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Amazon is turning into a mine field for legitimate sellers. I have a customer I work closely with to integrate their customer products into Amazon. They have

Amazon is turning into a mine field for legitimate sellers. I have a customer I work closely with to integrate their customer products into Amazon. They have a catalog of 3,000 stock parking signs listed on Amazon. We took considerable time to buy custom SKUs and get them listed. We discovered in the last month two separate Chinese sellers utilized the Amazon buy box feature and listed on our product page for less money than our items. This is impossible to do since they don't make the same signs at the same specs and design. In fact how could they have my customer's artwork? We soon discovered these people were actually hijacking our high resolution main image and actually using that to make their own signs. Amazon is strict about watermarking so we went very conservative on the markings on the files. When they received an order they printed out the high res file of ours and stuck it to a parking blank. The reviews they were getting it was obvious they weren't selling good quality, but people were confusing them with US! Almost worse than any of it Amazon puts so much power into other sellers using the buy box feature that if you searched for my customer the Chinese sellers would often default to the preferred seller. In the end Amazon has banned the two sellers, but moving forward it is difficult to police 3,000 listings so we have not been expanding what we are doing on there.

paulcole 10y ago
>In the end Amazon has banned the two sellers, but moving forward it is difficult to police 3,000 listings so we have not been expanding what we are doing on there. Does the API still return offer count? If you're truly the only legit seller, set up an alert if offerCount >> 1. Even without the API this should be pretty trivial to scrape.
- dlubarov 10y ago
  But the first sale doctrine means there can be other legit sellers. There's no way to be certain whether a third party seller is selling a counterfeit (except by buying it).
  - paulcole 10y ago
    First, my suggestion was more an attempt to simplify the "how do I keep an eye on 3,000 listings" process. Second, > first sale doctrine means there can be other legit sellers This is not necessarily true on Amazon. There are larger brands that make deals with Amazon, preventing their products from being sold as new by anyone but themselves. Other people can sell it, but it must be listed as used. An end-run around first sale, but that's the way it is.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    One could just buy a certain percentage of those allegedly resold items that have a lower-than-suggested price, and then report every one that turns out to be counterfeit.
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      That's definitely an option, and possibly a business opportunity. Downvotes are unwarranted. Other options would be to require bonding or otherwise validating sellers, particularly over a certain volume. Amazon (and other retailers) might collectivise or bundle sellers, with an intermediate serving as a vouchsafe for quality and origin, if necessary. Otherwise, this whole situation is a massive trust breakdown, for both sellers and buyers, and a major problem for Amazon generally.
losteverything 10y ago
I'm curious. Did you ever send an order to China? So if I make a thing that can't be digitally copied easily I'm safe???
- riskable 10y ago
  Bespoke everything is the future of retail goods. Imagine if every product on Amazon was custom made for you. A Chinese seller could do it sure but you might get suspicious of the 4-6 week shipping time and it would be blatantly obvious where it was coming from. With the cost of 3D printing, CNC, and laser engraving dropping faster than a Miami facelift it's inevitable.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    I think you're vastly underestimating the economies of mass production and the complexity costs of even templated or made-to-measure items. Yes, you'll see some degree of custom manufacture, as exists now in furniture and a few other areas. But in too many cases, the costs of mass production and available efficiencies are simply too great to compete with. Apple's devices, as an example, are not custom-specified, but are offered from an exceptionally small number of variants.
- benmorris 10y ago
  To answer your question no we don't ship to China. Ripping off our main image was enough to recreate our product (poorly).
robryan 10y ago
It has also become harder from for legitimate sellers because Amazon are trying to respond to counterfeits. I suspect almost every seller of volume would get counterfeit claims made against them, having a buyer use the word fake in their correspondence is enough to trigger one. Get a few of these and your account gets suspended.
nas 10y ago
It's a minefield for buyers as well. I have ordered products from Amazon's web site for many years, probably more than 15. Recently, I am getting reluctant to buy because there are so many counterfeit products. As an example, I wanted to by a genuine Lenovo charger for my X230 laptop. If you want to share my pain, try finding the real McCoy on Amazon.com. I also had to replace my keyboard. That was even worse than the chargers. The products say they are manufactured by Lenovo but they are clearly not. In the end, I suspect the keyboard and charger I got (which I paid quite a bit more than the clearly fake items) are still fakes. They have Lenovo's brand marks on them but they don't look exactly like the originals. Another good example of counterfeits are cell phone batteries. I tried to buy a replacement battery for a Nexus phone. I had to give up because wading through the endless listings of counterfeit products is just too time consuming. I don't think Amazon is doing nearly enough to stop this.
- shimon 10y ago
  Yeah, I ordered a Lenovo laptop charger that seems to be fake. It is lighter and the cable is thinner than the genuine item. It also has a manufacturing date on it of 01/2013, although I received it in early 2017. But it was like $12.
- Splines 10y ago
  I would have bought this one: http://a.co/7XcZoUf http://a.co/7XcZoUf Is that one a fake too? Going by the "Lenovo" seller and the fact that the seller also sells a ton of other Lenovo branded stuff makes me feel better, but who knows...
  - nas 10y ago
    I bought this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006OQJO4C/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006OQJO4C/ref=oh_aui_sear... I'm not sure it is a fake or not. I looks a little "off" to me. Maybe real but intended for a foreign market? Hasn't burnt my house down yet, so that's something.
    - 10y ago

paulcole 10y ago

>In the end Amazon has banned the two sellers, but moving forward it is difficult to police 3,000 listings so we have not been expanding what we are doing on there. Does the API still return offer count? If you're truly the only legit seller, set up an alert if offerCount >> 1. Even without the API this should be pretty trivial to scrape.

dlubarov 10y ago
But the first sale doctrine means there can be other legit sellers. There's no way to be certain whether a third party seller is selling a counterfeit (except by buying it).
- paulcole 10y ago
  First, my suggestion was more an attempt to simplify the "how do I keep an eye on 3,000 listings" process. Second, > first sale doctrine means there can be other legit sellers This is not necessarily true on Amazon. There are larger brands that make deals with Amazon, preventing their products from being sold as new by anyone but themselves. Other people can sell it, but it must be listed as used. An end-run around first sale, but that's the way it is.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  One could just buy a certain percentage of those allegedly resold items that have a lower-than-suggested price, and then report every one that turns out to be counterfeit.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    That's definitely an option, and possibly a business opportunity. Downvotes are unwarranted. Other options would be to require bonding or otherwise validating sellers, particularly over a certain volume. Amazon (and other retailers) might collectivise or bundle sellers, with an intermediate serving as a vouchsafe for quality and origin, if necessary. Otherwise, this whole situation is a massive trust breakdown, for both sellers and buyers, and a major problem for Amazon generally.

losteverything 10y ago

I'm curious. Did you ever send an order to China? So if I make a thing that can't be digitally copied easily I'm safe???

riskable 10y ago
Bespoke everything is the future of retail goods. Imagine if every product on Amazon was custom made for you. A Chinese seller could do it sure but you might get suspicious of the 4-6 week shipping time and it would be blatantly obvious where it was coming from. With the cost of 3D printing, CNC, and laser engraving dropping faster than a Miami facelift it's inevitable.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  I think you're vastly underestimating the economies of mass production and the complexity costs of even templated or made-to-measure items. Yes, you'll see some degree of custom manufacture, as exists now in furniture and a few other areas. But in too many cases, the costs of mass production and available efficiencies are simply too great to compete with. Apple's devices, as an example, are not custom-specified, but are offered from an exceptionally small number of variants.
benmorris 10y ago
To answer your question no we don't ship to China. Ripping off our main image was enough to recreate our product (poorly).

robryan 10y ago

It has also become harder from for legitimate sellers because Amazon are trying to respond to counterfeits. I suspect almost every seller of volume would get counterfeit claims made against them, having a buyer use the word fake in their correspondence is enough to trigger one. Get a few of these and your account gets suspended.

nas 10y ago

It's a minefield for buyers as well. I have ordered products from Amazon's web site for many years, probably more than 15. Recently, I am getting reluctant to buy because there are so many counterfeit products. As an example, I wanted to by a genuine Lenovo charger for my X230 laptop. If you want to share my pain, try finding the real McCoy on Amazon.com. I also had to replace my keyboard. That was even worse than the chargers. The products say they are manufactured by Lenovo but they are clearly not. In the end, I suspect the keyboard and charger I got (which I paid quite a bit more than the clearly fake items) are still fakes. They have Lenovo's brand marks on them but they don't look exactly like the originals. Another good example of counterfeits are cell phone batteries. I tried to buy a replacement battery for a Nexus phone. I had to give up because wading through the endless listings of counterfeit products is just too time consuming. I don't think Amazon is doing nearly enough to stop this.

shimon 10y ago
Yeah, I ordered a Lenovo laptop charger that seems to be fake. It is lighter and the cable is thinner than the genuine item. It also has a manufacturing date on it of 01/2013, although I received it in early 2017. But it was like $12.
Splines 10y ago
I would have bought this one: http://a.co/7XcZoUf http://a.co/7XcZoUf Is that one a fake too? Going by the "Lenovo" seller and the fact that the seller also sells a ton of other Lenovo branded stuff makes me feel better, but who knows...
- nas 10y ago
  I bought this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006OQJO4C/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006OQJO4C/ref=oh_aui_sear... I'm not sure it is a fake or not. I looks a little "off" to me. Maybe real but intended for a foreign market? Hasn't burnt my house down yet, so that's something.
  - 10y ago