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Don’t buy name brands from 3rd party sellers on Amazon. Pretty simple. Purchasing on amazon isn’t about getting a “deal”, it’s about getting something at or a

Don’t buy name brands from 3rd party sellers on Amazon. Pretty simple. Purchasing on amazon isn’t about getting a “deal”, it’s about getting something at or around retail price without having to go to the store. If you are looking for cheap name brand items, go to TJMax or something.

kalleboo 9y ago
Amazon comingles goods in their warehouses between themselves and various sellers. You can buy something sold "by Amazon" and get sent an item sent to Amazon by a third party seller.
- oxymoran 9y ago
  Right, meaning fulfilled by Amazon. But they have the brand registry indicating that something is “of a brand”. So you are saying that these products can be counterfeits? The item from the post says it’s “by wish power” not google(the logo is certainly alarming though). It’s a knockoff sure, but a pretty obvious one. I order everything from Amazon and I have never ever had a single problem with that. I am a pretty diligent shopper so maybe that helps?
  - taylorexpander 9y ago
    Right, so when you buy things from Amazon you have several options: 1. Items sold by Amazon. 2. Items sold by 3rd parties and fulfilled by Amazon. 3. Items sold by 3rd parties and shipped by 3rd parties. The problem is that items in their fulfillment centers, (1) and (2) are mixed together. Just because you buy something sold by Amazon doesn’t guarantee that you won’t be sent a counterfeit item that a 3rd party sent to amazon to use for fulfillment.
    - partisan 9y ago
      Is there a source confirming this?
      - mannykannot 9y ago
        Was this not exactly the problem with eclipse glasses last summer? People who ordered the real thing were being shipped dangerous knock-offs.
      - wlkr 9y ago
        This article [0] seems pretty comprehensive. I recall there being a thread here on this topic fairly recently but I can't seem to find it now. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/12/13/how-to-protect-your-family-from-dangerous-fakes-on-amazon-this-holiday-season/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/12/13/how-to-p...
      - home_boi 9y ago
        https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=200243180 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId... Everything except for topical/consumable items and items with an expiration date can be conmingled.
        partisan 9y ago
        Thank you for finding that. It's hard to believe they haven't considered the potential issues that arise from this. Or they have considered the issues and found it financially viable to ignore them.
    - awakeasleep 9y ago
      There is actually a new category of products sold and shipped by third parties that still count as prime shipping somehow.
      - leeoniya 9y ago
        we have Prime products that we mfg, sell and ship directly. basically you have to be very diligent about shipping by their cutoff times and use a service that guarantees the delivery date and must generate your shipping labels through amazon so they can track it all. we hooked up our existing ups account and dont have to purchase shipping through amazon. we ship out all orders same day (not just amazon) but it's easy to lose Prime status if you fall behind.
  - opencl 9y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16498013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16498013 Just a few days ago this was on the front page, an article by a small business owner selling their product on Amazon complaining both in the article and the comments that even when a product is in the brand registry they are woefully ineffective about dealing with counterfeits. This not-Chromecast is a really bad example because it's not actually claiming to be a Chromecast, but I have certainly ordered products on Amazon and received knockoffs before. Inventory comingling makes it basically impossible to ensure you're getting what you order because even if you order from a reputable seller it might come from somebody else entirely.
nkrisc 9y ago
I consider myself a sophisticated internet user and even I can't really tell how to know if a seller is the "real brand" page or not. I recently bought a Hario coffee grinder. I looked at what I thought was the official page for the item on Amazon (not a third party seller) yet 10-15% of the reviews all complained about receiving a counterfeit. That's when I gave up and bought it at Williams Sonoma.
- ajmurmann 9y ago
  That brings up another big Amazon issue. Reviews for related but not identical products hey thrown in together. It's supposedly the same product in this case, but different vendors. So the product reviews aren't the right place in this case. Sometimes these get grouped in the same listing and you can see vendor ratings under purchase options (clicking "new & used"). I feel I've seen this not frequently with books though. Talking about books. Here Amazon throws all versions together. Kindle version has typos from bad OCR? That review is now going to be for all versions. A foreign language book has multiple translations? All get the same review. I recently wanted to buy a particular translation of The Brothers Kamazorov. That was a incredibly frustrating experience. Several versions available didn't list the translator in the description. One I found the right one and clicked on Kindle version I'm surprised to see a totally different translation. On top of that the bulk of the reviews are talking about how a particular translation is bad. It's just a giant cluster fuck.
  - Quenty 9y ago
    I bet part of Amazon’s motive is the fact that people are more likely to buy something if the reviews are good, and there’s a lot of them.
    - ajmurmann 9y ago
      Maybe. Funny enough though I looked into buying The Brothers Kamazorov a year ago or so and have up because I didn't know what translation to buy and the reviews all being mixed together just fed my confusion and I have up. I only came back to it because someone on a podcast recommended a particular translation.
LoSboccacc 9y ago
Unless they do commingled inventory, then you may be getting a counterfeit even when purchasing from the name brand store. The discussion about that comes up regularly enough on here, so it’s not hard to find references.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> Don’t buy name brands from 3rd party sellers on Amazon No, don't buy name brands from Fulfilled by Amazon sellers (including Amazon itself) on Amazon, only from known-good third-party non-FBA sellers (exception, Amazon is okay if there are no FBA sellers for a product), since Amazon commingles inventory from FBA sellers (including themselves), so you never know which seller actually sourced a good purchased from an FBA seller.
- vlozko 9y ago
  There’s something seriously wrong if this is the advice being doled out. It’s as if we’re ok with the haphazard shopping experience and there’s a set of guidelines on avoiding being scammed. It’s the kind of thing I never have to worry about with so many other retailers but we all stick with Amazon because Prime perks.
- home_boi 9y ago
  One last case, some manufacturers are the only sellers for their product (like Anker).
Slansitartop 9y ago
> Purchasing on amazon isn’t about getting a “deal” No, it is, or at least it was. When online shopping got big, up until a few years ago, the prices were usually better than physical retail (but with higher latency due to shipping). It only got popular because you were getting a deal (if only dodging sales tax), and most people were conditioned to think that online shopping = good deal (compared to physical retail). But you're right, in 2018 Amazon's for paying retail and gambling that you didn't get a counterfeit (the chance of which varys depending on the kind of product), and then waiting for it to arrive. For me that doesn't make any sense, so I've stopped shopping there for anything I can find locally in a retail store.
- Silhouette 9y ago
  For me that doesn't make any sense, so I've stopped shopping there for anything I can find locally in a retail store. People often say that media like CDs and DVDs/Blu-rays are on the way out and it's all online downloads now, but at least here in the UK I still buy probably 90% of the films I watch at home and maybe half of the TV shows on disc, because the likes of Netflix simply don't have a big range of big name titles, or don't get them until several years after they come out. Sadly, most of the good local stores where I used to buy discs have closed down, in large part thanks to online sellers undercutting them and driving them out of the market. The likes of Silver Screen, where you could go in and browse for almost any film or TV show you liked on disc and probably pick up something new to try on an offer while you were there, have gone the way of the dinosaur. All that's left is a few of the recent blockbusters in the big stores. I'm not convinced this is progress! We do at least still have one decent bookshop in town, which is a blessing because Amazon's handling of books is apparently so careless that I was returning a crazy number of them just because they arrived marked, ripped or otherwise not in brand new condition. I've gone back to buying the majority of my books, and anything I possibly can if it will be a gift, in bricks and mortar stores so I can see it's in good condition before I buy it, and where I can also browse for related material that I might also like to pick up while I'm there. Tech-wise, I wouldn't trust Amazon for anything more sophisticated than a network cable or USB hub. This is a merchant that ships hard drives in over-sized boxes with a bit of tissue paper for padding, and then seems to have trouble understanding why we decline the delivery. There are plenty of specialist tech merchants who will supply more serious gear packaged properly, from reputable sources, and typically at about the same price anyway.

kalleboo 9y ago

Amazon comingles goods in their warehouses between themselves and various sellers. You can buy something sold "by Amazon" and get sent an item sent to Amazon by a third party seller.

oxymoran 9y ago
Right, meaning fulfilled by Amazon. But they have the brand registry indicating that something is “of a brand”. So you are saying that these products can be counterfeits? The item from the post says it’s “by wish power” not google(the logo is certainly alarming though). It’s a knockoff sure, but a pretty obvious one. I order everything from Amazon and I have never ever had a single problem with that. I am a pretty diligent shopper so maybe that helps?
- taylorexpander 9y ago
  Right, so when you buy things from Amazon you have several options: 1. Items sold by Amazon. 2. Items sold by 3rd parties and fulfilled by Amazon. 3. Items sold by 3rd parties and shipped by 3rd parties. The problem is that items in their fulfillment centers, (1) and (2) are mixed together. Just because you buy something sold by Amazon doesn’t guarantee that you won’t be sent a counterfeit item that a 3rd party sent to amazon to use for fulfillment.
  - partisan 9y ago
    Is there a source confirming this?
    - mannykannot 9y ago
      Was this not exactly the problem with eclipse glasses last summer? People who ordered the real thing were being shipped dangerous knock-offs.
    - wlkr 9y ago
      This article [0] seems pretty comprehensive. I recall there being a thread here on this topic fairly recently but I can't seem to find it now. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/12/13/how-to-protect-your-family-from-dangerous-fakes-on-amazon-this-holiday-season/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/12/13/how-to-p...
    - home_boi 9y ago
      https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=200243180 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId... Everything except for topical/consumable items and items with an expiration date can be conmingled.
      - partisan 9y ago
        Thank you for finding that. It's hard to believe they haven't considered the potential issues that arise from this. Or they have considered the issues and found it financially viable to ignore them.
  - awakeasleep 9y ago
    There is actually a new category of products sold and shipped by third parties that still count as prime shipping somehow.
    - leeoniya 9y ago
      we have Prime products that we mfg, sell and ship directly. basically you have to be very diligent about shipping by their cutoff times and use a service that guarantees the delivery date and must generate your shipping labels through amazon so they can track it all. we hooked up our existing ups account and dont have to purchase shipping through amazon. we ship out all orders same day (not just amazon) but it's easy to lose Prime status if you fall behind.
- opencl 9y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16498013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16498013 Just a few days ago this was on the front page, an article by a small business owner selling their product on Amazon complaining both in the article and the comments that even when a product is in the brand registry they are woefully ineffective about dealing with counterfeits. This not-Chromecast is a really bad example because it's not actually claiming to be a Chromecast, but I have certainly ordered products on Amazon and received knockoffs before. Inventory comingling makes it basically impossible to ensure you're getting what you order because even if you order from a reputable seller it might come from somebody else entirely.

nkrisc 9y ago

I consider myself a sophisticated internet user and even I can't really tell how to know if a seller is the "real brand" page or not. I recently bought a Hario coffee grinder. I looked at what I thought was the official page for the item on Amazon (not a third party seller) yet 10-15% of the reviews all complained about receiving a counterfeit. That's when I gave up and bought it at Williams Sonoma.

ajmurmann 9y ago
That brings up another big Amazon issue. Reviews for related but not identical products hey thrown in together. It's supposedly the same product in this case, but different vendors. So the product reviews aren't the right place in this case. Sometimes these get grouped in the same listing and you can see vendor ratings under purchase options (clicking "new & used"). I feel I've seen this not frequently with books though. Talking about books. Here Amazon throws all versions together. Kindle version has typos from bad OCR? That review is now going to be for all versions. A foreign language book has multiple translations? All get the same review. I recently wanted to buy a particular translation of The Brothers Kamazorov. That was a incredibly frustrating experience. Several versions available didn't list the translator in the description. One I found the right one and clicked on Kindle version I'm surprised to see a totally different translation. On top of that the bulk of the reviews are talking about how a particular translation is bad. It's just a giant cluster fuck.
- Quenty 9y ago
  I bet part of Amazon’s motive is the fact that people are more likely to buy something if the reviews are good, and there’s a lot of them.
  - ajmurmann 9y ago
    Maybe. Funny enough though I looked into buying The Brothers Kamazorov a year ago or so and have up because I didn't know what translation to buy and the reviews all being mixed together just fed my confusion and I have up. I only came back to it because someone on a podcast recommended a particular translation.

LoSboccacc 9y ago

Unless they do commingled inventory, then you may be getting a counterfeit even when purchasing from the name brand store. The discussion about that comes up regularly enough on here, so it’s not hard to find references.

dragonwriter 9y ago

> Don’t buy name brands from 3rd party sellers on Amazon No, don't buy name brands from Fulfilled by Amazon sellers (including Amazon itself) on Amazon, only from known-good third-party non-FBA sellers (exception, Amazon is okay if there are no FBA sellers for a product), since Amazon commingles inventory from FBA sellers (including themselves), so you never know which seller actually sourced a good purchased from an FBA seller.

vlozko 9y ago
There’s something seriously wrong if this is the advice being doled out. It’s as if we’re ok with the haphazard shopping experience and there’s a set of guidelines on avoiding being scammed. It’s the kind of thing I never have to worry about with so many other retailers but we all stick with Amazon because Prime perks.
home_boi 9y ago
One last case, some manufacturers are the only sellers for their product (like Anker).

Slansitartop 9y ago

> Purchasing on amazon isn’t about getting a “deal” No, it is, or at least it was. When online shopping got big, up until a few years ago, the prices were usually better than physical retail (but with higher latency due to shipping). It only got popular because you were getting a deal (if only dodging sales tax), and most people were conditioned to think that online shopping = good deal (compared to physical retail). But you're right, in 2018 Amazon's for paying retail and gambling that you didn't get a counterfeit (the chance of which varys depending on the kind of product), and then waiting for it to arrive. For me that doesn't make any sense, so I've stopped shopping there for anything I can find locally in a retail store.

Silhouette 9y ago
For me that doesn't make any sense, so I've stopped shopping there for anything I can find locally in a retail store. People often say that media like CDs and DVDs/Blu-rays are on the way out and it's all online downloads now, but at least here in the UK I still buy probably 90% of the films I watch at home and maybe half of the TV shows on disc, because the likes of Netflix simply don't have a big range of big name titles, or don't get them until several years after they come out. Sadly, most of the good local stores where I used to buy discs have closed down, in large part thanks to online sellers undercutting them and driving them out of the market. The likes of Silver Screen, where you could go in and browse for almost any film or TV show you liked on disc and probably pick up something new to try on an offer while you were there, have gone the way of the dinosaur. All that's left is a few of the recent blockbusters in the big stores. I'm not convinced this is progress! We do at least still have one decent bookshop in town, which is a blessing because Amazon's handling of books is apparently so careless that I was returning a crazy number of them just because they arrived marked, ripped or otherwise not in brand new condition. I've gone back to buying the majority of my books, and anything I possibly can if it will be a gift, in bricks and mortar stores so I can see it's in good condition before I buy it, and where I can also browse for related material that I might also like to pick up while I'm there. Tech-wise, I wouldn't trust Amazon for anything more sophisticated than a network cable or USB hub. This is a merchant that ships hard drives in over-sized boxes with a bit of tissue paper for padding, and then seems to have trouble understanding why we decline the delivery. There are plenty of specialist tech merchants who will supply more serious gear packaged properly, from reputable sources, and typically at about the same price anyway.