20 ms·

How counterfeits benefit Amazon

296 points by petethomas 8y ago

philipswood 8y ago
How do you use private key digital signatures on physical products? A signed QR code on the packaging? With a online verification that the key hasn't been reused. Sort of like old software activation codes?
- mjevans 8y ago
  If it's any form of token, a legitimate product could be obtained and resold or returned without the token or with a fake. (How would it be validated prior to use; and if you did provide that oracle, how would you prevent botfarm abuse checking codes?) The serial number on the product and a token to claim that number as a pair would work, at least in so far as someone would then have to obtain a large number of units and fake exact numbers. That should increase the chance of tracing a buyer; more so if the unit number is also on the outside of the box and it's registration can be checked prior to opening the box.
- 14 8y ago
  When I bought a device from team-xecuter for my xbox 360, they placed a bar code and serial number on the packaging. You could then go to a site they had and check the serial number to verify if it was real. I did and the site verified I had a real product. I don't recall if the serial was on the product as well or just the box. But in looking it up just now I see that according to team-xecuter there was an issue with a script and the site was returning genuine product as fake and visa versa occasionally . Also it was stated that it cost approx. one hundred dollars a month to run the service so I guess the fact that they mentioned that shows that a small company might have a hard time verifying their product if it means less for their bottom line.
  - ttty 8y ago
    what stops them from having the same "valid" serial number for 1000s devices.
    - tgsovlerkhgsel 8y ago
      Usually, it's a scratch-off code that either can only be used once, or tells you how often it has been used.
- snaky 8y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18018448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18018448
  - AjithAntony 8y ago
    E-cigarette products are rife with counterfeits and often use the scratchpad-code. It's a cat-and-mouse game still. They used to just spam one code on all the boxes so you could easily see messages like "this code has been checked 300 times" but later there were more codes and you would see they were only checked <10 times. Given that many consumers aren't even checking the codes, they probably get away with a lot.
    - snaky 8y ago
      That's all about reputation. Codes and other authenticity means just help to build - or break - the seller reputation. By the way, for example, you know that e-cig products marked 'authentic' on e.g. Fasttech are really authentic, because (tens of?) thousands of people bought there, and checked the codes, and if that wouldn't stay true, all the people at all the related forums know that. I find it kind of funny when Chinese shop from Guangdong happened to build better reputation than the biggest American retail corporation.
- inapis 8y ago
  Doesn’t matter. I ordered a pair of sennheiser headphones which came in the original box with all the fancy authentication stickers and it passed the verification process on sennheisers website. Six months later they were sent in for warranty replacement and the headphones I received from Sennheiser had a ground breaking difference in sound quality. I realised then that the ones Amazon shipped were counterfeits.
  - snaky 8y ago
    It works when done right. a) verification code that is big enough under the scratchpad b) verification process on the vendor site shows how many times this code had been checked before.
  - userbinator 8y ago
    Six months later they were sent in for warranty replacement and the headphones I received from Sennheiser had a ground breaking difference in sound quality. ...or it could just be that they were originally flawed anyway or somewhat damaged in transit. It's not like manufacturers don't make minor changes to a product after starting production either --- mass production doesn't mean every product is exactly the same.
neonate 8y ago
https://outline.com/z99T8C https://outline.com/z99T8C
- ajarmoniuk 8y ago
  Thank you. Los Angeles Times shows this: > Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.
ohazi 8y ago
This sounds like it might be a good candidate for a class-action lawsuit, assuming you could include anyone touched by all counterfeits on Amazon as part of the class. I don't really care about the ~$50-100 in suspect cables, microsd cards, and batteries I've bought over the years, it just seems like something this broad would probably be the only way to get Amazon to consider fixing their inventory co-mingling issues.
- themodelplumber 8y ago
  I've seen people posting photos of counterfeits that they received, and I've made a lot of Amazon purchases, but I've never received one. I'm kind of shocked actually because I try out some of the really counterfeit-magnet stuff. The photos I've seen made it look like the counterfeits were really obvious, too.
  - lozenge 8y ago
    You probably have received one (See the toupee fallacy). Sometimes counterfeits come from the same factory using the same materials, just running overtime.
    - ahoka 8y ago
      "Sometimes counterfeits come from the same factory using the same materials, just running overtime." Sans the quality assurance.
      - Stratoscope 8y ago
        Here's an interesting story about counterfeit SD cards and the "ghost shift": https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=918 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=918
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    You may not have noticed. I bought an Apple headset that fell apart after 3 months. Now either their headsets are just bad or it was a counterfeit. I don't know but I suspect it was counterfeit.
benatkin 8y ago
> "Amazon, in court filings, denied mixing knockoff Fuse Chicken products with genuine ones. The company says it has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to counterfeits and aggressively pursues legal action against bad actors." A zero tolerance policy doesn't mean much if you don't give out enough first strikes.
- taneq 8y ago
  This actually seems to be a common effect of zero tolerance systems. If the rules are too harsh, and there's a negative effect on the authority for handing out bans, then the rules end up not being enforced unless absolutely necessary.
- fencepost 8y ago
  A zero tolerance policy doesn't mean much if your process A) doesn't allow ways to remove counterfeits after they've entered your supply chain, B) is slow enough to allow counterfeiters to make profits before they're kicked out, and C) has low enough barriers to entry that losing a seller account is a relatively trivial inconvenience.
rectang 8y ago
> The spread of cheaper knockoffs can also put pressure on authentic sellers and brands to lower their prices, helping Amazon win more customers. Ugh, how cynical. "Your reputation is my opportunity."
- snaky 8y ago
  That's complicated. In the world full of ODM and OEM manufacturing, some of the 'cheaper knockoffs' are actually exactly the same product, just with no brand label, or with the different one.
  - toss1 8y ago
    Which is often, especially in China, the same product made by the factory as extra production runs, but sold out the back door at night. Straight up theft on not only IP, but all the management admin costs to manage production, and the marketing efforts to build the brand. From every single account of people I've encountered who have worked in/with China, this and every other sort of ripoff is absolutely expected and par for the course unless you take serious countermeasures (e.g., make all critical components in another economy, ship over to China only the goods that just need final process and assembly). It's just how they do business. And obviously, now, they have significant hordes scanning Amazon for products selling well, which they'll promptly counterfeit. And Amazon's happy to help them undercut you.
retrogradeorbit 8y ago
You won't see this story in the Washington Post.
- snaky 8y ago
  "How merchants use Facebook to flood Amazon with fake reviews" by Elizabeth Dwoskin and Craig Timberg, April 23 is available on Washington Post site.
  - fmajid 8y ago
    He meant an article implying the malfeasance is encouraged by Amazon itself, not sleazy third-party merchants (although the latter are convenient to Amazon for plausible deniability, like how firms like DirecTV outsource their telemarketing calls then act shocked, shocked that they went rogue and did not heed the do-not-call list).
chrischen 8y ago
So I tried to sell a Microsoft Xbox One on Amazon once, and it required me to verify that I am an authorized reseller. Why don't they just do this for every merchant selling any brand?
- snaky 8y ago
  Maybe Amazon have some special relationships with Microsoft, Sony and some other corporations.
  - jjeaff 8y ago
    Ya, the special relationship is that if Amazon doesn't take action, said corporations will bring massive lawsuits that Amazon will loose. Amazon Corp bots make financial decision that blocking unauthorized sellers is cheaper than fighting lawsuits.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  > it required me to verify that I am an authorized reseller. Why don't they just do this for every merchant selling any brand? As a customer why would I care if Microsoft have authorised you to resell Xbox One's or not?
  - chrischen 8y ago
    Most likely because Microsoft begged Amazon to block the unauthorized re-sale.
gaius 8y ago
There’s a dive torch popular amongst newbie divers, the LED Lenser Frogman. I actually have one myself, they’re pretty neat, tho’ obv no substitute for my Light Monkeys. It should retail for £35-40 but you see knock offs on Amazon for <£7. Now this is potentially a piece of safety-critical equipment, and it’s totally unacceptable for Amazon to not police it better. But commingling the stock so even genuine buyers get the knockoffs is plumbing new depths of sleaze.
- petra 8y ago
  Does Amazon get the price difference in the case of commingling ?
- xbkingx 8y ago
  Flashlights (including anything that has a battery and led bulb) and batteries are almost in how brazenly they falsely advertise on Amazon. I would have to say that well over half of torches on Amazon exaggerate their claims by at LEAST 100%. You'll see the same exact 5-mode style with 20 different max output numbers. Most sellers get a counterfeit LED that's half as bright as the real thing, then list the max straight from the CREE spec sheets, ignoring that the numbers come from properly cooled, properly driven, and much more efficient legit bulbs. Battery sellers on Amazon generally tack on 30-80% capacity, but some go bonkers. Go ahead and search for 18650 batteries for those flashlights. Amazing! Panasonic and LG can't get past 3600mAh for theirs and charge ~$25 for a pair, but multiple sellers have 9000mAh+ options for ~$2/cell. And they ALL have 4+ star reviews. It used to be that the garbage sellers would claim around 3500mAh capacity so that there was some plausible deniability, but now they're probably bordering on nuclear fission energy densities. They're selling a 2 liter bottle of water and claiming there's 3 liters in it. Oh, and any 'emergency' or safety related product is fair game. If it fails, either they'll rationalize that it wasn't properly maintained prior to the emergency or the buyer isn't around to complain about it. Needless to say, I don't order anything I actually care about from Amazon. I actually just looked through my 2018 purchases and it reads like the orders I used to place through cheap Chinese sites 5 years ago. I guess I now treat Amazon like a shipping option - $2 premium to get the same junk, but I don't have to wait a month.
nobrains 8y ago
The article talks about how counterfeits benefit Amazon, but its not the full picture. There is a negative affect of counterfiets on Amazon as well, and that is (1) reputation (customers not trusting Amazon anymore as a site that has honest opinions) (2) competition (other online retailers growing in the trusted-products-selling business) and (3) reliance on one country only (if this continues, and Amazon makes short term profits because of it, they will end of becoming a front end for china manufacturers only, risking their supply line. With one rule, china can ban Chinese products to be sold via Amazon, and Amazon can go broke). So it is in Amazon's interest to solve this problem, and not focus on the short term gains, but I wonder why they are not making any moves to solve this? That's the weird part.
- B1FF_PSUVM 8y ago
  > they will end of becoming a front end for china manufacturers only And there's AliExpress.com already doing a good job of that. Actually, a better job, apparently, because on AliExpress you know which seller will ship your purchase.
  - justtopost 8y ago
    You also don't have to question if it is counterfit. You can just assume it is. Petty theft from engineers, by engineers. It is an unusual world.
    - fjsolwmv 8y ago
      You call it counterfeit, China calls it commodity. When you buy generic sugar in USA, is it "counterfeit"?
      - L-four 8y ago
        When you buy sugar in China it might be.
        crankylinuxuser 8y ago
tracker1 8y ago
First step... add a "vendor sticker" to each item as it comes from a vendor into its' warehouse. At the very LEAST they could then filter out vendors selling counterfeits. The costs would be minimal and actually lead to rooting out counterfeits. Amazon's responses on this are purely bullshit.
- hrktb 8y ago
  That’s a good proposition I think. In no way would adding an extra logistic step to every single package entering amazon’s warehouse something of ”minimal” cost, but it might be worth it.
  - LeifCarrotson 8y ago
    Even if Amazon needs 10 billion stickers and it has to buy a sticker manufacturer, the profitability is what matters. How much does adding one the sticker cost relative to the average Amazon product? 0.1%? How much does it cost relative to the cost of the counterfeiting problem?
    - GordonS 8y ago
      I imagine the cost of actually placing the stickers on things would far outweigh the cost of the stickers themselves.
      - fujiters 8y ago
        They could require the vendors attach the stickers to uniquely determine the shipment. Upon receipt, just scan to ensure the barcodes match/aren't duplicates. They already require vendors using Fullfillment by Amazon to have their shipment contain a shipping summary. Adding per item barcodes wouldn't be a huge change (and Amazon itself wouldn't bear the cost).
        reaperducer 8y ago
        You're right. The items have to be scanned for inventory management anyway when they arrive and are put in the bins at Amazon. Might as well just scan a second bar code to note where it came from. Or do it as a combined QR code. Lots of room for extra data in there.
clumsysmurf 8y ago
Recently purchased a pair of Eneloop Pros that did not live up to expectations. Looking at a top review from 'Onick', it seems even popular items from well known companies are counterfeited. I bought my next Eneloops from another flashlight ecommerce website — I won't by anything from Amazon again. If i can't trust them $20 rechargeable batteries, I'm not trusting them with anything at all.
- inapis 8y ago
  Apart from books, kindles and maybe heavy electronics, almost everything Amazon lists can be counterfeited. Clothing, accessories, shoes, chargers, cables and headphone are prime candidates. Right now the only way to get a genuine product is to buy only those items which have exactly one seller, with a legit name, and are not under prime shipping or fulfilled by Amazon.
  - mathgenius 8y ago
    There are plenty of reports of counterfeit books on amazon. I don't buy my books from there anymore. If I wanted a cheap knock-off I can print it myself.
    - snaky 8y ago
      > counterfeit books That's amazing. How it works, I wonder - some Chinese factory just print from PDFs?
      - Buge 8y ago
        Here's an instance of counterfeit books: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924546 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924546
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  That's the real problem. You can't even know for sure whether you have a counterfeit. They may even be real Eneloops that failed quality testing.
gcatalfamo 8y ago
“Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.”
- mbel 8y ago
  > We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options... Full four months of engagement and commitment, that's pretty impressive.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - walshemj 8y ago
    Its a traditional publisher what do you expect, it took me years to get a simple change made (redirecting the .org domain to .com for a site) when I worked at Relex (reed elsiveer)
    - 52-6F-62 8y ago
      Hey you’re not wrong, just maybe not clear enough. It’s true that many traditional publications and houses are slower to adapt to changes in the digital landscape ever since print as an output has been sidelined. They like to find something that works and stick with it, even if it’s not optimal. It would likely explain LA Times’ delay. It’s taken teams I’ve been on a year to procure a ten dollar a month VPS because the request would continually get turned down by infra.
- trifidpaw 8y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20180929090017/http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-amazon-counterfeits-20180928-story.html https://web.archive.org/web/20180929090017/http://www.latime...
singularity2001 8y ago
the worst thing is that Amazon censors/bans critical comments. I once wrote "oh no not another Amazon counterfeit". guess what my comment was rejected.
- snaky 8y ago
  "Censored Amazon Review of Sandisk Ultra 32GB Micro SDHC Card" 10 days old thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18017676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18017676
kevinthew 8y ago
I would say roughly 50 percent of things I have bought are counterfeit (books, all electronics, CLOTHING, you name it!) It is, frankly, going to end Amazon as a company eventually but they do not seem to give a shit.
- ac29 8y ago
  Curious: how do you know so many items are counterfeit? 50% is a pretty high number. I order from Amazon once a month or so, and I can't think of more than one thing I suspect of being counterfeit over the past year or two, and even that I couldn't be sure.
NKCSS 8y ago
This problem has been going around for a few years now, good to see it pop up in more mainstream media.
yholio 8y ago
The problem is more complex than it seems. Amazon could easily stamp out all fake products by giving the manufacturer the power to single source a given brand. Unfortunately, that would also give that manufacturer full pricing power across Amazon, and that's a very bad thing for Amazon. The manufacturer could practice price discrimination in certain lower income markets while at the same time, being sure that discounted inventory does not end up on Amazon. No such limitation would exists for other sites, putting Amazon at a serious competitive disadvantage. So Amazon wants the distributors of a certain brand to compete with themselves and push the prices down. But that opens the door for fakes on the site. Nothing I said above should justify co-mingling inventory from different producers when a risk exists that fakes will be introduced in this manner, that's squarely Amazon's fault in their pursuit for faster delivery times. That practice leaves consumers without any ability to avoid fakes, destroying trust in the Amazon brand itself. I think the solution is a system of financial bonds, where the seller would pledge a significant sum to be accepted in the co-mingling bunch and benefit from fast delivery etc. A single fake product traced back to it would result in loosing the pledge.
- yayana 8y ago
  I like your analysis, but I find the pledge problematic. Vendors work against each other and would consider frauds like hiring people to buy a real product and return a fake.
  - eslaught 8y ago
    I see your point, but isn't that a problem for any enforcement scheme? Unless Amazon is going to invest the energy of their own employees into determining what is fake and what isn't, the best you can do is rely on the signal you get from customers when they return items (legitimately or not).
    - paulddraper 8y ago
      > invest the energy of their own employees into determining what is fake and what isn't That is how most stores operate.
daddylonglegs 8y ago
Does anyone have experience of using Bitmark, either as a customer or as manufacturer? It seems to be a public ledger for individual units of a product for handling warranty and returns. Andrew Huang, who is involved, describes the system and some of the scams they are trying to mitigate: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4981 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4981 I'm curious about people's experience in practice. I would think this unlikely to help but Huang is smart and has lot of relevant experience. Bitmark's javascript laden and (to me) slightly off putting site is at: https://bitmark.com/ https://bitmark.com/
hsivonen 8y ago
Especially outside yhe largest countries, it's often hard to find replacement parts for computers that are a older than the current generation. What's the counterfeit situation with chips that can be installed in computers post factory? Cloning a GPU or a PCI card that requires vendor-specific drivers would actually require copying the chip instead of substituting with another one in the same product category for the genuine driver to work. Can we still expect PCI cards to be genuine if the genuine driver works? What about RAM, which doesn't require vendor-specific drivers?
- Spooky23 8y ago
  I met with the representative from a major OEM a few years ago on a realtes topic. His position was that any new part that began manufacturing in Chinese partner factories was in competitor factories within hours and unauthorized or counterfeit parts were available in 30 days. If you have a use case where genuine article is important, there are companies that you can use to inspect and certify the parts or systems immediately after import.
ilamont 8y ago
Kind of surprised the article (or the Amazon spokesperson) didn't mention Transparency, which has been in development for some time: https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency The basic idea: Vendor places unique 2D barcode on each unit of a branded product, only products with those barcodes get placed into Amazon warehouse inventory, consumers can scan the barcode themselves to verify it's legit.
- gok 8y ago
  And what happens when the FC does notice a fake? Do they actually promise to not ship it?
  - cdjk 8y ago
    Once an asin is marked as being part of transparency they will reject it after a sell through period for any existing inventory.
- cdjk 8y ago
  Yes, and amazon gets to put a sticker on every item you sell (or at least the SKUs you enroll in transparency) no matter what channel you sell it in. I can’t imagine why vendors might not want to do that if they want to sell anyplace other than Amazon.
  - crazygringo 8y ago
    Seems like you're being sarcastic? But I don't see why. It means all your customers would get the anti-counterfeiting benefit, not only the ones who purchase from Amazon, since non-Amazon customers can verify the code too. Seems like a win for everybody. (Also, you're putting the codes on your items yourself, Amazon's not doing it.)
    - cdjk 8y ago
      Yes, I am being sarcastic. There may be a benefit to customers but your products will have calls to action on them to download and install an Amazon app on your phone when you’re in a retailer like Target or Best Buy. I think that’s the real reason for the transparency program.
DrNuke 8y ago
The only way still worth the hassle for westerner users is purchasing items as sold and shipped by Amazon from reputed brands only, while on offer with heavy discount... at the very least, you will get original but lower quality products made for lower income markets at their intended price.
habosa 8y ago
It seems like if you're a small brand, like Fuse Chicken, you should be able to become the exclusive supplier of your own product on Amazon. For anyone else you sell your product to, include a "this may not end up on Amazon" clause and then you're sure everything on Amazon came direct from you.
- vageli 8y ago
  > It seems like if you're a small brand, like Fuse Chicken, you should be able to become the exclusive supplier of your own product on Amazon. For anyone else you sell your product to, include a "this may not end up on Amazon" clause and then you're sure everything on Amazon came direct from you. I'm pretty sure a clause like that would be an infringement of rights grants by the First Sale doctrine [0] and would be void (in the US at least). [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    First sale doctrine doesn’t prohibit two parties from contracting with each other. There’s no reason why you cannot have an official Fuse Chicken SKU or even exclusive to Amazon barcode or model number. Other sellers are able to sell your product, but not with that SKU.
    - fencepost 8y ago
      Edit: I misremembered, the product was the Ripple Rug (ripplerug.com) and the problem was arbitrage where people were selling it on eBay for higher than retail, then drop-shipping via Amazon. Returns when it showed up in an Amazon box were paid for by the manufacturer, not the drop-ship seller. Links in the News section of their site, look for stories in 2016-2017. (original post) I can't recall the name of the product or find it with some quick searches, but I recall stories of one product that did precisely that after their product started being counterfeited heavily and undercut on Amazon - they have a cheaper version that's available on Amazon and a higher quality version available only directly from them. I believe it was basically a stiff synthetic material blanket with a bunch of large holes and attachment points such that those points could be attached together in a bunch of different ways to make a wide variety of configurations for cats to play in.
tim333 8y ago
>The company says it has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to counterfeits I find that a bit hard to believe. Try searching for earpods and finding a real one amongst all the fakes.
chaosbutters314 8y ago
Counterfeits are the reason anyone at my company(fortune 500 company) is no longer allowed to buy supplies from. I guess because they couldn't trust supplies, they said no longer and we have to go closer to the supplies for tracking
philjohn 8y ago
And if you return too many items Amazon just suspend your account. There really is very little downside.

296 points by petethomas 8y ago

How do you use private key digital signatures on physical products? A signed QR code on the packaging? With a online verification that the key hasn't been reused. Sort of like old software activation codes?

mjevans 8y ago
If it's any form of token, a legitimate product could be obtained and resold or returned without the token or with a fake. (How would it be validated prior to use; and if you did provide that oracle, how would you prevent botfarm abuse checking codes?) The serial number on the product and a token to claim that number as a pair would work, at least in so far as someone would then have to obtain a large number of units and fake exact numbers. That should increase the chance of tracing a buyer; more so if the unit number is also on the outside of the box and it's registration can be checked prior to opening the box.
14 8y ago
When I bought a device from team-xecuter for my xbox 360, they placed a bar code and serial number on the packaging. You could then go to a site they had and check the serial number to verify if it was real. I did and the site verified I had a real product. I don't recall if the serial was on the product as well or just the box. But in looking it up just now I see that according to team-xecuter there was an issue with a script and the site was returning genuine product as fake and visa versa occasionally . Also it was stated that it cost approx. one hundred dollars a month to run the service so I guess the fact that they mentioned that shows that a small company might have a hard time verifying their product if it means less for their bottom line.
- ttty 8y ago
  what stops them from having the same "valid" serial number for 1000s devices.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 8y ago
    Usually, it's a scratch-off code that either can only be used once, or tells you how often it has been used.
snaky 8y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18018448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18018448
- AjithAntony 8y ago
  E-cigarette products are rife with counterfeits and often use the scratchpad-code. It's a cat-and-mouse game still. They used to just spam one code on all the boxes so you could easily see messages like "this code has been checked 300 times" but later there were more codes and you would see they were only checked <10 times. Given that many consumers aren't even checking the codes, they probably get away with a lot.
  - snaky 8y ago
    That's all about reputation. Codes and other authenticity means just help to build - or break - the seller reputation. By the way, for example, you know that e-cig products marked 'authentic' on e.g. Fasttech are really authentic, because (tens of?) thousands of people bought there, and checked the codes, and if that wouldn't stay true, all the people at all the related forums know that. I find it kind of funny when Chinese shop from Guangdong happened to build better reputation than the biggest American retail corporation.
inapis 8y ago
Doesn’t matter. I ordered a pair of sennheiser headphones which came in the original box with all the fancy authentication stickers and it passed the verification process on sennheisers website. Six months later they were sent in for warranty replacement and the headphones I received from Sennheiser had a ground breaking difference in sound quality. I realised then that the ones Amazon shipped were counterfeits.
- snaky 8y ago
  It works when done right. a) verification code that is big enough under the scratchpad b) verification process on the vendor site shows how many times this code had been checked before.
- userbinator 8y ago
  Six months later they were sent in for warranty replacement and the headphones I received from Sennheiser had a ground breaking difference in sound quality. ...or it could just be that they were originally flawed anyway or somewhat damaged in transit. It's not like manufacturers don't make minor changes to a product after starting production either --- mass production doesn't mean every product is exactly the same.

neonate 8y ago

https://outline.com/z99T8C https://outline.com/z99T8C

ajarmoniuk 8y ago
Thank you. Los Angeles Times shows this: > Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.

ohazi 8y ago

This sounds like it might be a good candidate for a class-action lawsuit, assuming you could include anyone touched by all counterfeits on Amazon as part of the class. I don't really care about the ~$50-100 in suspect cables, microsd cards, and batteries I've bought over the years, it just seems like something this broad would probably be the only way to get Amazon to consider fixing their inventory co-mingling issues.

themodelplumber 8y ago
I've seen people posting photos of counterfeits that they received, and I've made a lot of Amazon purchases, but I've never received one. I'm kind of shocked actually because I try out some of the really counterfeit-magnet stuff. The photos I've seen made it look like the counterfeits were really obvious, too.
- lozenge 8y ago
  You probably have received one (See the toupee fallacy). Sometimes counterfeits come from the same factory using the same materials, just running overtime.
  - ahoka 8y ago
    "Sometimes counterfeits come from the same factory using the same materials, just running overtime." Sans the quality assurance.
    - Stratoscope 8y ago
      Here's an interesting story about counterfeit SD cards and the "ghost shift": https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=918 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=918
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  You may not have noticed. I bought an Apple headset that fell apart after 3 months. Now either their headsets are just bad or it was a counterfeit. I don't know but I suspect it was counterfeit.

benatkin 8y ago

> "Amazon, in court filings, denied mixing knockoff Fuse Chicken products with genuine ones. The company says it has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to counterfeits and aggressively pursues legal action against bad actors." A zero tolerance policy doesn't mean much if you don't give out enough first strikes.

taneq 8y ago
This actually seems to be a common effect of zero tolerance systems. If the rules are too harsh, and there's a negative effect on the authority for handing out bans, then the rules end up not being enforced unless absolutely necessary.
fencepost 8y ago
A zero tolerance policy doesn't mean much if your process A) doesn't allow ways to remove counterfeits after they've entered your supply chain, B) is slow enough to allow counterfeiters to make profits before they're kicked out, and C) has low enough barriers to entry that losing a seller account is a relatively trivial inconvenience.

rectang 8y ago

> The spread of cheaper knockoffs can also put pressure on authentic sellers and brands to lower their prices, helping Amazon win more customers. Ugh, how cynical. "Your reputation is my opportunity."

snaky 8y ago
That's complicated. In the world full of ODM and OEM manufacturing, some of the 'cheaper knockoffs' are actually exactly the same product, just with no brand label, or with the different one.
- toss1 8y ago
  Which is often, especially in China, the same product made by the factory as extra production runs, but sold out the back door at night. Straight up theft on not only IP, but all the management admin costs to manage production, and the marketing efforts to build the brand. From every single account of people I've encountered who have worked in/with China, this and every other sort of ripoff is absolutely expected and par for the course unless you take serious countermeasures (e.g., make all critical components in another economy, ship over to China only the goods that just need final process and assembly). It's just how they do business. And obviously, now, they have significant hordes scanning Amazon for products selling well, which they'll promptly counterfeit. And Amazon's happy to help them undercut you.

retrogradeorbit 8y ago

You won't see this story in the Washington Post.

snaky 8y ago
"How merchants use Facebook to flood Amazon with fake reviews" by Elizabeth Dwoskin and Craig Timberg, April 23 is available on Washington Post site.
- fmajid 8y ago
  He meant an article implying the malfeasance is encouraged by Amazon itself, not sleazy third-party merchants (although the latter are convenient to Amazon for plausible deniability, like how firms like DirecTV outsource their telemarketing calls then act shocked, shocked that they went rogue and did not heed the do-not-call list).

chrischen 8y ago

So I tried to sell a Microsoft Xbox One on Amazon once, and it required me to verify that I am an authorized reseller. Why don't they just do this for every merchant selling any brand?

snaky 8y ago
Maybe Amazon have some special relationships with Microsoft, Sony and some other corporations.
- jjeaff 8y ago
  Ya, the special relationship is that if Amazon doesn't take action, said corporations will bring massive lawsuits that Amazon will loose. Amazon Corp bots make financial decision that blocking unauthorized sellers is cheaper than fighting lawsuits.
chrisseaton 8y ago
> it required me to verify that I am an authorized reseller. Why don't they just do this for every merchant selling any brand? As a customer why would I care if Microsoft have authorised you to resell Xbox One's or not?
- chrischen 8y ago
  Most likely because Microsoft begged Amazon to block the unauthorized re-sale.

gaius 8y ago

There’s a dive torch popular amongst newbie divers, the LED Lenser Frogman. I actually have one myself, they’re pretty neat, tho’ obv no substitute for my Light Monkeys. It should retail for £35-40 but you see knock offs on Amazon for <£7. Now this is potentially a piece of safety-critical equipment, and it’s totally unacceptable for Amazon to not police it better. But commingling the stock so even genuine buyers get the knockoffs is plumbing new depths of sleaze.

petra 8y ago
Does Amazon get the price difference in the case of commingling ?
xbkingx 8y ago
Flashlights (including anything that has a battery and led bulb) and batteries are almost in how brazenly they falsely advertise on Amazon. I would have to say that well over half of torches on Amazon exaggerate their claims by at LEAST 100%. You'll see the same exact 5-mode style with 20 different max output numbers. Most sellers get a counterfeit LED that's half as bright as the real thing, then list the max straight from the CREE spec sheets, ignoring that the numbers come from properly cooled, properly driven, and much more efficient legit bulbs. Battery sellers on Amazon generally tack on 30-80% capacity, but some go bonkers. Go ahead and search for 18650 batteries for those flashlights. Amazing! Panasonic and LG can't get past 3600mAh for theirs and charge ~$25 for a pair, but multiple sellers have 9000mAh+ options for ~$2/cell. And they ALL have 4+ star reviews. It used to be that the garbage sellers would claim around 3500mAh capacity so that there was some plausible deniability, but now they're probably bordering on nuclear fission energy densities. They're selling a 2 liter bottle of water and claiming there's 3 liters in it. Oh, and any 'emergency' or safety related product is fair game. If it fails, either they'll rationalize that it wasn't properly maintained prior to the emergency or the buyer isn't around to complain about it. Needless to say, I don't order anything I actually care about from Amazon. I actually just looked through my 2018 purchases and it reads like the orders I used to place through cheap Chinese sites 5 years ago. I guess I now treat Amazon like a shipping option - $2 premium to get the same junk, but I don't have to wait a month.

nobrains 8y ago

The article talks about how counterfeits benefit Amazon, but its not the full picture. There is a negative affect of counterfiets on Amazon as well, and that is (1) reputation (customers not trusting Amazon anymore as a site that has honest opinions) (2) competition (other online retailers growing in the trusted-products-selling business) and (3) reliance on one country only (if this continues, and Amazon makes short term profits because of it, they will end of becoming a front end for china manufacturers only, risking their supply line. With one rule, china can ban Chinese products to be sold via Amazon, and Amazon can go broke). So it is in Amazon's interest to solve this problem, and not focus on the short term gains, but I wonder why they are not making any moves to solve this? That's the weird part.

B1FF_PSUVM 8y ago
> they will end of becoming a front end for china manufacturers only And there's AliExpress.com already doing a good job of that. Actually, a better job, apparently, because on AliExpress you know which seller will ship your purchase.
- justtopost 8y ago
  You also don't have to question if it is counterfit. You can just assume it is. Petty theft from engineers, by engineers. It is an unusual world.
  - fjsolwmv 8y ago
    You call it counterfeit, China calls it commodity. When you buy generic sugar in USA, is it "counterfeit"?
    - L-four 8y ago
      When you buy sugar in China it might be.
      - crankylinuxuser 8y ago

tracker1 8y ago

First step... add a "vendor sticker" to each item as it comes from a vendor into its' warehouse. At the very LEAST they could then filter out vendors selling counterfeits. The costs would be minimal and actually lead to rooting out counterfeits. Amazon's responses on this are purely bullshit.

hrktb 8y ago
That’s a good proposition I think. In no way would adding an extra logistic step to every single package entering amazon’s warehouse something of ”minimal” cost, but it might be worth it.
- LeifCarrotson 8y ago
  Even if Amazon needs 10 billion stickers and it has to buy a sticker manufacturer, the profitability is what matters. How much does adding one the sticker cost relative to the average Amazon product? 0.1%? How much does it cost relative to the cost of the counterfeiting problem?
  - GordonS 8y ago
    I imagine the cost of actually placing the stickers on things would far outweigh the cost of the stickers themselves.
    - fujiters 8y ago
      They could require the vendors attach the stickers to uniquely determine the shipment. Upon receipt, just scan to ensure the barcodes match/aren't duplicates. They already require vendors using Fullfillment by Amazon to have their shipment contain a shipping summary. Adding per item barcodes wouldn't be a huge change (and Amazon itself wouldn't bear the cost).
      - reaperducer 8y ago
        You're right. The items have to be scanned for inventory management anyway when they arrive and are put in the bins at Amazon. Might as well just scan a second bar code to note where it came from. Or do it as a combined QR code. Lots of room for extra data in there.

clumsysmurf 8y ago

Recently purchased a pair of Eneloop Pros that did not live up to expectations. Looking at a top review from 'Onick', it seems even popular items from well known companies are counterfeited. I bought my next Eneloops from another flashlight ecommerce website — I won't by anything from Amazon again. If i can't trust them $20 rechargeable batteries, I'm not trusting them with anything at all.

inapis 8y ago
Apart from books, kindles and maybe heavy electronics, almost everything Amazon lists can be counterfeited. Clothing, accessories, shoes, chargers, cables and headphone are prime candidates. Right now the only way to get a genuine product is to buy only those items which have exactly one seller, with a legit name, and are not under prime shipping or fulfilled by Amazon.
- mathgenius 8y ago
  There are plenty of reports of counterfeit books on amazon. I don't buy my books from there anymore. If I wanted a cheap knock-off I can print it myself.
  - snaky 8y ago
    > counterfeit books That's amazing. How it works, I wonder - some Chinese factory just print from PDFs?
    - Buge 8y ago
      Here's an instance of counterfeit books: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924546 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924546
maxxxxx 8y ago
That's the real problem. You can't even know for sure whether you have a counterfeit. They may even be real Eneloops that failed quality testing.

gcatalfamo 8y ago

“Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.”

mbel 8y ago
> We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options... Full four months of engagement and commitment, that's pretty impressive.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- walshemj 8y ago
  Its a traditional publisher what do you expect, it took me years to get a simple change made (redirecting the .org domain to .com for a site) when I worked at Relex (reed elsiveer)
  - 52-6F-62 8y ago
    Hey you’re not wrong, just maybe not clear enough. It’s true that many traditional publications and houses are slower to adapt to changes in the digital landscape ever since print as an output has been sidelined. They like to find something that works and stick with it, even if it’s not optimal. It would likely explain LA Times’ delay. It’s taken teams I’ve been on a year to procure a ten dollar a month VPS because the request would continually get turned down by infra.
trifidpaw 8y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20180929090017/http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-amazon-counterfeits-20180928-story.html https://web.archive.org/web/20180929090017/http://www.latime...

singularity2001 8y ago

the worst thing is that Amazon censors/bans critical comments. I once wrote "oh no not another Amazon counterfeit". guess what my comment was rejected.

snaky 8y ago
"Censored Amazon Review of Sandisk Ultra 32GB Micro SDHC Card" 10 days old thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18017676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18017676

kevinthew 8y ago

I would say roughly 50 percent of things I have bought are counterfeit (books, all electronics, CLOTHING, you name it!) It is, frankly, going to end Amazon as a company eventually but they do not seem to give a shit.

ac29 8y ago
Curious: how do you know so many items are counterfeit? 50% is a pretty high number. I order from Amazon once a month or so, and I can't think of more than one thing I suspect of being counterfeit over the past year or two, and even that I couldn't be sure.

NKCSS 8y ago

This problem has been going around for a few years now, good to see it pop up in more mainstream media.

yholio 8y ago

The problem is more complex than it seems. Amazon could easily stamp out all fake products by giving the manufacturer the power to single source a given brand. Unfortunately, that would also give that manufacturer full pricing power across Amazon, and that's a very bad thing for Amazon. The manufacturer could practice price discrimination in certain lower income markets while at the same time, being sure that discounted inventory does not end up on Amazon. No such limitation would exists for other sites, putting Amazon at a serious competitive disadvantage. So Amazon wants the distributors of a certain brand to compete with themselves and push the prices down. But that opens the door for fakes on the site. Nothing I said above should justify co-mingling inventory from different producers when a risk exists that fakes will be introduced in this manner, that's squarely Amazon's fault in their pursuit for faster delivery times. That practice leaves consumers without any ability to avoid fakes, destroying trust in the Amazon brand itself. I think the solution is a system of financial bonds, where the seller would pledge a significant sum to be accepted in the co-mingling bunch and benefit from fast delivery etc. A single fake product traced back to it would result in loosing the pledge.

yayana 8y ago
I like your analysis, but I find the pledge problematic. Vendors work against each other and would consider frauds like hiring people to buy a real product and return a fake.
- eslaught 8y ago
  I see your point, but isn't that a problem for any enforcement scheme? Unless Amazon is going to invest the energy of their own employees into determining what is fake and what isn't, the best you can do is rely on the signal you get from customers when they return items (legitimately or not).
  - paulddraper 8y ago
    > invest the energy of their own employees into determining what is fake and what isn't That is how most stores operate.

daddylonglegs 8y ago

Does anyone have experience of using Bitmark, either as a customer or as manufacturer? It seems to be a public ledger for individual units of a product for handling warranty and returns. Andrew Huang, who is involved, describes the system and some of the scams they are trying to mitigate: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4981 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4981 I'm curious about people's experience in practice. I would think this unlikely to help but Huang is smart and has lot of relevant experience. Bitmark's javascript laden and (to me) slightly off putting site is at: https://bitmark.com/ https://bitmark.com/

hsivonen 8y ago

Especially outside yhe largest countries, it's often hard to find replacement parts for computers that are a older than the current generation. What's the counterfeit situation with chips that can be installed in computers post factory? Cloning a GPU or a PCI card that requires vendor-specific drivers would actually require copying the chip instead of substituting with another one in the same product category for the genuine driver to work. Can we still expect PCI cards to be genuine if the genuine driver works? What about RAM, which doesn't require vendor-specific drivers?

Spooky23 8y ago
I met with the representative from a major OEM a few years ago on a realtes topic. His position was that any new part that began manufacturing in Chinese partner factories was in competitor factories within hours and unauthorized or counterfeit parts were available in 30 days. If you have a use case where genuine article is important, there are companies that you can use to inspect and certify the parts or systems immediately after import.

ilamont 8y ago

Kind of surprised the article (or the Amazon spokesperson) didn't mention Transparency, which has been in development for some time: https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency The basic idea: Vendor places unique 2D barcode on each unit of a branded product, only products with those barcodes get placed into Amazon warehouse inventory, consumers can scan the barcode themselves to verify it's legit.

gok 8y ago
And what happens when the FC does notice a fake? Do they actually promise to not ship it?
- cdjk 8y ago
  Once an asin is marked as being part of transparency they will reject it after a sell through period for any existing inventory.
cdjk 8y ago
Yes, and amazon gets to put a sticker on every item you sell (or at least the SKUs you enroll in transparency) no matter what channel you sell it in. I can’t imagine why vendors might not want to do that if they want to sell anyplace other than Amazon.
- crazygringo 8y ago
  Seems like you're being sarcastic? But I don't see why. It means all your customers would get the anti-counterfeiting benefit, not only the ones who purchase from Amazon, since non-Amazon customers can verify the code too. Seems like a win for everybody. (Also, you're putting the codes on your items yourself, Amazon's not doing it.)
  - cdjk 8y ago
    Yes, I am being sarcastic. There may be a benefit to customers but your products will have calls to action on them to download and install an Amazon app on your phone when you’re in a retailer like Target or Best Buy. I think that’s the real reason for the transparency program.

DrNuke 8y ago

The only way still worth the hassle for westerner users is purchasing items as sold and shipped by Amazon from reputed brands only, while on offer with heavy discount... at the very least, you will get original but lower quality products made for lower income markets at their intended price.

habosa 8y ago

It seems like if you're a small brand, like Fuse Chicken, you should be able to become the exclusive supplier of your own product on Amazon. For anyone else you sell your product to, include a "this may not end up on Amazon" clause and then you're sure everything on Amazon came direct from you.

vageli 8y ago
> It seems like if you're a small brand, like Fuse Chicken, you should be able to become the exclusive supplier of your own product on Amazon. For anyone else you sell your product to, include a "this may not end up on Amazon" clause and then you're sure everything on Amazon came direct from you. I'm pretty sure a clause like that would be an infringement of rights grants by the First Sale doctrine [0] and would be void (in the US at least). [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
- Spooky23 8y ago
  First sale doctrine doesn’t prohibit two parties from contracting with each other. There’s no reason why you cannot have an official Fuse Chicken SKU or even exclusive to Amazon barcode or model number. Other sellers are able to sell your product, but not with that SKU.
  - fencepost 8y ago
    Edit: I misremembered, the product was the Ripple Rug (ripplerug.com) and the problem was arbitrage where people were selling it on eBay for higher than retail, then drop-shipping via Amazon. Returns when it showed up in an Amazon box were paid for by the manufacturer, not the drop-ship seller. Links in the News section of their site, look for stories in 2016-2017. (original post) I can't recall the name of the product or find it with some quick searches, but I recall stories of one product that did precisely that after their product started being counterfeited heavily and undercut on Amazon - they have a cheaper version that's available on Amazon and a higher quality version available only directly from them. I believe it was basically a stiff synthetic material blanket with a bunch of large holes and attachment points such that those points could be attached together in a bunch of different ways to make a wide variety of configurations for cats to play in.

tim333 8y ago

>The company says it has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to counterfeits I find that a bit hard to believe. Try searching for earpods and finding a real one amongst all the fakes.

chaosbutters314 8y ago

Counterfeits are the reason anyone at my company(fortune 500 company) is no longer allowed to buy supplies from. I guess because they couldn't trust supplies, they said no longer and we have to go closer to the supplies for tracking

philjohn 8y ago

And if you return too many items Amazon just suspend your account. There really is very little downside.