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Amazon mixes marketplace and Amazon sourced products. If you buy an Amazon sourced item they might ship you the marketplace version.

• dragonwriter 9y ago
  Specifically, “Fulfilled by Amazon” inventory, including Amazon's first-party inventory, is commingled. So if there is no third-party FBA seller for a product you buy sold by Amazon, you are as safe as Amazon's first-party sourcing, otherwise it's the wild west.
  • dawhizkid 9y ago
    Yeah it's really an unfortunate dark ux pattern that too few people have called them out on (i.e. all product pages look the same and only one line of text will tell you if something is actually sold by Amazon or some sketchy third party vendor). I wonder how many people, even people who've shopped on Amazon for years, actually realize when they buy something direct from Amazon vs a third party.
    • dragonwriter 9y ago
      > only one line of text will tell you if something is actually sold by Amazon or some sketchy third party vendor The problem with commingling, though, goes beyond that: if there are any “Fulfilled by Amazon” vendors for the same product, buying a product “sold by Amazon” does not guarantee you that the actual product you receive was not sourced by a shady FBA vendor that does less to protect against counterfeits in its sourcing than Amazon does. So you can't trust Amazon—or an FBA vendor that is trustworthy on their own—if other vendors using FBA exist for the same product.