9 ms·

I ordered the top-rated eclipse glasses on Amazon a few months ago and they were counterfeit. If you put them on during daytime you can see indirect sunlight a

by typpo 9y ago

I ordered the top-rated eclipse glasses on Amazon a few months ago and they were counterfeit. If you put them on during daytime you can see indirect sunlight and even my kitchen light. They were shipped from China despite having "Made in the USA" markings and all the proper ISO certification fine print. I haven't received any communication from Amazon, so people who haven't heard from them should not assume their glasses are safe (contrary to Amazon's statement). I contacted Amazon support and they were quick to initiate a refund. For some reason Amazon rejected my review warning that items from third party sellers may be counterfeit and explaining how to tell. Here are a couple photos of the counterfeits: https://goo.gl/photos/1XRKw8KBgo3hjHx6A https://goo.gl/photos/1XRKw8KBgo3hjHx6A

MichaelGG 9y ago
It seems incredibly careless of them to tell people if they did not get an email they're OK. There's no way the impact from refunding everyone that bought any such product outweighs the coming lawsuits. I feel bad for people about to be injured. But hopefully this will screw Amazon hard and make them change their ways.
- m-j-fox 9y ago
  Isn't it somewhat on the sellers who are willing to blind people for a buck? That's not ok even in China.
  - bdcravens 9y ago
    For a given SKU, Amazon commingles inventory, so who you bought from may not be the company who stocked the FBA shelf with the product. Surely Amazon can trace it back, but I think Amazon lost the "just a marketplace" defense a long time ago as a result.
    - jklein11 9y ago
      Is the process of commingling inventory documented? That policy is slightly alarming. What would stop someone from sending boxes full of rocks to the fulfillment center with the sku of an iPad?
      - xur17 9y ago
        When you sell products through Amazon FBA (ship to Amazon, and they sell and ship it with the Prime logo), they give you the option to commingle inventory for most products if they have a UPC on them. They scan the UPC and then credit your account with 1 of the product. Your product is then mixed in with the rest [0]. [0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=200243180 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId...
  - netsharc 9y ago
    They put some sort of deadly chemical in baby milk to make it more frothy, because that's a sign of more protein... they don't give a shit ("they" being some turbo-capitalists...).
    - CamperBob2 9y ago
      No, "they" are not "turbo-capitalists." "They" are criminals. Or were, in any case. At least some of the executives responsible for that incident were executed.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - jrochkind1 9y ago
        You say that like there's a difference.
        ecommerceguy 9y ago
        There most certainly is a difference. Have you been to China? These "turbo-capitalists" are all Communist Party connected scumbags that literally would rather see people die and make a yaun than worry about safety. Parts of China is pure filth. There is no quality control until bad PR surfaces. Then it's all about saving face.
        CamperBob2 9y ago
        Here in the US, I think we've seen what the rhetoric of false equivalency gets us. Go peddle that somewhere else.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - jws 9y ago
      It was a more mundane horror. The melamine acts as a filler but also tests as protein. In the body it causes kidney trouble. In the end, 0.001% of the babies fed the adulterated formula died. (3 out of 300000). That makes being fed the tainted formula roughly as deadly as traveling 500 miles in a car in the United States. So it wasn't a case of adding deadly poison, it was a case of adding an almost safe ingredient because the manufacturers needed to get their cost down to compete. Amazingly, it appears that melamine was even too expensive and they bought scrap melamine from the manufacturing process which was not pure enough to be used in plastics, beacuase it contained the actual kidney damaging chemical rather than just the precursor. Lots of detail in the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal
- amelius 9y ago
  Amazon is already selling large quantities of food, food-supplements, and OTC medications. I'm wondering how these practices have been able to go on without any reports of poisoning.
  - snuxoll 9y ago
    Ironically, Amazon requires additional verification and approval to sell in the Food/Grocery sections, but not Health & Personal Care. I'm a lot more concerned about potential counterfeit medication than I am breakfast cereal.
    - ecommerceguy 9y ago
      You most certainly have to get ungated for H&B. http://www.fbamaster.com/ungate-health-beauty-grocery/ http://www.fbamaster.com/ungate-health-beauty-grocery/ If I recall correctly, the process for Grocery and H&B have the same requirements. I am ungated for both.
hellbanner 9y ago
I just checked my "Soluna" glasses - I can see a high watt bulb in a lamp, previously I couldn't see any lower watt bulb :/
- abirkill 9y ago
  If yours also claim to be manufactured by American Paper Optics, as the pair in the parent comment claim to be, the (real) manufacturer has some information to help determine if they're counterfeit: https://www.eclipseglasses.com/pages/safety https://www.eclipseglasses.com/pages/safety See the photo at the very bottom of the page for an illustration of the (very minor) differences.
  - hellbanner 9y ago
    Hey, I got some from APO directly -- I can still see my new, high wattage kitchen light thru them. This shouldn't be possible, right? The sun still hurts my eyes if I look close to it so.. looks like I'm out of luck.
- thesmallestcat 9y ago
  It looks like a lot of crazy people are going to trust their eyesight to a cheap piece of plastic from some company they've never heard of. Hope for the best.
  - mobilefriendly 9y ago
    No they are trusting Amazon.
    - LoSboccacc 9y ago
      *They are not understanding how Amazon resellers works
      - ceejayoz 9y ago
        Which is very much the way Amazon set it up to work.
subway 9y ago
Top-rated on Amazon, and shipped from China on the same product seems kind of suspect. It's pretty rare for a top-rated item to be fulfilled by a party other than Amazon. Any chance you can share a link to the item?
- typpo 9y ago
  Here's a link to the item: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N9T9CZL https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N9T9CZL The seller that sold me the glasses is no longer listed. The only remaining seller is the actual manufacturer.
  - 27182818284 9y ago
    I have ordered these as well. I believe I have the correct ones. For example, I can stare directly at two CFLs and see nothing. Sunlight I can see the sun, and the sun bouncing off like a car window really bright. The Amazon seller, GSM, assured me in a comment that if in my order history GSM Sales is listed I should be good to go, and it is. I don't believe mine shipped from China or anything as they were ordered with other Amazon Prime products so I'm not even sure how that would work.
apple4ever 9y ago
I bought mine 4 months ago, and they looked right too, but I got an email as well. Which is fine. I ended up getting verified ones from my father-in-law's astronomy club.
mnm1 9y ago
I too made this mistake and can see my kitchen light with these glasses. They didn't send me an email about the recall. Amazon will refund the money if you chat with them, but this in no way absolves them. I blame them fully. This counterfeit problem has been going on for years and they haven't addressed it, other than banning accounts of people who return too many of their shitty, counterfeit products. If people do get injured, I hope there are extreme punitive damages. Unfortunately, people will have to get hurt before anything changes. Fuck Amazon.
- troisx 9y ago
  I really hope that some massive lawsuits finally put and end to this. Amazon deserves anything bad that comes their way. The amount of fake items I've received from them is awful.
  - ImSkeptical 9y ago
    Are you getting fake items when you order from Amazon, or when you order from a third party through Amazon?
breakyerself 9y ago
I have the exact opposite situation. I got 9 pairs of plastic framed glasses on Amazon. They seem really legit. Only thing I can see through them is the sun unless I hold a light source directly up to the lenses. Amazon gave me a refund and told me not to use them. I'm going to try to research some more research on Monday like getting a hold of the company that gave them the ISO rating. This is apparently the source of the glasses although the seller was third party. I don't want to toss out perfectly good glasses because Amazon freaked out and banned anyone not on an exclusive list of suppliers. http://www.prosolareclipse.cc/products_list.html http://www.prosolareclipse.cc/products_list.html
- throwaway613834 9y ago
  Is it really worth your eyes and the extra money to take a risk on the glasses that you're still not giving up on them and planning on researching them? Why not just buy one that you know is reputable?
  - syshum 9y ago
    At this stage of game they will be hard to get, many of the "legit" suppliers have 100+ minimum orders right now. The Eclipse is 1 week away after all
    - ghaff 9y ago
      As far as I can tell, they're basically not available at this point, even in areas far from the path of totality.
  - ant6n 9y ago
    Where would you suggest one could get one?
    - randallsquared 9y ago
      Here in South Carolina Lowe's still has them in stock in the local stores, though only as part of some "Eclipse Kit".
InclinedPlane 9y ago
This is why I bought my glasses from an astronomical equipment store. I really hope this clusterfuck causes amazon to get their act together in regards to fraudulent listings.
- notyourday 9y ago
  > This is why I bought my glasses from an astronomical equipment store. And where do you think that place got their glasses from?
  - ecommerceguy 9y ago
    This is my concern. Regarding the supply chain, perhaps the (re)sellers are not aware of the goods being counterfeit. Chinese manufacturers have been known to adjust product without informing the brand. Brands don't usually have someone spot checking every item that rolls off the assembly line. These glasses are one-off purchases and I'd assume demand is multiple orders of magnitude higher than normal. Corner cutting at the manufacture in China is where I'd start investigating. Again, more often than not, a Chinese manufacturer (boss) would rather deliver unsafe products and save face then to tell the buyer I can't make them. Especially smaller fly-by-night "factories" that are constantly appearing in the countryside or factories facing a giant surge in demand. I could write a book re: Fake China.
kbaker 9y ago
As a comparison to the counterfeits, I took some pictures of my 'real' Soluna glasses, which I ordered a couple weeks ago from Amazon (and didn't get an email.) Also they pass the manufacturer's tests for verifying real glasses. 100 W equivalent CFL is very dimly visible. http://imgur.com/a/5hMfu http://imgur.com/a/5hMfu
- glassesquestion 9y ago
  I've been testing mine with a red laser pointer (NOT into my eye!). The glasses reflect a lot, even at a high angle. What does get through does not project beyond the filter itself, and is very dim, even in a darkened room (yes, I'm being careful, I know a reflection can cause damage). When I look at a 100W equiv CFL bulb, it resembles what you photographed. I've also looked briefly at my smartphone flash when in flashlight mode, it is quite dim and 'shifted' toward yellow. Just wondering if I can extrapolate these into a transmission spectrum. I'm leaning toward throwing on an ordinary UV blocking pair of sunglasses on top and then limiting my time anyway, you can basically see the same thing with the pinhole technique. This is a risk I would take for myself, if my children were still young I would not risk their eyes, nor do it in front of them and tell them they couldn't. Also, I can distinctly remember staring directly at the sun as a (dumbass) kid on multiple occasions for as long as I could stand it.
  - jerf 9y ago
    "Also, I can distinctly remember staring directly at the sun as a (dumbass) kid on multiple occasions for as long as I could stand it." Yes, nature has made it so that we can't do that and harm ourselves, since the sun has been there for a long time. The problem is precisely that during the eclipse you'll be able to "stand it" for much, much longer. Eclipses don't happen often enough for us to be protected against them, and I also have to imagine most animals aren't as fascinated with them as we are...
    - joezydeco 9y ago
      The other issue is that your pupils are dilating with the darkness, allowing way more UV into the eye.
influx 9y ago
I can get why Chinese would manufacture items and then slap on a logo and resell it for much higher price, but what kind of person ships something that could blind a user for s couple bucks? Insane.

by typpo 9y ago

MichaelGG 9y ago

It seems incredibly careless of them to tell people if they did not get an email they're OK. There's no way the impact from refunding everyone that bought any such product outweighs the coming lawsuits. I feel bad for people about to be injured. But hopefully this will screw Amazon hard and make them change their ways.

m-j-fox 9y ago
Isn't it somewhat on the sellers who are willing to blind people for a buck? That's not ok even in China.
- bdcravens 9y ago
  For a given SKU, Amazon commingles inventory, so who you bought from may not be the company who stocked the FBA shelf with the product. Surely Amazon can trace it back, but I think Amazon lost the "just a marketplace" defense a long time ago as a result.
  - jklein11 9y ago
    Is the process of commingling inventory documented? That policy is slightly alarming. What would stop someone from sending boxes full of rocks to the fulfillment center with the sku of an iPad?
    - xur17 9y ago
      When you sell products through Amazon FBA (ship to Amazon, and they sell and ship it with the Prime logo), they give you the option to commingle inventory for most products if they have a UPC on them. They scan the UPC and then credit your account with 1 of the product. Your product is then mixed in with the rest [0]. [0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=200243180 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId...
- netsharc 9y ago
  They put some sort of deadly chemical in baby milk to make it more frothy, because that's a sign of more protein... they don't give a shit ("they" being some turbo-capitalists...).
  - CamperBob2 9y ago
    No, "they" are not "turbo-capitalists." "They" are criminals. Or were, in any case. At least some of the executives responsible for that incident were executed.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - jrochkind1 9y ago
      You say that like there's a difference.
      - ecommerceguy 9y ago
        There most certainly is a difference. Have you been to China? These "turbo-capitalists" are all Communist Party connected scumbags that literally would rather see people die and make a yaun than worry about safety. Parts of China is pure filth. There is no quality control until bad PR surfaces. Then it's all about saving face.
      - CamperBob2 9y ago
        Here in the US, I think we've seen what the rhetoric of false equivalency gets us. Go peddle that somewhere else.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - jws 9y ago
    It was a more mundane horror. The melamine acts as a filler but also tests as protein. In the body it causes kidney trouble. In the end, 0.001% of the babies fed the adulterated formula died. (3 out of 300000). That makes being fed the tainted formula roughly as deadly as traveling 500 miles in a car in the United States. So it wasn't a case of adding deadly poison, it was a case of adding an almost safe ingredient because the manufacturers needed to get their cost down to compete. Amazingly, it appears that melamine was even too expensive and they bought scrap melamine from the manufacturing process which was not pure enough to be used in plastics, beacuase it contained the actual kidney damaging chemical rather than just the precursor. Lots of detail in the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal
amelius 9y ago
Amazon is already selling large quantities of food, food-supplements, and OTC medications. I'm wondering how these practices have been able to go on without any reports of poisoning.
- snuxoll 9y ago
  Ironically, Amazon requires additional verification and approval to sell in the Food/Grocery sections, but not Health & Personal Care. I'm a lot more concerned about potential counterfeit medication than I am breakfast cereal.
  - ecommerceguy 9y ago
    You most certainly have to get ungated for H&B. http://www.fbamaster.com/ungate-health-beauty-grocery/ http://www.fbamaster.com/ungate-health-beauty-grocery/ If I recall correctly, the process for Grocery and H&B have the same requirements. I am ungated for both.

hellbanner 9y ago

I just checked my "Soluna" glasses - I can see a high watt bulb in a lamp, previously I couldn't see any lower watt bulb :/

abirkill 9y ago
If yours also claim to be manufactured by American Paper Optics, as the pair in the parent comment claim to be, the (real) manufacturer has some information to help determine if they're counterfeit: https://www.eclipseglasses.com/pages/safety https://www.eclipseglasses.com/pages/safety See the photo at the very bottom of the page for an illustration of the (very minor) differences.
- hellbanner 9y ago
  Hey, I got some from APO directly -- I can still see my new, high wattage kitchen light thru them. This shouldn't be possible, right? The sun still hurts my eyes if I look close to it so.. looks like I'm out of luck.
thesmallestcat 9y ago
It looks like a lot of crazy people are going to trust their eyesight to a cheap piece of plastic from some company they've never heard of. Hope for the best.
- mobilefriendly 9y ago
  No they are trusting Amazon.
  - LoSboccacc 9y ago
    *They are not understanding how Amazon resellers works
    - ceejayoz 9y ago
      Which is very much the way Amazon set it up to work.

subway 9y ago

Top-rated on Amazon, and shipped from China on the same product seems kind of suspect. It's pretty rare for a top-rated item to be fulfilled by a party other than Amazon. Any chance you can share a link to the item?

typpo 9y ago
Here's a link to the item: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N9T9CZL https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N9T9CZL The seller that sold me the glasses is no longer listed. The only remaining seller is the actual manufacturer.
- 27182818284 9y ago
  I have ordered these as well. I believe I have the correct ones. For example, I can stare directly at two CFLs and see nothing. Sunlight I can see the sun, and the sun bouncing off like a car window really bright. The Amazon seller, GSM, assured me in a comment that if in my order history GSM Sales is listed I should be good to go, and it is. I don't believe mine shipped from China or anything as they were ordered with other Amazon Prime products so I'm not even sure how that would work.

apple4ever 9y ago

I bought mine 4 months ago, and they looked right too, but I got an email as well. Which is fine. I ended up getting verified ones from my father-in-law's astronomy club.

mnm1 9y ago

I too made this mistake and can see my kitchen light with these glasses. They didn't send me an email about the recall. Amazon will refund the money if you chat with them, but this in no way absolves them. I blame them fully. This counterfeit problem has been going on for years and they haven't addressed it, other than banning accounts of people who return too many of their shitty, counterfeit products. If people do get injured, I hope there are extreme punitive damages. Unfortunately, people will have to get hurt before anything changes. Fuck Amazon.

troisx 9y ago
I really hope that some massive lawsuits finally put and end to this. Amazon deserves anything bad that comes their way. The amount of fake items I've received from them is awful.
- ImSkeptical 9y ago
  Are you getting fake items when you order from Amazon, or when you order from a third party through Amazon?

breakyerself 9y ago

I have the exact opposite situation. I got 9 pairs of plastic framed glasses on Amazon. They seem really legit. Only thing I can see through them is the sun unless I hold a light source directly up to the lenses. Amazon gave me a refund and told me not to use them. I'm going to try to research some more research on Monday like getting a hold of the company that gave them the ISO rating. This is apparently the source of the glasses although the seller was third party. I don't want to toss out perfectly good glasses because Amazon freaked out and banned anyone not on an exclusive list of suppliers. http://www.prosolareclipse.cc/products_list.html http://www.prosolareclipse.cc/products_list.html

throwaway613834 9y ago
Is it really worth your eyes and the extra money to take a risk on the glasses that you're still not giving up on them and planning on researching them? Why not just buy one that you know is reputable?
- syshum 9y ago
  At this stage of game they will be hard to get, many of the "legit" suppliers have 100+ minimum orders right now. The Eclipse is 1 week away after all
  - ghaff 9y ago
    As far as I can tell, they're basically not available at this point, even in areas far from the path of totality.
- ant6n 9y ago
  Where would you suggest one could get one?
  - randallsquared 9y ago
    Here in South Carolina Lowe's still has them in stock in the local stores, though only as part of some "Eclipse Kit".

InclinedPlane 9y ago

This is why I bought my glasses from an astronomical equipment store. I really hope this clusterfuck causes amazon to get their act together in regards to fraudulent listings.

notyourday 9y ago
> This is why I bought my glasses from an astronomical equipment store. And where do you think that place got their glasses from?
- ecommerceguy 9y ago
  This is my concern. Regarding the supply chain, perhaps the (re)sellers are not aware of the goods being counterfeit. Chinese manufacturers have been known to adjust product without informing the brand. Brands don't usually have someone spot checking every item that rolls off the assembly line. These glasses are one-off purchases and I'd assume demand is multiple orders of magnitude higher than normal. Corner cutting at the manufacture in China is where I'd start investigating. Again, more often than not, a Chinese manufacturer (boss) would rather deliver unsafe products and save face then to tell the buyer I can't make them. Especially smaller fly-by-night "factories" that are constantly appearing in the countryside or factories facing a giant surge in demand. I could write a book re: Fake China.

kbaker 9y ago

As a comparison to the counterfeits, I took some pictures of my 'real' Soluna glasses, which I ordered a couple weeks ago from Amazon (and didn't get an email.) Also they pass the manufacturer's tests for verifying real glasses. 100 W equivalent CFL is very dimly visible. http://imgur.com/a/5hMfu http://imgur.com/a/5hMfu

glassesquestion 9y ago
I've been testing mine with a red laser pointer (NOT into my eye!). The glasses reflect a lot, even at a high angle. What does get through does not project beyond the filter itself, and is very dim, even in a darkened room (yes, I'm being careful, I know a reflection can cause damage). When I look at a 100W equiv CFL bulb, it resembles what you photographed. I've also looked briefly at my smartphone flash when in flashlight mode, it is quite dim and 'shifted' toward yellow. Just wondering if I can extrapolate these into a transmission spectrum. I'm leaning toward throwing on an ordinary UV blocking pair of sunglasses on top and then limiting my time anyway, you can basically see the same thing with the pinhole technique. This is a risk I would take for myself, if my children were still young I would not risk their eyes, nor do it in front of them and tell them they couldn't. Also, I can distinctly remember staring directly at the sun as a (dumbass) kid on multiple occasions for as long as I could stand it.
- jerf 9y ago
  "Also, I can distinctly remember staring directly at the sun as a (dumbass) kid on multiple occasions for as long as I could stand it." Yes, nature has made it so that we can't do that and harm ourselves, since the sun has been there for a long time. The problem is precisely that during the eclipse you'll be able to "stand it" for much, much longer. Eclipses don't happen often enough for us to be protected against them, and I also have to imagine most animals aren't as fascinated with them as we are...
  - joezydeco 9y ago
    The other issue is that your pupils are dilating with the darkness, allowing way more UV into the eye.

influx 9y ago

I can get why Chinese would manufacture items and then slap on a logo and resell it for much higher price, but what kind of person ships something that could blind a user for s couple bucks? Insane.