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Amazon and Ebay Opened Pandora's Box of Chinese Counterfeits
- thisisit 9y ago> We have a store on Amazon and counterfeits have been able to attach themselves to our page, violating all of our intellectual property.” How is attaching themselves to the page even possible? I don't believe Amazon has any kind of ad system which allow people to buy spaces.
- detaro 9y agoI think they can just say they sell the same product and then they are shown as another seller on the same product page. Reviews get mixed, the counterfeiter might be shown as the cheapest option, ...
- post_break 9y agoYep, it's the reason why buying any Apple accessory can be a mine field.
- jeffwilcox 9y agoThis scares me, a lot. After watching enough videos online I've had to start using the Apple Store, paying shipping, to avoid any potential fire hazards. Most consumers probably never know. :( It's crazy that they sell the fakes on the official Apple product pages.
- dragonwriter 9y agoIt's a reason why buying anything on Amazon that could be counterfeited is a minefield, especially (given commingling of inventory) if the seller is Amazon or anyone using Amazon fulfillment, because then you can't even rely on experience with the seller, since the item you get may not actually be from the identified seller.
- jlj 9y agoMight be the "have one to sell?" link on each page.
- Raphmedia 9y agoAmazon works this way: If a product is not on Amazon, you create a listing, add images, descriptions, etc. Then everyone that has the same product has to add their under your listing. That means that if you put hours and hours into creating the best Amazon page, a counterfeiter can simply add his version under your listing and gain all your images, descriptions, reviews.
- brianwawok 9y agoThey are talking about owning an ASIN For example: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KRYMB88/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KRYMB88/ The ASIN is B00KRYMB88. Whoever FIRST listed to that item picked the title, description, pictures.. and it created the page on Amazon and assigned it an ASIN. If you have an identical shirt to that, you can list it with ASIN B00KRYMB88, and it will appear on that page (But you can't edit the listing details). That is how Amazon is built. The problem is, what if you have a counterfeit shirt, and you sell under the same ASIN. A customer will get it delivered.. it sucks maybe.. and you blame the listing and leave a bad review.
- dabernathy89 9y agoSo you cannot prevent other sellers from selling under the same ASIN?
- j-c-hewitt 9y agoIt is possible, but only with direct permission from Amazon. It's called 'brand gating.'
- brianwawok 9y agoYah it is a bit of a process. It is much easier if you are say, selling something with Brand = Nike and you have a company called Nike.. vs just being the first person to sell generic widget X.
- thisisit 9y agoWow. That is an eye opener. The extent to people go to find loopholes. Though given e-commerce is trying to replace traditional brick and mortar, they might put more effort in ensuring quality.
- mox1 9y agoAmazon also co-mingles inventory. If we both have the same exact product to sell it gets put into the same physical warehouse space. Then when it's sold, they just grab a random one out of that space. So its possible that you can "sell" an item that a different supplier actually sent to amazon.
- stevenwoo 9y agoI thought one specified the seller on Amazon.
- Amezarak 9y agoYes, but he's saying that Amazon commingles the inventories of different sellers if they recognize it to be the same item. In other words, if Seller X, Y, and Z all sell Widgets, Amazon puts all their Widgets into the same box. When you buy a Widget from Seller X, you may actually be getting a Widget that originated from Seller Y or Z. From the buyer and seller perspective, it's transparent...unless, of course, one of the sellers is a counterfeiter, in which case the buyer gets agitated that Seller X is selling counterfeit Widgets and yells at Seller X for selling counterfeit Widgets when the item actually originated with Seller Y.
- acuozzo 9y ago> Amazon commingles the inventories of different sellers if they recognize it to be the same item Is this also true of items shipped and sold by Amazon.com? I avoid third party sellers for this reason.
- j-c-hewitt 9y agoYou're probably more likely to get something co-mingled sold by Amazon.com than from a third party seller. Generally speaking third party sellers have more of a reason to opt out of it unless they know their inventory is junk.
- astura 9y ago
- joezydeco 9y agoThere's another issue where middlemen like Amazon are mixing counterfeit product into the flow of real products. This discussion came up during the 2017 Solar Eclipse where Amazon was selling counterfeit viewing glasses and then recalling legitimate product from real vendors in the confusion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15008338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15008338
- sofaofthedamned 9y agoCo-mingling of inventory is why i'll never buy anything vaguely counterfeitable from either. I previously had fake Sennheiser headphones sold by Amazon themselves.
- nkrisc 9y agoThis is exactly why I no longer buy electronics or other higher ticket consumer goods from Amazon. Inevitably I'll be researching the product on Amazon and it will have 5 stars reviews with a healthy smattering of 1 star reviews. If you investigate the 1 star reviews it turns out most of them are usually from people who received a counterfeit. So you have people buying from (ostensibly) the same product page on the site, but some percentage are getting inferior counterfeit products. If there's a way around that I haven't figured it out and won't be spending any more time to figure it out. I now buy from authorized retailers and have yet to have a problem. Unless I'm buying little plastic things that stick on my desk and hold cables. I still buy those from Amazon. I don't really care if they're counterfeit, insofar as they could even be.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ng12 9y agoI only order items "Sold by Amazon" and have never received a counterfeit item (AFAICT). I always assume those reviews are from 3rd party sellers -- is that an incorrect assumption?
- jaggederest 9y ago
- PublicFace 9y agoI like the Chinese counterfeits. I got a bundle of knock off Ralph Lauren polos that let me experiment with the frat boy look in college with out spending thousands on real ones. I personally like shanzai culture. Brands are cool but ultimately quality should be an internal thing that customers should seek out and test, not rely on status symbols and brands to define their tastes. Caveat emptor is a thing you know.
- corey_moncure 9y agoI like manufacturing safety standards! Those are cool too.
- PublicFace 9y agoI mean I agree but what about something like clothing where the style is ephemeral and safety isn't really an issue (outside of blatant materials poisoning or whatever).
- chrisper 9y agoWhat if you paid and ordered Ralph Lauren and received counterfeit? Because that's the larger problem in my opinion. Especially since it often also includes goods that are dangerous as counterfeit (like medication).
- icebraining 9y agoIt raises an important distinction, though: protecting users vs protecting brands. There are business interests pushing to conflate the two, but we shouldn't.
- graphitezepp 9y agoPrecisely, in my worldview. Brands have some amount of value for users as they are a stamp of a certain level of manufacturing standard. However that does not mean they are inherently beneficial to consumers.
- ChuckMcM 9y agoFrom the article -- "This is a world where just about anything can be made almost instantaneously; a world where a product can be iterated, produced, and then sold around the world within a couple of weeks." And yet every Kickstarter that uses Shenzen to manufacture is months if not years late in delivering. Presumably if you could make money by taking out counterfeiters it would inspire a some subset of people to do so. Most of what I've read on this problem though seems to hinge on the fact that even if you identify the business that is at fault they just vanish and a new business pops up to take their place. And their does not seem to be a lot of incentive on the Chinese government to regulate these guys.
- leggomylibro 9y agoA lot of that is inexperience. If they spoke Mandarin and had ongoing relationships with people/places having access to everything ranging from simple milling equipment up to a superfactory in the space of a few square miles, (and next-day shipping from Taobao,) they might have less trouble.
- ethbro 9y agoI feel like Shenzhen factory owners must work very hard to keep a straight face when someone shows up and says "I have a bag of money from Kickstarter, and need a one-off large order under a tight deadline."
- baybal2 9y agoObserve that: In case kickstarter applicant is a domestic Chinese company, they rarely have any problem delivering even biggest projects. Everything changes when the applicant in question is some kinda American Silicone Valley hoodie startup wunder kinder, with an idea that he he can make a manufacturable product from scratch during a one week hop to Shenzhen. Just go and look at past statistics by yourself
- baybal2 9y agoA good piece of reading on that: https://www.google.ch/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/benjaminjoffe/2017/07/18/crowdfundings-death-has-been-greatly-exaggerated-creators-ship-especially-in-china/amp/ https://www.google.ch/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/benjaminjof...
- dba7dba 9y agoNot long ago people got sent to jails and had their lives ruined (sure they broke law) for carrying counterfeit stuff. They were treated like drug dealers. Now same is done but it's considered ok and even a brilliant business move, all because some MBAs and their bosses make it look ok.
- readhn 9y agoshouldn't there be a mechanism that allowed legitimate sellers to report and block knock-off sellers on ebay/amazon? Amazon and eBay are American companies so they the problem here it seems to me. How are they getting away with it? Arent they technically participating in the copyright/patent violations by providing the counterfeiters a platform to sell their knock offs? Knock offs on alibaba are another issue but then again average American is not shopping there. ... yet.
- baybal2 9y agoWell, Apple and Sony together effectively bribed Alibaba to prohibit trade in factory refurbished second hand electronics. I was making money on that myself in my teenage years. Probably, I would not be a developer now if Apple did not come up with Iphone and Sony and Nokia did not tank to the bottom so quickly at around 2009. First and second generations of iphones were easily refurbishable. They turned to optic medium and harder adhesives in third gen, and in the middle of production run for the third, they began using one that was completely impossible to undo in garage workshop conditions to finally kill refurbishment industry
- j-c-hewitt 9y agoThere is, sort of. On Amazon, you have to do test purchases. You can then file complaints to Amazon. In many cases, this results in a suspension or some other kind of ding against their account particularly if they can't verify an authentic supply chain. Amazon avoids getting in trouble by putting the legal responsibility entirely on sellers. They are just a 'dumb pipe' running the marketplace.
- mabbo 9y agoPerhaps there needs to be a new open standard for authenticating physical products. Put a unique key on each item- added cost, I know- that validates against a public key for the company and product. At each sale of the product or passing of possession from a supplier to a vendor, the keys would register a transfer. Anyone in the supply chain could use the company's public APIs to say "I have this item, does that make sense? Or did someone already sell this one?". Companies could sue anyone selling unverified goods. Border police could easily identify fakes. Customers could confirm authenticity. Sellers could prove they are or are not selling fakes.
- Cacti 9y agoAnd every physical good you ever purchased would be tracked and accounted for until you die. Don't you think it would be far easier to just enforce the laws we already have?
- mabbo 9y agoHow? The problem is that it's hard to enforce these laws. I'm proposing that we need to make it easier to enforce them.
- reportingsjr 9y agoThis exists under the name bitmarks. Bunnie Huang wrote a blog post about this just a couple of weeks ago: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4981 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4981
- rrggrr 9y agoWho is responsible when a counterfeit device results in injury or damage to personal property? Is there much difference between Ulbricht's culpability for Silk Road and Amazon (Bezos) liability for Amazon's embrace of counterfeit products? True, the former was criminal liability, and perhaps that might be enough of a difference, but it ought not be. Decades of product safety regulation and tort deterrence is being washed away.
- cpwright 9y agoPresumbly, Jeff Bezos is not putting out hits on his competitors or disgruntled employees.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ct0 9y agoBezos is not working out of a library.
- revelation 9y agoI mean, Amazon is even doing the logistics for this stuff. A lot of counterfeits are "fulfilled by Amazon". You pay Amazon, Amazon delivers it, you return to it Amazon - who on earth is the 3rd party supposed to be in this transaction? There is none. How can Amazon escape liability for this crap? Not even the great pirate Ulbricht himself would warehouse and ship the narcotics.
- gscott 9y agoThe seller has implied liability, I think it would be the Amazon seller. Even though Amazon corporate sent the customer a fake not from your sellers inventory but from another sellers inventory you would still have the sue the seller first and then the seller would have to prove it wasn't the same one sent by the seller to Amazon. By the time the seller was cleared they would be in bankruptcy.
- j-c-hewitt 9y ago
- danesparza 9y agoYoutube has done a decent job of filtering out copyrighted material (or even making sure certain videos are sold -- not distributed for free). I'm not sure why this can't be managed in a similar way. The people in the article mention they had patents, etc. This would be easy to prove to corporations like Amazon and eBay. I'm also surprised the US based companies distributing the goods aren't getting their pants sued off in court.
- icebraining 9y agoDigital goods are different from physical ones. The first-sale doctrine means the seller doesn't need any licenses (patent or otherwise) to sell the product. They still can't counterfeit, but you have to show that the product is counterfeit, not just that the seller is "unauthorized" like in copyright. Amazon could still refuse to list those products, of course, but it's not a legal obligation.
- ilamont 9y agoYoutube has done a decent job of filtering out copyrighted material I think it depends on what types of copyrighted material are involved. Music piracy is rampant and artists/publishers get little love from Google (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/apr/15/music-industry-youtube-video-streaming-royalties https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/apr/15/music-indus...). As a small publisher, I can also tell you our copyrighted materials regularly find their way onto YouTube (and Google SERPs) with links to torrents or other unauthorized sites. Filing a DMCA to get them taken down is a PITA, and YouTube/Google is not proactive about handling the problem.
- cracell 9y agoIf you a profiting from it, why stop it? That said I think in the long term Amazon's brand could be being damaged by this more by more than they are profiting. But who knows. They must be very aware of the problem and either working on a solution or purposely just letting it go for now.
- r00fus 9y agoConsider me cynical, but I think it's far more likely, given Amazon's power, that the company convinces their consumers that counterfeits are "status quo". US consumers exist for their masters, not the other way around. Where else will they go to buy?
- akgerber 9y agoThere are a lot of honestly-marketed and fun products that you can buy China-direct on eBay, e.g. nuts and bolts of all types and random titanium or carbon bicycle fabrications, all with shockingly low shipping. But I wouldn't trust them for something safety-critical, since you have no idea what engineering went into them and no recourse if they fail.
- s0rce 9y agoI would say a bike frame and associated bolts are safety critical since a failure could result in serious injury/death, especially if you are in traffic. However, I've read a bunch of positive reviews of the Chinese frames and its likely that they are produced on the same factory lines as branded frames, unless you buy something hand made in US/Europe.
- akgerber 9y agoI don't have a Chinese eBay bike frame (though I do have a lovely Taiwenese titanium one ordered from the ORA factory[0] by an American importer that sold for less than many steel bikes)— just a water bottle cage and a random headset spacer. [0] http://oraeng.imb2b.com/ http://oraeng.imb2b.com/
- s0rce 9y agoI'm kinda considering a Ti bike, who did you order from?
- philjohn 9y agoThis. CF bottle cage for my bike? Sure ... I'll get CCCF (Cheap Chinese Carbon Fibre), CF bike frame? Hell no.
- zanny 9y agoWe live in the information age, people in China are spinning up factories overnight to mass produce something in demand in the west and sell it through marketplaces on websites, but we have no way to inform people what is real and what is fake. Like, per manufacturer product reviews that are trustworthy. Seems like something akin to Consumer Reports for online merch would be a thing, but I guess there is not enough money in it.
- ljf 9y agoBought a 64gb Kingston micro SD from ebay, and appeared fine at first but after running some checks was clearly fake. Reported it to ebay and the seller. Was refunded instantly (and could keep the duff card) but the seller is still selling and ebay do not appear to have taken any action. I now realise that no-one would sell for 64gb card new for £12, so ALL the sellers there must be selling fakes - but ebay allows them to make new listings and others to sell. Sad thing is someone won't notice until they get back from their holiday and find their pictures aren't there. And by then the seller will have closed that account and opened a new one.
- wtallis 9y agoLast year I bought a genuine Samsung 128GB card for $25, so what you paid isn't that suspiciously low. Flash memory prices have gone up over the past year, but you probably still paid more than wholesale price for a real 64GB card.
- ikeboy 9y agoWholesale price on these are very close to retail. And the Samsung you bought was probably from a deal and not regular price.
- tooltalk 9y agoThis has been going on for almost two decades, or as long as eBay has been around. Back in the days, once you unknowingly bought a fake SD card, you not only had to prove that you had a fake, but also ship it back to China to get a refund! Even though the cheap fake memory card problem was widely known (there were selling in thousands), eBay didn't seem to care and quickly lost me as a customer.
- sowbug 9y agoI doubt it's a good idea to knowingly mail a counterfeit product. Crossing state lines, etc. If any seller or retailer asked you to do that today, I'd recommend refusing and instead offering to make it available for them to pick up via their choice of carrier.
- nfRfqX5n 9y agofunny thing is, they actually block you from posting if you let people know it's a fake or replica. ebay and amazon do tend to side with the buyer most of the time, making it a tough problem to solve because it can be exploited on both sides. on the other hand, this has opened up other places for people to buy and sell with authentication provided as a service ie: StockX and GOAT for sneakers.
- sova 9y agoAn impressively unusable website due to ads on mobile.
- baybal2 9y agoI believe it is very "if you can't win them, join them" moment for the Amazon. If they will not engage with Chinese makers, people will simply shop on Chinese mail order sites as is particularly popular with current American college age group now (and yes, Alibaba provides a lot of hard statistics on that.) If they will begin actively working to detriment of existing Chinese sellers, they will loose even more. They are choosing in between "not winning much in move 1, and loosing a lot in move 2"
- pitaa 9y agoI have drastically cut down on the number of amazon orders I place because of the amount of no-name imports that have flooded their catalog in the last few years. I finally decided that if I was going to be getting crap from china anyway I might as well buy it directly from the source, so I buy a lot of stuff on Aliexpress now. Sure, it sometimes takes upwards of 3 weeks to arrive, but when you're getting stuff for a tenth of the cost elsewhere, 3 weeks doesn't seem so bad a lot of times.
- elefanten 9y agoI have ceased entirely. All product categories. For most of late 2016 I played the annoying game of "would some really counterfeit this product?", which usually ended in a stalemate. First I stopped buying anything that goes in my body. Then I stopped buying anything that goes on my body. Then electronics. Finally, sometime early this year when I caught myself pondering whether paper cat litter pellets might be dangerous if counterfeit... I just realized it was time to stop. Until they show they care about this, I'm Amazon-free. It's nice, I'm walking more than I used to and it feels good.
- andrei_says_ 9y agoWhat are some guaranteed counterfeit free alternatives?
- milesvp 9y agoIn the EE community, it's generally understood that if you use ebay or amazon, you're probably going to get counterfeit electronics components. Mouser and Digikey are largely considered safe places to order components from, and presumably they have incentive to maintain their supply chain as free of counterfeits as possible. For physical goods, I'm more inclined to go to local retailers, since I can inspect them. Case in point, rat traps, I couldn't find a place on line where I could convince myself they weren't selling cheap knockoffs, so I drove to home depot and bought them there. I can't guarantee I didn't buy counterfeit traps, but at least they were high quality.
- baybal2 9y agoI believe American companies are uncompetitive in the "new world order" - where 99% of durable consumer goods (yes, that's how economists call it) categories are either made in China, or not being made at all (edit.) Americans are not as innovative and strong as Chinese in the way they appropriate designs and ideas: Chinese extract all value from novel high margin niches quickly, they run at the forefront at the race to the bottom in mass market goods, and do painless exits from product niches that are sucked dry and are out of trend/hype cycle. American companies needs to become more innovative to compete with Chinese. Completely scraping the useless concept of "intellectual" property of every kind, and the idea that one can "own" and idea and create captive markets through that ownership will be the first step in that direction.
- xenihn 9y agoYeah, my main takeaway from this is "Learn Mandarin, and ensure that your kids learn it too."
- baybal2 9y ago>"Learn Mandarin, and ensure that your kids learn it too." Why not? Getting basic Yue will not be a bad idea too. I'm not a Russian native, but I spent a big part of my childhood in the country. I remember that Muscovite elites had that idea at the time (mid nineties): "my kid will be going to Stanford, no money spared," while smarter far-easterners were sending their kids to back then still cheap China to learn the language and get connections. Guess whose kids fared better in 20 years time? Now, Russia has lost its last vestiges of industrial self-sufficiency, and has no economy for all those US schooled "creative" banker kids to work in. The few people who do get business today, are ones who can drive a truck to Yiwu, have basic commerce background, and knowledge of Chinese along with local connections.
- stevenwoo 9y agoI was listening to something about economics on NPR this last weekend and it talked about some of the reasons for German manufacturing surviving and thriving after China joined the WTO and part of it was the Chinese market desired German quality in certain fields - there are niche markets that Germans specialized in that Chinese consumers recognize as having some value (not sure if brand or quality of goods or combination as it was not mentioned) over anything they could get in China, and that German manufacturers are on average much smaller, and the workers cooperated a bit with owners there to lower wages to out compete the Chinese. So it is possible, and also manufacturers were outsourcing from China to Thailand (before that last natural disaster), and Vietnam because of slight wage inflation in China at one point, too.
- reiichiroh 9y agoNot explored in the article is what happens when Amazon clones your product. HN last discussed this in 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11533973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11533973
- bitmapbrother 9y agoI don't know why Amazon continues to jeopardize their reputation with being a counterfeit reseller, but they're becoming worse than eBay. I guess the money must be so good that they just don't care.
- astura 9y agoThere's a lot of money to be made and it hasn't backfired on them at least yet, they are still dominating online retail and still growing, to my knowledge. Average Joe on the street doesn't know Amazon has a counterfeit problem or even that third party sellers exist, they just press "buy" without thinking much about it. I know because I talk to Average Joes all the time about it and everyone I've talked to so far is surprised. They are surprised it possible to get counterfeits on Amazon and they are surprised I have the ability to sell on Amazon. So I guess customer education is an issue? I think their long term plan is to stop selling themselves and turn into a logistic company.
- steven777400 9y agoRelated question: what online sites, if any, are better to purchase items to avoid counterfeit? I've been thinking of using B&H instead of Amazon for electronic stuff, assuming that their reputation means they are less likely to enable counterfeit sellers, but I don't know that for sure. I also don't know if other online sites (jet.com?) have or don't have the counterfeit issue.
- mcguire 9y agoB&H? Once upon a time the world's greatest source of "grey market" camera equipment?
- detaro 9y agoWas there a time when they weren't open about that?
- astura 9y agoGrey market is not black market though. They aren't counterfeit, knockoffs, or potentially dangerous. They are legitimate products made by the manufacturer. They are very upfront that they sell grey market items. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/find/HelpCenter/USGrey.jsp https://www.bhphotovideo.com/find/HelpCenter/USGrey.jsp We also sell some products we've obtained from sources other than the manufacturer or its licensed importer. These are "grey market" products. "Grey market" is not illegal, not factory seconds, not demo merchandise, not cheaper or inferior products. In fact in almost every instance a "grey market" product is absolutely identical to its US-warranted counterpart. "Grey market" and US-warranted products are manufactured in the same factories from the same components, and sub-assemblies, to the same specs and tolerances, by the same workers. In terms of the item itself (excepting PAL video -- see below) there is no difference at all. A "grey market" Nikon 50mm f/1.4 D-AF lens (for example) is exactly the same in every possible way as the US-warranted version.
- astura 9y agoA lot of times I buy for the websites of big name brick and mortar stores. Some B&M stores also have third party sellers, so watch out for that. Walmart.com offers free two day shipping for orders over $49, which I've used quite a bit since they implemented that policy. I've also bought direct from the manufacturer. As far as jet.com, I think their suppliers vary and I don't know if they have better vetting of their suppliers. They are owned by Walmart now, FWIW. I've bought a few things from there and they have very bad problems with packaging, all my orders had something destroyed during shipping due to poor packaging.
- dizzystar 9y agoI'd like to clear up a few misconceptions here. I have a lot of experience in this space. For starters, Amazon has very good policies that allow sellers to protect their IP and products. It's very easy to remove fraudulent products from your listing. The problem is that Amazon is a very complex platform to use, with a lot of rules and policies, so it seems to me that the sellers in the article, and many others, don't quite know how to protect their ASINs. I would like to think that Amazon would do a little better to inform the sellers, but since so many are just starting, or are amateurs, there probably isn't time to walk each one through. Of course, RTMFD, as they are very clear on what is and isn't allowed to be sold. For example, it is a clear and blatant violation of Amazon policy to drop-ship from overseas. eBay and Amazon aren't able to police everything. It is up to the sellers and buyers to report products that are knock-offs. As a buyer, I've closed down a few listings. As a seller, I've done the same, but mind that there is a complex war going on between sellers. Some sellers game the system by nuking your listing over fake violations, so there is a balance to all of this that is very difficult to maintain. Unfortunately, the world is full of jerks, so if it was a blind trust, we'd be in a much worse position. Anyways, please read through ALL the policies of Amazon and eBay before making assumptions about what is right and wrong. What is in this article and in many of these comments are very wrong.
- austinheap 9y agoI think you might be missing the point. Amazon didn't used to be a "buyer beware" e-commerce platform. You used to be able to trust them, where as everyone knew eBay was rife with counterfits and fraud. Amazon and eBay didn't used to be comparable, because one site (Amazon) used to have integrity in their product listings. That's no longer the case. Amazon doesn't even attempt to protect consumers the way they used to. This has cheapened their value and put the burden on consumers -- most of which are unable to decipher fraud from legitimate products. I assure you my grandma has zero clue when she's getting scammed on Amazon and that's bad for business and bad for those in our society who are vulnerable to these types of scams. Buying on Amazon shouldn't be like playing roulette.
- dizzystar 9y ago
- randyrand 9y agoI don't care if its a counterfeit as long as its completely indistinguishable in every manner from the original. If it is distinguishable, then amazon should be distinguishing it and selling it under a "counterfeit" label with its distinguishing qualities on the sale page. Easier said than done of course. But I think this is the right approach in dreamland.
- bdcravens 9y agoNot all products are obviously counterfeit; the "distinguishable" part may come later (for instance, iPhone chargers that fail due to lacking safety internals authentic parts have)
- SubiculumCode 9y agoInteresting. The producers in China operate in a more capitalist market than in the U.S. In some ways this has created an entrepreneurial class in China of high innovation, instead of rentiers owning a market. That said, whatever your feeling on patents and IP, stealing someone's brand name crosses a real line, even in the most capitalistic ideology
- paul7986 9y agoIs there an AliExpress vs. Amazon vs. Ebay shopping comparison site? If not I was thinking that might be a good side project.
- ctdonath 9y agoWanted: Amazon Custody Chain - assurance that the product in question was in fact purchased by Amazon directly from the manufacturer, or otherwise Amazon vouches for the authenticity of the product. Ditto eBay.
- elandybarr 9y agoOne of my laptops is running with a counterfeit charger (Amazon) and a counterfeit battery (eBay). As soon as I realized that I have never left it plugged in where I don't see it - who knows what kind of fire hazard it could be. Also, lasers. There are plenty of illegal laser pointers on eBay and output rarely matches the claims. And you really don't want to play with these illegal lasers unless you have real wraparound lenses.
- ethbro 9y agoI had a knockoff laptop power supply energetically self-disconnect. That was surprising! Laptop was plugged in, cord draped over something and under mild tension. As near as I can tell, the wires shorted on the DC side, instantly melted the plastic insulation, and suddenly I had a severed cord and two live wires sticking out of the brick. ... so no, I would never leave a counterfeit laptop charger unsupervised.
- binarysolo 9y agoI run a mid-sized online distributorship: there's a lot of factors at play. Have a few private label items + exclusives with a few US manufacturers and fought the war against counterfeiters for the past 7-8 years on Amazon, eBay, and a few other sites. These thoughts pertain primarily to Amazon. THE ARTICLE'S PROBLEM IS BEING SOLVED: Amazon Brand registry 2.0 just came out late 2016 - if you have applied for a trademark (with USPTO registration), you can brand gate your products and prohibit others from selling. Amazon had to do this as a response because things were entirely out of control the past few years. It's definitely a process full of friction to the rights-holder, but this overcomes not only counterfeit items (other people stealing your brand) but also inauthentic items (grey market products not authorized by you as a vendor). AS A CUSTOMER: as long as you can identify you have a counterfeit, you just use the magic words and apply for a refund saying it's a counterfeit and you're protected. From personal experience -- you can do it post-facto ~90 days and Amazon will still be on your side. AS A BUSINESS: basically enter the brand registry program and gate your products as needed, depending on who else is selling your stuff. You need to spend some effort making sure people aren't stealing your photos and designs and camping out on other listings -- that's probably the highest point of friction right now, but note those knockoffs can't enter your brand without triggering gating effects. There's a chunk of opportunity here for full service, value-added resellers like myself here who essentially run the online channels for older American businesses that aren't techified at all and need to navigate all the techno-bureaucracy. AS AMAZON... it's tricky, you need to set up strong controls for brand and facilitate a system so that it forces the eventuality it desires -- every manufacturer directly working with Amazon ("most efficient"). Letting the counterfeiters run a bit amok actually forces the hands of the brand owners to be really hands on in Amazon sellercentral, sell direct to Amazon via vendorcentral, or deal with the constant irritation of counterfeits, review/performance bombing by competitors, and their associated performance notifcations (that can shut down your store). Kinda brilliant actually. ON BRANDS and knockoffs: when I as a consumer buy something, I am spending money to solve a want or need. The brand and its associated reputation gives me an expected value that said shirt/snack/shaver is going to give me what I want without much downside -- it's gonna fit well, or is tasty and will not poison me, or will trim my hairs cleanly... and that expectation is the value of a brand. In this regard, yes, I think counterfeiting is unethical since you are delivering a fake promise that your shitty product will do XYZ based on a good marketplace actor's performance.
- otterpro 9y agoI've been buying from B&H and NewEgg for electronics, and avoiding Amazon if I can. I use Amazon for cheap stuff out of convenience with "prime", and buy only from Amazon, LLC and not other sellers, although that is not always guaranteed to solve the problem, as others have mentioned (such as mixing of counterfeit with real products). When writing a review of counterfeit product, make sure to include the Seller's name in the review so that buyers are aware.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]