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How would you solve the counterfeit goods and preventing people from gaming the review system problems? It seems like a hard problem - eBay suffered from this

How would you solve the counterfeit goods and preventing people from gaming the review system problems? It seems like a hard problem - eBay suffered from this too for their goods,Yelp with reviews. I doubt it's just a "I don't care" kind of thing.

ckastner 8y ago
> How would you solve the counterfeit goods and preventing people from gaming the review system problems? No idea what do to about the reviews, but the first step to the counterfeit goods problem is simple: once you've received X complaints about a counterfeit product, stop selling the product. Continuing to sell a product for which there are numerous and credible indications that they are counterfeit is borderline fraud.
- 394549 8y ago
  > No idea what do to about the reviews, They need to patrol the sources for fake reviews (facebook groups, etc) and perform sting operations to catch the sellers who solicit them. It shouldn't be too hard, a simple Facebook search finds hundreds of groups and thousands of solicitations. Once you identify a seller that does this, you ban them from Amazon, as well as everyone who's given their products a fake review (for the reviewers, it should probably be a three strikes thing before they're banned, since a lot of them seem to just like free stuff). > but the first step to the counterfeit goods problem is simple: once you've received X complaints about a counterfeit product, stop selling the product. > Continuing to sell a product for which there are numerous and credible indications that they are counterfeit is borderline fraud. I'd say the second step is to roll back many of Amazon's practices that make counterfeiting harder to detect, for instance how they can commingle inventory between sellers (if those sellers weren't careful when they made their listing). That makes it impossible for the sellers to have meaningful reputation scores, since bad-actors can sell their counterfeits through honest-actor storefronts (and vice versa). The third step is to implement better supply chain management and vetting of suppliers. Not everyone should be able to set up a marketplace store and sell any product. There needs to be effective vetting of sellers and it should be hard enough to setup a marketplace account they can't just create a new one when their last one is banned. There should also be especially stringent vetting around listings for frequently fake and counterfeit products, like SD cards. The fourth step is to implement active counterfeit and fake product detection (through test purchases). If a particular item is too often fake or counterfeited, Amazon should ban it from the marketplace and only sell inventory directly sourced from the original manufacturer. None of these things should be too hard for a company with Amazon's resources to effectively implement. The fact that it hasn't says that these problems aren't a priority for it.
- taeric 8y ago
  Have you established that there are "numerous and credible indications" for all counterfeit products? I would, perhaps naively, think that this is just shifting the exact same problem to the reports. That is, reviews and reports are likely easier to manipulate/game than physical products. Not just in "ballet stuffing" but through many other means. (That is, it is probably easy to get credible people to also vouch for products while you are shipping counterfeit ones.) To that end, I'd imagine it is easy to get rid of someone that sells 100% fake items. But how hard is it to drop someone that sells 10% fake items? In bulk, that is still damaging. And is still probably lucrative for the seller. Basically, I'd expect (again, perhaps naively) that painting it as a boolean trip actually makes it easier for the cheaters.
  - ckastner 8y ago
    > Have you established that there are "numerous and credible indications" for all counterfeit products? No, just anecdata, including personal experience. But the anecdata seems widespread enough. > To that end, I'd imagine it is easy to get rid of someone that sells 100% fake items. But how hard is it to drop someone that sells 10% fake items? I have absolutely zero experience with retail, but I'd probably set the bar at 0%. Any deviation from that 0% must be explained satisfactorily: "how did this happen", "what measures have been taken so that this doesn't happen again", etc.
- lolsal 8y ago
  > No idea what do to about the reviews, but the first step to the counterfeit goods problem is simple: once you've received X complaints about a counterfeit product, stop selling the product. If you don't have an idea of how to solve the review problem, I'm not convinced you've thought through the "received X complaints about a counterfeit product" problem and your proposed solution. In your system, I could easily assault my competitors with counterfeit claims and get their products removed. This already happens with reviews and other sort of reports/returns.
  - ckastner 8y ago
    > If you don't have an idea of how to solve the review problem, I'm not convinced you've thought through the "received X complaints about a counterfeit product" problem With "complaint", I meant a formal complaint to Amazon, over a proper channel, either by contacting Amazon Support, or during the returning process (I'm returning this product because it is counterfeit").
- kaitai 8y ago
  This just can't work on a logistical level. Let's look at diapers. There are lots of reports of counterfeit Huggies and Pampers. In some cases, it's true -- they're counterfeit. Recently, though, Huggies changed the 'movers & poopers' line or whatever they call it. Since consumers didn't know about the change beforehand (new leg-hole shape, for instance) there were many reports that those were counterfeit, and Huggies had representatives deployed to answer Amazon reviews that showed the legit redesigned diapers and falsely called them counterfeit. Moreover, what would happen to Amazon if they stopped selling Huggies and Pampers? Collapse! or maybe just a 20% loss of revenue! Do you know how many people go Prime purely so they can get their diapers autoshipped? and the formula, and the breastmilk bags, and the wipes? My family signed up for Prime solely because of baby crap, and once that baby crap is not needed, Prime ends. But for most people, Prime continues from baby to toddler to whenever they remember to stop auto-renewing. This is a huge market. Amazon cannot afford not to fix their supply chain legitimacy issues. But they can't just stop selling the product. Agree that it's fraudulent to keep selling counterfeits, agree that they need to fix it or all those Prime parents are going to switch to Target for their brand-name diapers. It's not simple, though.
  - ckastner 8y ago
    > Amazon cannot afford not to fix their supply chain legitimacy issues. If they can't run a legitimate business properly, then that's their problem. Take a look around -- plenty of other profitable retailers don't have this problem. > But they can't just stop selling the product. Not only can they, they must. You can't continue with illegitimate business just because you'd be unprofitable otherwise.
NeedMoreTea 8y ago
It's a solved problem and not hard. Most brick and mortar chains in the UK have a buying policy that requires you to prove your goods are fit for purpose before they'll put it on the shelves and risk hurting their brand. I imagine most of Europe operates similarly. They will generally require suppliers to send examples of the range before being allowed in store, and they will test or examine a representative selection first. They'll probably do basic safety and legality tests too. As a new supplier you can expect your products to be subject to random checks over the coming months. After a period of good track record you will become a trusted supplier and subject to fewer, or perhaps no, checks. Amazon should do the same. That they are big or that they are online is no excuse not to.
- bhtru 8y ago
  Couldn’t malicious sellers circumvent this by sending quality product initially and then swapping it later on?
  - mattmg83 8y ago
    The entire TIC industry (I work for Underwriters Laboratories) does just that, we independently test and certify and then audit the factories to make sure it’s still made the same way as the original sample. Problem is... people counterfeit our certificates, and some retailers don’t care much
    - jfim 8y ago
      For those wondering, TIC stands for testing, inspection and certification.
    - tormeh 8y ago
      Then stop using certificates. Have a website where retailers can check if the supplier is certified. Using signed pieces of paper as evidence is inferior to just querying the certifier directly.
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    Sure they could, but with a proper approach to supply management, like the whole of the traditional sector is used to it gets caught. The lower quality switch would get caught in the random checks of incoming product in your first years as supplier, or rapidly from customer feedback. Then simply drop them as supplier. Amazon would look far far better to their customers if they started cutting some of the crap as "not good enough to go in Amazon" and dropping suppliers for shoddy manufacture or too high a return rate. There is a big difference between cheap, good value and all the world's unfit for purpose and counterfeit crap, for me anyway. They can pretend marketplace is separate, and outsource returns and customer service to marketplace sellers all they like. If I buy something dangerous or shit on marketplace I resent Amazon as much as the RNGFake4u brand I accidentally bought.
swsieber 8y ago
Counterfeit problem? Stop co-mingling inventory - then you can track what inventory went to which customer and easily peg down which sources are selling counterfeits by looking at the reviews.
- rmah 8y ago
  Amazon co-mingles different retailer's inventory when amazon handle fulfillment for them?!?!? Are you sure? That's insane.
  - secabeen 8y ago
    Yes, that's the root cause of many of their fulfillment issues. And it makes sense for something like a mass-market book. It makes less sense for other things.
  - moltar 8y ago
    Yup. Multiple sellers can sell the “same” item. I put same in quotes, because it can be counterfeit or just similar. You’ll never know if you just buy the cheapest via buy now. The only exception if it’s your own brand. Which is what many sellers are doing now. That’s why you are seeing a billion of poorly branded, cheap Chinese products.
  - russh 8y ago
    Yes, they do. It's one of the reasons you can buy a "new" hard drive that already has several years use on it.
LinuxBender 8y ago
I don't believe you can stop this. I have tried and failed. I steer clear of anything not shipped directly from Amazon. Trying to report shady sellers on Amazon is next to impossible and Amazon will not remove them.
- dawnerd 8y ago
  The counterfeit items come from items shipped from amazon too thanks to their commingling inventory.
ryanianian 8y ago
It's pretty easy to spot fake reviews. The tacticts are pretty obvious. I'd bet basic NLP and pattern-matching would work to catch a huge percentage of fake-reviews if it were something Amazon really cared about doing. Is the reviewer saying things of substance, how many other reviews have they left and over how many years, how many things have they actually bought on the store and at what dollar amounts, are their other reviews a mix of positive/negative, are the types of products distinct, etc. Score each of these and remove/shadow-ban reviews that don't meet an authenticity metric. If there are real consequences for getting caught buying fake reviews (e.g. banning from selling or fines), it could really restore some order to the chaos. (Then you get the inverse problem of competitors buying fake reviews trying to get the competition banned or fined. This is second-order to actually removing the fake reviews in the first place though.)
- tmaly 8y ago
  fakespot.com does this for you. Just paste in the URL for the amazon product and it will analyze the reviews.
- yayadarsh 8y ago
  Love the ReviewMeta (website or chrome extension) for exactly this. It gives a computed "true score" based on some of the dimensions you mention above. (I am not in any way affiliated with this product) https://reviewmeta.com/ https://reviewmeta.com/
dawnerd 8y ago
You don’t allow third party sellers and the problem goes away real fast.
- astura 8y ago
  You can still allow third party sellers, but just do some vetting of both their products and their operations first.
astura 8y ago
Same way every other retailer (Walmart, Target, Sears, etc) prevent counterfeit goods?
specialp 8y ago
I really think they don't care that much. For them what they do is take a 20% rip from the random sellers that appear on there and always side with the buyer in any case of counterfeit or misrepresented products. This is working great in the interim as they truly have nothing (monetarily) to lose like this. Customers get a full refund no questions asked, and often get to keep the knockoff. Amazon makes more money on marketplace than selling themselves. But for someone like me, I don't want to gamble whenever I buy anything. I have had Prime from the very start and now I think I am not going to renew. I am sick of getting substandard products and lately with their private label shipping the delivery date/time has been completely arbitrary. I've done almost all of my shopping online my entire adult life, but now I am increasingly going to local stores as I have never received a fake, and now they compete on price.
awaywopassd 8y ago
> How would you solve the counterfeit goods and preventing people from gaming the review system problems? The big issue is co-mingling inventory. This is where they mix same product from different sellers in same batch. I only order products from Amazon.com LLC. But I have still received items that seems fake. Some says that co-mingling inventory saves Amazon a lot of money but to me it seems like Amazon is actively shielding bad players by making it hard to trackdown who is selling fake products.
- hef19898 8y ago
  One other, and somehow more troubling alternative to safing money, could that Amazon's homegrown warehouse management systems and fulfillment software are reaching some kind of limitation. Seperating inventory not just by article but also supplier and / or inventory owner is no small feat. But if Amazon's IT environment is not able of doing it, this is opening all kinds of issues. None of them really good in the long run.
  - awaywopassd 8y ago
    Actually, I have some experience as Amazon Seller/FBA. I believe on certain items, I would get an option to co-mingle it. It wasn't selected by default, so I didn't change it. So Amazon has already built the system to keep inventory separate by sellers.
- binarysolo 8y ago
  Also Amazon vendor here - co-mingling is really a lot better these days because of the new brand registry. Basically as the manufacturer you can restrict the other vendors from even hopping on. If you turn off comingling you have to (? not sure if anymore) apply Amazon ASIN stickers instead of the manufacturer barcode, which is really annoying.

ckastner 8y ago

> How would you solve the counterfeit goods and preventing people from gaming the review system problems? No idea what do to about the reviews, but the first step to the counterfeit goods problem is simple: once you've received X complaints about a counterfeit product, stop selling the product. Continuing to sell a product for which there are numerous and credible indications that they are counterfeit is borderline fraud.

394549 8y ago
> No idea what do to about the reviews, They need to patrol the sources for fake reviews (facebook groups, etc) and perform sting operations to catch the sellers who solicit them. It shouldn't be too hard, a simple Facebook search finds hundreds of groups and thousands of solicitations. Once you identify a seller that does this, you ban them from Amazon, as well as everyone who's given their products a fake review (for the reviewers, it should probably be a three strikes thing before they're banned, since a lot of them seem to just like free stuff). > but the first step to the counterfeit goods problem is simple: once you've received X complaints about a counterfeit product, stop selling the product. > Continuing to sell a product for which there are numerous and credible indications that they are counterfeit is borderline fraud. I'd say the second step is to roll back many of Amazon's practices that make counterfeiting harder to detect, for instance how they can commingle inventory between sellers (if those sellers weren't careful when they made their listing). That makes it impossible for the sellers to have meaningful reputation scores, since bad-actors can sell their counterfeits through honest-actor storefronts (and vice versa). The third step is to implement better supply chain management and vetting of suppliers. Not everyone should be able to set up a marketplace store and sell any product. There needs to be effective vetting of sellers and it should be hard enough to setup a marketplace account they can't just create a new one when their last one is banned. There should also be especially stringent vetting around listings for frequently fake and counterfeit products, like SD cards. The fourth step is to implement active counterfeit and fake product detection (through test purchases). If a particular item is too often fake or counterfeited, Amazon should ban it from the marketplace and only sell inventory directly sourced from the original manufacturer. None of these things should be too hard for a company with Amazon's resources to effectively implement. The fact that it hasn't says that these problems aren't a priority for it.
taeric 8y ago
Have you established that there are "numerous and credible indications" for all counterfeit products? I would, perhaps naively, think that this is just shifting the exact same problem to the reports. That is, reviews and reports are likely easier to manipulate/game than physical products. Not just in "ballet stuffing" but through many other means. (That is, it is probably easy to get credible people to also vouch for products while you are shipping counterfeit ones.) To that end, I'd imagine it is easy to get rid of someone that sells 100% fake items. But how hard is it to drop someone that sells 10% fake items? In bulk, that is still damaging. And is still probably lucrative for the seller. Basically, I'd expect (again, perhaps naively) that painting it as a boolean trip actually makes it easier for the cheaters.
- ckastner 8y ago
  > Have you established that there are "numerous and credible indications" for all counterfeit products? No, just anecdata, including personal experience. But the anecdata seems widespread enough. > To that end, I'd imagine it is easy to get rid of someone that sells 100% fake items. But how hard is it to drop someone that sells 10% fake items? I have absolutely zero experience with retail, but I'd probably set the bar at 0%. Any deviation from that 0% must be explained satisfactorily: "how did this happen", "what measures have been taken so that this doesn't happen again", etc.
lolsal 8y ago
> No idea what do to about the reviews, but the first step to the counterfeit goods problem is simple: once you've received X complaints about a counterfeit product, stop selling the product. If you don't have an idea of how to solve the review problem, I'm not convinced you've thought through the "received X complaints about a counterfeit product" problem and your proposed solution. In your system, I could easily assault my competitors with counterfeit claims and get their products removed. This already happens with reviews and other sort of reports/returns.
- ckastner 8y ago
  > If you don't have an idea of how to solve the review problem, I'm not convinced you've thought through the "received X complaints about a counterfeit product" problem With "complaint", I meant a formal complaint to Amazon, over a proper channel, either by contacting Amazon Support, or during the returning process (I'm returning this product because it is counterfeit").
kaitai 8y ago
This just can't work on a logistical level. Let's look at diapers. There are lots of reports of counterfeit Huggies and Pampers. In some cases, it's true -- they're counterfeit. Recently, though, Huggies changed the 'movers & poopers' line or whatever they call it. Since consumers didn't know about the change beforehand (new leg-hole shape, for instance) there were many reports that those were counterfeit, and Huggies had representatives deployed to answer Amazon reviews that showed the legit redesigned diapers and falsely called them counterfeit. Moreover, what would happen to Amazon if they stopped selling Huggies and Pampers? Collapse! or maybe just a 20% loss of revenue! Do you know how many people go Prime purely so they can get their diapers autoshipped? and the formula, and the breastmilk bags, and the wipes? My family signed up for Prime solely because of baby crap, and once that baby crap is not needed, Prime ends. But for most people, Prime continues from baby to toddler to whenever they remember to stop auto-renewing. This is a huge market. Amazon cannot afford not to fix their supply chain legitimacy issues. But they can't just stop selling the product. Agree that it's fraudulent to keep selling counterfeits, agree that they need to fix it or all those Prime parents are going to switch to Target for their brand-name diapers. It's not simple, though.
- ckastner 8y ago
  > Amazon cannot afford not to fix their supply chain legitimacy issues. If they can't run a legitimate business properly, then that's their problem. Take a look around -- plenty of other profitable retailers don't have this problem. > But they can't just stop selling the product. Not only can they, they must. You can't continue with illegitimate business just because you'd be unprofitable otherwise.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago

It's a solved problem and not hard. Most brick and mortar chains in the UK have a buying policy that requires you to prove your goods are fit for purpose before they'll put it on the shelves and risk hurting their brand. I imagine most of Europe operates similarly. They will generally require suppliers to send examples of the range before being allowed in store, and they will test or examine a representative selection first. They'll probably do basic safety and legality tests too. As a new supplier you can expect your products to be subject to random checks over the coming months. After a period of good track record you will become a trusted supplier and subject to fewer, or perhaps no, checks. Amazon should do the same. That they are big or that they are online is no excuse not to.

bhtru 8y ago
Couldn’t malicious sellers circumvent this by sending quality product initially and then swapping it later on?
- mattmg83 8y ago
  The entire TIC industry (I work for Underwriters Laboratories) does just that, we independently test and certify and then audit the factories to make sure it’s still made the same way as the original sample. Problem is... people counterfeit our certificates, and some retailers don’t care much
  - jfim 8y ago
    For those wondering, TIC stands for testing, inspection and certification.
  - tormeh 8y ago
    Then stop using certificates. Have a website where retailers can check if the supplier is certified. Using signed pieces of paper as evidence is inferior to just querying the certifier directly.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Sure they could, but with a proper approach to supply management, like the whole of the traditional sector is used to it gets caught. The lower quality switch would get caught in the random checks of incoming product in your first years as supplier, or rapidly from customer feedback. Then simply drop them as supplier. Amazon would look far far better to their customers if they started cutting some of the crap as "not good enough to go in Amazon" and dropping suppliers for shoddy manufacture or too high a return rate. There is a big difference between cheap, good value and all the world's unfit for purpose and counterfeit crap, for me anyway. They can pretend marketplace is separate, and outsource returns and customer service to marketplace sellers all they like. If I buy something dangerous or shit on marketplace I resent Amazon as much as the RNGFake4u brand I accidentally bought.

swsieber 8y ago

Counterfeit problem? Stop co-mingling inventory - then you can track what inventory went to which customer and easily peg down which sources are selling counterfeits by looking at the reviews.

rmah 8y ago
Amazon co-mingles different retailer's inventory when amazon handle fulfillment for them?!?!? Are you sure? That's insane.
- secabeen 8y ago
  Yes, that's the root cause of many of their fulfillment issues. And it makes sense for something like a mass-market book. It makes less sense for other things.
- moltar 8y ago
  Yup. Multiple sellers can sell the “same” item. I put same in quotes, because it can be counterfeit or just similar. You’ll never know if you just buy the cheapest via buy now. The only exception if it’s your own brand. Which is what many sellers are doing now. That’s why you are seeing a billion of poorly branded, cheap Chinese products.
- russh 8y ago
  Yes, they do. It's one of the reasons you can buy a "new" hard drive that already has several years use on it.

LinuxBender 8y ago

I don't believe you can stop this. I have tried and failed. I steer clear of anything not shipped directly from Amazon. Trying to report shady sellers on Amazon is next to impossible and Amazon will not remove them.

dawnerd 8y ago
The counterfeit items come from items shipped from amazon too thanks to their commingling inventory.

ryanianian 8y ago

It's pretty easy to spot fake reviews. The tacticts are pretty obvious. I'd bet basic NLP and pattern-matching would work to catch a huge percentage of fake-reviews if it were something Amazon really cared about doing. Is the reviewer saying things of substance, how many other reviews have they left and over how many years, how many things have they actually bought on the store and at what dollar amounts, are their other reviews a mix of positive/negative, are the types of products distinct, etc. Score each of these and remove/shadow-ban reviews that don't meet an authenticity metric. If there are real consequences for getting caught buying fake reviews (e.g. banning from selling or fines), it could really restore some order to the chaos. (Then you get the inverse problem of competitors buying fake reviews trying to get the competition banned or fined. This is second-order to actually removing the fake reviews in the first place though.)

tmaly 8y ago
fakespot.com does this for you. Just paste in the URL for the amazon product and it will analyze the reviews.
yayadarsh 8y ago
Love the ReviewMeta (website or chrome extension) for exactly this. It gives a computed "true score" based on some of the dimensions you mention above. (I am not in any way affiliated with this product) https://reviewmeta.com/ https://reviewmeta.com/

dawnerd 8y ago

You don’t allow third party sellers and the problem goes away real fast.

astura 8y ago
You can still allow third party sellers, but just do some vetting of both their products and their operations first.

astura 8y ago

Same way every other retailer (Walmart, Target, Sears, etc) prevent counterfeit goods?

specialp 8y ago

I really think they don't care that much. For them what they do is take a 20% rip from the random sellers that appear on there and always side with the buyer in any case of counterfeit or misrepresented products. This is working great in the interim as they truly have nothing (monetarily) to lose like this. Customers get a full refund no questions asked, and often get to keep the knockoff. Amazon makes more money on marketplace than selling themselves. But for someone like me, I don't want to gamble whenever I buy anything. I have had Prime from the very start and now I think I am not going to renew. I am sick of getting substandard products and lately with their private label shipping the delivery date/time has been completely arbitrary. I've done almost all of my shopping online my entire adult life, but now I am increasingly going to local stores as I have never received a fake, and now they compete on price.

awaywopassd 8y ago

> How would you solve the counterfeit goods and preventing people from gaming the review system problems? The big issue is co-mingling inventory. This is where they mix same product from different sellers in same batch. I only order products from Amazon.com LLC. But I have still received items that seems fake. Some says that co-mingling inventory saves Amazon a lot of money but to me it seems like Amazon is actively shielding bad players by making it hard to trackdown who is selling fake products.

hef19898 8y ago
One other, and somehow more troubling alternative to safing money, could that Amazon's homegrown warehouse management systems and fulfillment software are reaching some kind of limitation. Seperating inventory not just by article but also supplier and / or inventory owner is no small feat. But if Amazon's IT environment is not able of doing it, this is opening all kinds of issues. None of them really good in the long run.
- awaywopassd 8y ago
  Actually, I have some experience as Amazon Seller/FBA. I believe on certain items, I would get an option to co-mingle it. It wasn't selected by default, so I didn't change it. So Amazon has already built the system to keep inventory separate by sellers.
binarysolo 8y ago
Also Amazon vendor here - co-mingling is really a lot better these days because of the new brand registry. Basically as the manufacturer you can restrict the other vendors from even hopping on. If you turn off comingling you have to (? not sure if anymore) apply Amazon ASIN stickers instead of the manufacturer barcode, which is really annoying.