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Amazon commingles inventory, so it doesn't matter which 3rd party you select from the product page. Any one of them can inject the counterfeit into the supply a
by dahdum 8y ago
Amazon commingles inventory, so it doesn't matter which 3rd party you select from the product page. Any one of them can inject the counterfeit into the supply and affect sales from the others.
- ryanburk 8y agojust a note: this commingling only happens if it is "fulfilled by Amazon" vs buying directly from the 3rd party through Amazon.
- x0x0 8y agoNot trying to be a jerk, but how do you know that?
- dahdum 8y agoIf it's not fulfilled by Amazon, it ships from the manufacturer or retailer.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dahdum 8y agoA bit more clarification, the page right now says: "Sold by Spark Maestro and Fulfilled by Amazon." While this is a 3rd party sale, it will be fulfilled from the inventory Amazon has from any other seller. It has to ship from the 3rd party to be safe from counterfeiting.
- tedmcory77 8y agoNot exactly correct; the seller has to allow comingling as well.
- dahdum 8y agoDoes the buyer have any way to tell if an item is commingled, and if the seller they selected does not commingle? The pressure to get the buy box on competitive items means missing out on sales if you don't commingle.
- jjeaff 8y agoNot only is commingling inventory a seller choice, it is also not an available option for many products. Only certain pre-approved products are available for comingling. But the unfortunate thing is that as a buyer, you have no way of knowing which listing are from commingled inventory.
- cosmie 8y agoIt also only happens if they choose to do so. It's certainly the path of least resistance, but it's entirely possible for a seller to keep their inventory from being commingled while still using FBA. https://feedvisor.com/university/stickerless-commingled-inventory/ https://feedvisor.com/university/stickerless-commingled-inve...
- nitrogen 8y agoUnfortunately there's no way for a customer to verify that.
- derefr 8y agoTechnically, every part with the same SKU in an inventory system should be able to be intermingled. The problem is that the "SKU" concept is set up for selling things like drug stores selling bottles of Coca Cola, where hundreds of different franchised bottling plants will produce the same product under license, and so all have the right to slap the same SKU on the result, and it's kind of irrelevant to the consumer what licensed manufacturer produced the bottle. While this is a common case for consumer products purchased in physical stores, it isn't at-all common for products purchased online. Apple doesn't license the manufacture of iPhones to anybody; thus, nobody but Apple should be considered a valid input for the iPhone-SKU bin in the warehouse. Ideally, if you, as an Amazon seller, were to print the "Apple iPhone X US-version 64GB Black" UPC code on a box and send that box in to the Amazon warehouse, you should probably immediately get charged with mail fraud. Or maybe trademark infringement. (In fact, I can't see any reason why you couldn't literally trademark your own products' UPC codes, if you don't want anyone else using them.)
- Rylinks 8y agoI do not think it is fraud to print the Apple iPhone X US-version 64GB Black code on a box that does in fact contain an Apple iPhone X US-version 64GB Black Trademarking your UPC would not work, as someone reselling your product is protected by the first-sale doctrine. If I buy a bottle of Pepsi(tm), I can use Pepsi's trademarks when selling that bottle to someone else.
- derefr 8y agoThe first-sale doctrine indeed allows people to retail stuff they just bought. But in the case of Amazon, I’d almost say that the first-sale doctrine, followed to its natural conclusion, should better be called the “Man in the Middle doctrine”—that it would be perfectly fine and legal to 1. buy an iPhone from Apple, 2. install a wiretap into it, 3. repackage it as if it were a Brand New In Box iPhone, 4. and send it to Amazon to dump into their regular BNIB iPhone SKU bin. That seems nonsensical, right? Maybe trademark won’t work, but something should be preventing that. Maybe Amazon would have to do it themselves—marking certain SKU as “allocated” to particular sellers, and voiding the SKU claim of any other seller who sends them said product, instead slapping a replacement UPC code on that product giving it a namespaced SKU particular to that seller. To me, this would be like one of the key guidelines of journalism: if you can’t verify a claim from a source, you shouldn’t use that claim, but only mention that claim. I.e., Apple sells iPhones, but everyone else can only sell “iPhones.” They claim that they’re iPhones, but Amazon certainly doesn’t have a way to verify that they’re the exact iPhones Apple sells, so they can’t remove those quotation marks (or bin them in the same bin as Apple iPhones.) I would note that this is already partially done, in that Amazon warehouses do bin products with a given UPC code as a different SKU if they come in marked as “used.” All I’m suggesting here is a business rule that would change the definition of “used” used by the inventory system to include any secondary-market resale of the product—regardless of the condition of the product—if the product is anything that could be either cloned profitably or tampered with to some useful end.
- tedmcory77 8y agoAmazon may comingle, not does comingle. This is largely determined by the vendor.
- Dylan16807 8y agoBut it's impossible to check, so the general assumption should be that it's comingled.