry the trust "even Amazon".
  - saidajigumi 10y ago
    > Physical stores have to meet quality and legal requirements on sale of goods and what have you. Yes, but that's probably the wrong physical analogy. Has a mall ever been sued because one of its stores sold illegal and/or deceptively advertised goods? I seriously doubt it. Now a mall (or Amazon) might kick a seller out if there are problems. This absolutely happens, but it's not very visible, and only occurs after the fact.
    - anexprogrammer 10y ago
      Your analogy helps focus the crux of the problem. How many malls have all their stores branded as the mall? Amazon have been so successful integrating stores into their site that customers don't realise who they're buying from.
      - saidajigumi 10y ago
        I'll argue that the branding issue is a distraction. Shoppers generally understand that Home Depot, Walmart, etc. don't make or comprehensively vet everything they sell, yet they still stand behind the customer experience via returns and support. I find holding Amazon to a higher standard of product vetting as compared to other mass retailers a difficult position to defend.
- ChuckMcM 10y ago
  Its a good question, is the market maker responsible for the transactions that occur in their market. Probably not but it stains their reputation so its important for them (like it is important for Google's App store) to have some process for collecting feedback on, vetting, and mitigating, bad actors in their marketplace.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  One way is to have vendors sign a contract guaranteeing that their products do not contain malware. If the product does turn out to contain malware, then Amazon has contractual and legal recourse to recover damages and refund customers their money. Sure, this isn't perfect, and won't help much if the vendor is a shell company, but it does put vendors on notice.
  - ikeboy 10y ago
    They do. See https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200277040 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=... and https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=1161302 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=... Illegal or fraudulent listings are expressly forbidden, and the seller agrees to indemnify Amazon for any claim resulting from a breach.
    - WalterBright 10y ago
      That's good to hear!
- chris_wot 10y ago
  Lenovo did the same thing on at least three different occasions on their laptops. Advertisers on sites like Forbes regularly serve up malware. I guess I'm interested in knowing: when is someone going to be prosecuted over malware creation and distribution?
Alupis 10y ago
> The image watermark makes it pretty clear it's a 3rd party seller. Officially, watermarks and text on/in images is not allowed on Amazon, per their policy. (of course, enforcement varies). This means not seeing a watermark is not a good indication it's not a 3rd party seller. Better stated, absence of a watermark does not mean the item is sold by Amazon. Nearly everything sold on Amazon these days is 3rd parties. I'd wager somewhere in the 95%+ range. Same with "Prime" items (these are just 3rd parties that use the FBA option). > I do wish Amazon would vet the stuff they permit sale of on their site though. This is simply not possible at this scale. Not to mention, there's no guarantee a product line that was vetted by Amazon doesn't somehow have it's firmware changed/modified/injected after the validation period. Essentially, there's no way around these issues. They're not "Amazon" issues per-say, but rather product-line issues in general. Same thing could occur (and might already be occurring) from retail brick-and-mortar stores as well.
- lsaferite 10y ago
  Can you provide a source for you 95%+ assertion? I ask because I buy many things on Amazon and actively avoid 3rd party sellers. With that in mind, I almost never find something I'm looking for that is not available. There are a few exceptions from time to time, but they are rare.
  - Alupis 10y ago
    I have no official source, only experience. My company has been selling on Amazon for over 6 years (we're medium-ish volume, 200+ orders a day on Amazon alone). We're found majority of customers have no idea who they're buying from. Majority assume it's always Amazon, and often contact us about other orders they've recently placed, etc. If you browse around Amazon, you'll notice items that have many "offers", clicking this link will show you the seller's who are listing that product. You'll notice how few Amazon.com is actually listed as a seller. Typically they're listing the top 10 items in any given category, but there's millions of products on Amazon, and very few they actually carry. When they are listed on an item, they're not always the best deal anymore. We don't worry about competing with Amazon.com anymore, we worry about competing with our Chinese manufacturers (sometimes the same ones we source from!), who get USPS/US Gov't subsidized shipping (free shipping from China, and product costs ~1/2 of a US seller). Amazon is transitioning into a seller platform, not a seller themselves. All the warehouses they keep popping up everywhere are mostly for FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) warehouses, where 3rd party sellers send their products so that Amazon can warehouse them and ship them when there's a sale. Amazon FBA is a fairly competitive fulfillment cost, sometimes beating our own internal fulfillment costs (we're stepping up our FBA game because of this, but unfortunately will ultimately result in fewer warehouse staff in our company). Another secret - Amazon is rarely the best deal for any given item. Officially, policy says you must offer the "best deal" on Amazon, but this is never enforced in our experience. Amazon takes a commission of up-to 30% (depending on the item category), so unless you already have very healthy margins, you end up baking in an additional 30% to the retail price. Customer's pay your commission fees. So, if you find a product you want, see who the seller is, and try to find their website outside of Amazon.com. Chances are, the item will be up-to 30% cheaper (sometimes more!). Of course, this isn't an always guarantee, but it pays to check.
saidajigumi 10y ago
I do wish Amazon would vet the stuff they permit sale of on their site though. I get the impulse, but there's a reason that Amazon offers its A-to-Z guarantee rather than an a priori vetting process. Because the latter is literally impossible. How does the vetting even occur? Do we have armies of "compu-physical engineers", imaginary polymaths capable of analyzing any imaginable physical and/or software product for characteristics that should be rejected? If we had such mental deities at our disposal, why would we waste their time vetting gummi penguins for a retail outlet?!? Given that we won't have a magical vetting army, it'll be exactly like the TSA: enormous costs incurred to vet that the overwhelming majority of stuff is just fine, a bunch of horrible side-effects from false positives, and bad stuff will still slip through whenever someone wants it to.
- sohcahtoa 10y ago
  I'm sure this is an argument that can be applied for/against patent examiners, I'm just not sure how.
  - seanp2k2 10y ago
    For maximum irony, if you ever do find a way, patent it and license it to the government.
- teacup50 10y ago
  I think the 'vetting' is in buying products that are sourced through Amazon's supply chain, rather than vetting third-party sellers. Unfortunately, there's not a "hide 3rd-party sellers" preference toggle.
  - cherioo 10y ago
    It is possible to filter seller to Amazon.com only after you specify "Department", which is what I do most of the time. Maybe someone can write a greasemonkey script to apply it automatically.
    - 10y ago
jlarocco 10y ago
I'm not sure I agree about Amazon vetting products they sell, but singling them out in this case seems a little unfair, because there's something about this product that ties it to Amazon. Presumably I could buy the same cameras on eBay or Walmart or somewhere else and also get malware.
cat-dev-null 10y ago
Amazon now sells around a billion SKUs. It would take some serious Mechanical Turking to buy products, review them and due-diligence each for malware. The Amazon social features like Q&A and reviews are intended to crowdsource feedback after-the-fact. But until enough people die from being electrocuted from line voltage USB hubs or hoverboard power-supplies burning down their homes, regulators are unlikely to step in until there is greater public pressure on regulators to do so.
tlrobinson 10y ago
Agreed, there's a ton of counterfeit stuff on Amazon. I don't think they could pre-vet everything but they could be more aggressive about kicking off sellers of counterfeit things.

noxToken 10y ago

This isn't meant to be snarky: How does a company like Amazon, that sells damn near anything you could want, vet everything that they sell in an efficient manner? Even if you vet everything the first time around, what about updates? Software and hardware devices/gadgets are obvious, but this includes other physical goods that undergo a redesign as well.

FussyZeus 10y ago
They could at least be _trying_. The impression I get is literally anyone can post literally anything and amazon will put their brand above it. They must realize that their brand is highly legitimizing to any product for sale, and you'd think they would be more interested in maintaining that brand. I mean I wouldn't say Amazon is a byword for quality and value, but at the same time I would say most people would put it above, say, ebay and there really doesn't seem to be much of a difference anymore.
- noxToken 10y ago
  There are two, maybe three sides to Amazon. There is the main Amazon site that everyone is familiar with. You go to Amazon, buy the product from Amazon, pay Amazon, then receive a shipment from Amazon via carrier. Next is the Amazon seller side. This has two different sides to it. There is the traditional seller model that is akin to eBay's buy-it-now. You go to Amazon, buy from the seller, pay the seller (via Amazon), then receive the shipment from the seller via carrier. The side to the seller is fulfillment. Sellers have the option to use Amazon as a distributor. It's essentially a hybrid model of the two. You go to Amazon, buy from the seller, pay the seller (via Amazon), then receive the shipment from Amazon (that the seller sent to Amazon) via carrier[1]. My point is that Amazon doesn't exactly put their seal of approval above everything. Just most things. [1]: https://services.amazon.com/fulfillment-by-amazon/how-it-works.htm/ref=asus_fba_snav_how https://services.amazon.com/fulfillment-by-amazon/how-it-wor...
  - vertex-four 10y ago
    The point is that buying a thing off Amazon's site that turns out to be something unexpected or a scam devalues Amazon's brand, whether it's vetted by Amazon or not. Amazon make a point of not separating their vetted stuff from their third-party sellers intentionally. If it gets to the point where it's difficult for me to find products of the quality that I want on Amazon, I'm not going to worry about whether it's Sold By Amazon or not - I'm going to find an alternative.
  - FussyZeus 10y ago
    The seal of approval is implied though. They're carrying it in what is effectively their "store." If you bought something out of a Best Buy and it turned out to be full of malware, you'd go back to Best Buy (justifiably) pissed off, and in my mind Best Buy just throwing up their hands and saying "Well we carry a lot of products, we can't check everything" isn't a very good answer.
    - giaour 10y ago
      Isn't that exactly what best buy said about the superfish-infested laptops they sold?
      - FussyZeus 10y ago
        True that, but we're not talking an installed SSL cert buried in the system, this guy found it by opening the page and clicking view source. Not exactly well hidden.
        giaour 10y ago
        Yeah, all you have to do is order a camera from a third party seller, open the box, power everything on, visit the admin page, view the source, and then Google the domain name used in what looks like an ad tracker at the bottom of the page.
762236 10y ago
You require the seller to put money into escrow to cover bad customer experiences. This of course makes it harder to become a seller, which could also be a bad thing (for example, to incorporate in some countries requires putting $50k in the bank, which effectively stops quite a few entrepreneurs).
anexprogrammer 10y ago
I'm not sure. Perhaps charge a vetting fee until your store established a level of trust. Whilst there are some great 3rd party sellers there's now a huge number of awful ones. Amazon is no longer a site that feels trustworthy. Physical stores have to meet quality and legal requirements on sale of goods and what have you. The retailer can be sued if something isn't as described, or fit for sale. Things can and do get pulled. Mistakes are of course made. Selling a bunch of stuff under the Amazon brand but disclaiming everything (take it up with the seller in China) except their own supply has taken it a little far. They became ebay but somehow still carry the trust "even Amazon".
- saidajigumi 10y ago
  > Physical stores have to meet quality and legal requirements on sale of goods and what have you. Yes, but that's probably the wrong physical analogy. Has a mall ever been sued because one of its stores sold illegal and/or deceptively advertised goods? I seriously doubt it. Now a mall (or Amazon) might kick a seller out if there are problems. This absolutely happens, but it's not very visible, and only occurs after the fact.
  - anexprogrammer 10y ago
    Your analogy helps focus the crux of the problem. How many malls have all their stores branded as the mall? Amazon have been so successful integrating stores into their site that customers don't realise who they're buying from.
    - saidajigumi 10y ago
      I'll argue that the branding issue is a distraction. Shoppers generally understand that Home Depot, Walmart, etc. don't make or comprehensively vet everything they sell, yet they still stand behind the customer experience via returns and support. I find holding Amazon to a higher standard of product vetting as compared to other mass retailers a difficult position to defend.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
Its a good question, is the market maker responsible for the transactions that occur in their market. Probably not but it stains their reputation so its important for them (like it is important for Google's App store) to have some process for collecting feedback on, vetting, and mitigating, bad actors in their marketplace.
WalterBright 10y ago
One way is to have vendors sign a contract guaranteeing that their products do not contain malware. If the product does turn out to contain malware, then Amazon has contractual and legal recourse to recover damages and refund customers their money. Sure, this isn't perfect, and won't help much if the vendor is a shell company, but it does put vendors on notice.
- ikeboy 10y ago
  They do. See https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200277040 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=... and https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=1161302 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=... Illegal or fraudulent listings are expressly forbidden, and the seller agrees to indemnify Amazon for any claim resulting from a breach.
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    That's good to hear!
chris_wot 10y ago
Lenovo did the same thing on at least three different occasions on their laptops. Advertisers on sites like Forbes regularly serve up malware. I guess I'm interested in knowing: when is someone going to be prosecuted over malware creation and distribution?

Alupis 10y ago

> The image watermark makes it pretty clear it's a 3rd party seller. Officially, watermarks and text on/in images is not allowed on Amazon, per their policy. (of course, enforcement varies). This means not seeing a watermark is not a good indication it's not a 3rd party seller. Better stated, absence of a watermark does not mean the item is sold by Amazon. Nearly everything sold on Amazon these days is 3rd parties. I'd wager somewhere in the 95%+ range. Same with "Prime" items (these are just 3rd parties that use the FBA option). > I do wish Amazon would vet the stuff they permit sale of on their site though. This is simply not possible at this scale. Not to mention, there's no guarantee a product line that was vetted by Amazon doesn't somehow have it's firmware changed/modified/injected after the validation period. Essentially, there's no way around these issues. They're not "Amazon" issues per-say, but rather product-line issues in general. Same thing could occur (and might already be occurring) from retail brick-and-mortar stores as well.

lsaferite 10y ago
Can you provide a source for you 95%+ assertion? I ask because I buy many things on Amazon and actively avoid 3rd party sellers. With that in mind, I almost never find something I'm looking for that is not available. There are a few exceptions from time to time, but they are rare.
- Alupis 10y ago
  I have no official source, only experience. My company has been selling on Amazon for over 6 years (we're medium-ish volume, 200+ orders a day on Amazon alone). We're found majority of customers have no idea who they're buying from. Majority assume it's always Amazon, and often contact us about other orders they've recently placed, etc. If you browse around Amazon, you'll notice items that have many "offers", clicking this link will show you the seller's who are listing that product. You'll notice how few Amazon.com is actually listed as a seller. Typically they're listing the top 10 items in any given category, but there's millions of products on Amazon, and very few they actually carry. When they are listed on an item, they're not always the best deal anymore. We don't worry about competing with Amazon.com anymore, we worry about competing with our Chinese manufacturers (sometimes the same ones we source from!), who get USPS/US Gov't subsidized shipping (free shipping from China, and product costs ~1/2 of a US seller). Amazon is transitioning into a seller platform, not a seller themselves. All the warehouses they keep popping up everywhere are mostly for FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) warehouses, where 3rd party sellers send their products so that Amazon can warehouse them and ship them when there's a sale. Amazon FBA is a fairly competitive fulfillment cost, sometimes beating our own internal fulfillment costs (we're stepping up our FBA game because of this, but unfortunately will ultimately result in fewer warehouse staff in our company). Another secret - Amazon is rarely the best deal for any given item. Officially, policy says you must offer the "best deal" on Amazon, but this is never enforced in our experience. Amazon takes a commission of up-to 30% (depending on the item category), so unless you already have very healthy margins, you end up baking in an additional 30% to the retail price. Customer's pay your commission fees. So, if you find a product you want, see who the seller is, and try to find their website outside of Amazon.com. Chances are, the item will be up-to 30% cheaper (sometimes more!). Of course, this isn't an always guarantee, but it pays to check.

saidajigumi 10y ago

I do wish Amazon would vet the stuff they permit sale of on their site though. I get the impulse, but there's a reason that Amazon offers its A-to-Z guarantee rather than an a priori vetting process. Because the latter is literally impossible. How does the vetting even occur? Do we have armies of "compu-physical engineers", imaginary polymaths capable of analyzing any imaginable physical and/or software product for characteristics that should be rejected? If we had such mental deities at our disposal, why would we waste their time vetting gummi penguins for a retail outlet?!? Given that we won't have a magical vetting army, it'll be exactly like the TSA: enormous costs incurred to vet that the overwhelming majority of stuff is just fine, a bunch of horrible side-effects from false positives, and bad stuff will still slip through whenever someone wants it to.

sohcahtoa 10y ago
I'm sure this is an argument that can be applied for/against patent examiners, I'm just not sure how.
- seanp2k2 10y ago
  For maximum irony, if you ever do find a way, patent it and license it to the government.
teacup50 10y ago
I think the 'vetting' is in buying products that are sourced through Amazon's supply chain, rather than vetting third-party sellers. Unfortunately, there's not a "hide 3rd-party sellers" preference toggle.
- cherioo 10y ago
  It is possible to filter seller to Amazon.com only after you specify "Department", which is what I do most of the time. Maybe someone can write a greasemonkey script to apply it automatically.
  - 10y ago

jlarocco 10y ago

I'm not sure I agree about Amazon vetting products they sell, but singling them out in this case seems a little unfair, because there's something about this product that ties it to Amazon. Presumably I could buy the same cameras on eBay or Walmart or somewhere else and also get malware.

cat-dev-null 10y ago

Amazon now sells around a billion SKUs. It would take some serious Mechanical Turking to buy products, review them and due-diligence each for malware. The Amazon social features like Q&A and reviews are intended to crowdsource feedback after-the-fact. But until enough people die from being electrocuted from line voltage USB hubs or hoverboard power-supplies burning down their homes, regulators are unlikely to step in until there is greater public pressure on regulators to do so.

tlrobinson 10y ago

Agreed, there's a ton of counterfeit stuff on Amazon. I don't think they could pre-vet everything but they could be more aggressive about kicking off sellers of counterfeit things.