4 ms·
I received my first fake from the UK site recently; a microSD card. I too was prevented from leaving a review due to “unusual review activity” for that product.
by mprev 8y ago
I received my first fake from the UK site recently; a microSD card. I too was prevented from leaving a review due to “unusual review activity” for that product.
Checking the reviews I saw that many people had also received fakes and left one star reviews. Most reviews were five star, so I guess there’s some commingling or similar.
They’ve sent a replacement but, rightly or wrongly, I feel not only was my time wasted but that I’m subject to a minor coverup.
- dfcowell 8y agoAmazon’s entire model is flawed in this respect. Products on the platform are “deduped” by merging listings from multiple sellers of the same product under a single master listing, where the price for the item is the lowest price available from all sellers. This leads to counterfeit sellers targeting high-quantity items, creating and selling fakes for just under MSRP and making out like bandits. It’s impossible for Amazon to police, and they can’t avoid merging listings unless they want a million duplicate products in their search results.
- jiveturkey 8y agoit’s possible to police. audit the products. if it’s only the top few thousand hottest items this is possible. at least for the top items it’s valuable even if the second tier is still difficult.
- dpwm 8y agoI'd have thought that even when items are commingled there must be some way for Amazon to determine the origin and deal with it appropriately. However, I would have also thought that it was in Amazon's interest to fix this before the items go the customer as it does have a detrimental impact on both Amazon and the counterfeited brand.
- adetrest 8y agoApparently, Amazon has no idea which seller sent in the item amazon is selling you. I don't know how they can get away with it, or how this is even allowed. What if the item is so shitty that it causes injury or death? Wouldn't amazon like to know which of its sellers is responsible? Anyway, one more reason to dump amazon, if their appalling treatment of people isn't enough maybe the time wasted in buying then returning fake items (if you can tell at all, if you're buying a product for the first time you can't always spot a fake) is.
- rincebrain 8y agoIIRC isn't another part of that problem the commingling of stock for the "same product" from different Fulfilled by Amazon sources all in the same bin (unless the vendor pays Amazon more to keep it separate), so you can't tell which vendor fakes come from sometimes?
- gowld 8y agoIt's quite possible to police. Amazon needs to admit that (many of) their products are NOT substitutible commodities, and they need to separate listings from different sellers. Sellers should earn the right to be commingled with Amazon.com and other high-reputation sources by showing a track record of low return/complaint rates and high review score.
- adetrest 8y agoAmazon can do things. For example, why not tie each product to the seller that sent it? They would very quickly find who sends the fakes and who sends the genuine items. But I suspect they wouldn't be good for amazon's growth numbers so they don't do it.