3 ms·

Am really intrigued by this line - I've never had any reason to suspect my Amazon items in the UK have been counterfeit, whereas it seems like a common refrain

Am really intrigued by this line - I've never had any reason to suspect my Amazon items in the UK have been counterfeit, whereas it seems like a common refrain in the States. Greater reliance on the third-party market and intermingling stock? Or radically different product base?

arethuza 8y ago
UK here - I've definitely had concerns about some items but recently I ordered a Apple headphone adapter that was definitely advertised as "Genuine Apple" and clearly wasn't when it arrived - it works, but in a direct comparison with a part known to be from Apple you can see the differences. Not at big deal as it was a cheap part - but it was the final straw. NB I'm not anti Amazon by any means - I'm a long time Audible subscriber, use my Kindle pretty much every day and I pay for Prime Video. Wouldn't buy anything electrical from them again though.
- AJ007 8y ago
  I'm annoyed by getting counterfeit vacuum cleaner filters at the same price or higher as real ones, but anything where counterfeit could be dangerous I completely avoid (like, for example coffee filters or easily counterfeited electronics.) In the US, retailers always said Amazon was cheating by avoiding sales tax. The real competitive advantage they have is avoiding all of the legal liability of the products being sold.
pc86 8y ago
I'm pretty pro-Amazon but if counterfeit products has never been a concern you're just not buying very much. They're everywhere.
- wastedhours 8y ago
  Genuinely buy a fair bit, and never been a concern. Perhaps as a result of not really buying "brand" stuff on there, and so know it's a wilfully cheap iteration vs being a counterfeit?
astura 8y ago
Counterfeit and unsafe items aren't always "obviously" so and unless you have familiarity with the actual item, you might not notice. If you bought soap and got soap, you may be none the wiser that your soap was counterfeit. Here's some examples: https://youtu.be/8B12EfGArME https://youtu.be/8B12EfGArME https://youtu.be/WvaTA0K_DZs https://youtu.be/WvaTA0K_DZs
eloisant 8y ago
Apparently, the problem is that for a given SKU they'll mix up (on purpose) all marketplace vendors items, for items sold by third party but delivered from Amazon. Let's say you're selling Tickets to Ride on Marketplace (counterfeit products are common for board games). You send 100 copies to Amazon, now customers can buy those from you. I also sell Ticket to Ride on Marketplace! But I'm a cheap bastard so I send 100 counterfeit copies from China, with lower quality (off-centered chips, cheap prints, etc.) Instead of sending your copies to your customers, and my copies to my customers, they'll dump all of our copies all together and send a random copy to each customer. That means that any customer can receive counterfeit copies. You can't even trust a given vendor, or Amazon, because all the copies are mixed up.
- saiya-jin 8y ago
  That sounds like properly dumb approach to save a penny on an item - understandable with some quick grab scam scheme, but not something to do when building/maintaining long term business. I guess some manager got his yearly bonus for lowering expenses to next bottom, and who cares about the future because f*k 'ya all.
  - codyb 8y ago
    I imagine a lot of the reason they mix vendirs products together has to do with logistics. If seller A sends 100 units of product X to the East Coast and seller B 100 units of product X to the West Coast it has to be immeasurably easier to lump them together (not physically but electronically) then distribute this 200 units out to all their warehouses for faster shipping. It makes a lot of sense if everyone's on the up and up. That way you ship 20 units from Vendor A to NJ to cover the NYC metropolitan region for both vendor A and B.
- kevin_b_er 8y ago
  They also comingle "Shipped and sold by Amazon" with 3rd party shipped by amazon goods when you buy the "shipped and sold by amazon" item. All goods where there's a 3rd party seller are at risk of receiving garbage goods, which is to say everything.
- 8y ago

arethuza 8y ago

UK here - I've definitely had concerns about some items but recently I ordered a Apple headphone adapter that was definitely advertised as "Genuine Apple" and clearly wasn't when it arrived - it works, but in a direct comparison with a part known to be from Apple you can see the differences. Not at big deal as it was a cheap part - but it was the final straw. NB I'm not anti Amazon by any means - I'm a long time Audible subscriber, use my Kindle pretty much every day and I pay for Prime Video. Wouldn't buy anything electrical from them again though.

AJ007 8y ago
I'm annoyed by getting counterfeit vacuum cleaner filters at the same price or higher as real ones, but anything where counterfeit could be dangerous I completely avoid (like, for example coffee filters or easily counterfeited electronics.) In the US, retailers always said Amazon was cheating by avoiding sales tax. The real competitive advantage they have is avoiding all of the legal liability of the products being sold.

pc86 8y ago

I'm pretty pro-Amazon but if counterfeit products has never been a concern you're just not buying very much. They're everywhere.

wastedhours 8y ago
Genuinely buy a fair bit, and never been a concern. Perhaps as a result of not really buying "brand" stuff on there, and so know it's a wilfully cheap iteration vs being a counterfeit?

astura 8y ago

Counterfeit and unsafe items aren't always "obviously" so and unless you have familiarity with the actual item, you might not notice. If you bought soap and got soap, you may be none the wiser that your soap was counterfeit. Here's some examples: https://youtu.be/8B12EfGArME https://youtu.be/8B12EfGArME https://youtu.be/WvaTA0K_DZs https://youtu.be/WvaTA0K_DZs

eloisant 8y ago

Apparently, the problem is that for a given SKU they'll mix up (on purpose) all marketplace vendors items, for items sold by third party but delivered from Amazon. Let's say you're selling Tickets to Ride on Marketplace (counterfeit products are common for board games). You send 100 copies to Amazon, now customers can buy those from you. I also sell Ticket to Ride on Marketplace! But I'm a cheap bastard so I send 100 counterfeit copies from China, with lower quality (off-centered chips, cheap prints, etc.) Instead of sending your copies to your customers, and my copies to my customers, they'll dump all of our copies all together and send a random copy to each customer. That means that any customer can receive counterfeit copies. You can't even trust a given vendor, or Amazon, because all the copies are mixed up.

saiya-jin 8y ago
That sounds like properly dumb approach to save a penny on an item - understandable with some quick grab scam scheme, but not something to do when building/maintaining long term business. I guess some manager got his yearly bonus for lowering expenses to next bottom, and who cares about the future because f*k 'ya all.
- codyb 8y ago
  I imagine a lot of the reason they mix vendirs products together has to do with logistics. If seller A sends 100 units of product X to the East Coast and seller B 100 units of product X to the West Coast it has to be immeasurably easier to lump them together (not physically but electronically) then distribute this 200 units out to all their warehouses for faster shipping. It makes a lot of sense if everyone's on the up and up. That way you ship 20 units from Vendor A to NJ to cover the NYC metropolitan region for both vendor A and B.
kevin_b_er 8y ago
They also comingle "Shipped and sold by Amazon" with 3rd party shipped by amazon goods when you buy the "shipped and sold by amazon" item. All goods where there's a 3rd party seller are at risk of receiving garbage goods, which is to say everything.
8y ago