6 ms·

tl;dr: because they've already won, Amazon has zero reason (financial or moral) to fight counterfeit products. Nothing the consumer says or does can meaningfull

tl;dr: because they've already won, Amazon has zero reason (financial or moral) to fight counterfeit products. Nothing the consumer says or does can meaningfully impact Amazon's bottom line, and no regulation exists (nor is likely to exist in the future) to force them to "fix their shit". Unlike banks, Amazon is now simply too big to fail. (Because unlike banks, Amazon has a million and one services that all more than compensate for each other. Amazon, the website, is barely a fraction of Amazon, the corporation)

jhloa2 7y ago
That might be the case but individuals are still free to refuse to buy items from amazon. I know that they won’t fail anytime soon because of AWS but I absolutely refuse to buy any items from their store because 7/10 times it’s garbage. They might not fail but luckily there’s still good online alternatives
- leetcrew 7y ago
  > I absolutely refuse to buy any items from their store because 7/10 times it’s garbage. genuinely curious, what kinds of things do you order? I place 1-2 orders every month and I've never received anything that I suspected was counterfeit.
  - colejohnson66 7y ago
    I place 5-20 orders a month and have never received counterfeit
    - Hypx 7y ago
      Are you sure? It's not like a counterfeit broadcasts itself as a counterfeit. Totally possible you've already bought a counterfeit.
    - foobiekr 7y ago
      I was the same way, and then one day, got a set of completely obvious counterfeit undersink water filters that had nothing in them.
    - wetpaws 7y ago
      This is usually called 'survivor bias'
  - jhloa2 7y ago
    Maybe not counterfeits, but many of the listing are very poorly made. Most of the clothing I've bought through them (even supposed name brands) have fallen apart extremely quickly. Looking through my history: - a car battery maintainer that doens't really charge the battery - 2 puzzles that the pieces don't fit together and many of them broke. - a snowboard edge tuner that ended up breaking after about 5 uses. - an iphone charging cable that fell apart after about a year even though it claimed to be kevlar braided. - a spatula that must have been 24 gauge sheet metal stamped into a "spatula" shape. - some glass screen protectors for my iphone that don't fit. - an air filter for my car that doensn't fit the car it's listed for. - a wireless charger that the micro-usb port broke within 2 months. All of those were from 2018. Now that I look through my history I'll change the 7/10 to 5/10 but in my book that's sill absolutely unacceptable. I'm sure there's more diligence I can do to make sure that I only buy name brand products but Amazon has lost my trust.
    - weiming 7y ago
      Try to find the real manufacturer. If it's a no-name/no-brand seller from China, then you should know what to expect. Example: 1. Search for "car battery charger" 2. "Amazon's Choice" result is a brand called Ampeak 3. Google "Ampeak trademark" 4. Ahhhh, "AMPEAK is a trademark of SHENZHEN JIADING ECOMMERCE LTD." Exercise of trying to find any information about "Shenzhen Jiading Ecommerce LTD" left to the reader. Also: 1. Try to find a website for both the brand and the manufacturer. "Ampeak" does have a website but lacks company information. 2. Note if the listing is dominated by gushing 5-star reviews and 1-star "what the heck did I just buy" reviews, something you can observe in the Ampeak charger listing.
      - ar0 7y ago
        If this is really the only way to successfully shop at Amazon, I wonder why so many people are still doing that. It seems to me that it would be the role of the shop I am shopping at to perform this kind of due diligence and quality assurance.
        baybal2 7y ago
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    Some categories are worse than others. Bluetooth anything, cables, phone accessories are often fake. For awhile, iPhone accessories were either fake or grey market. I think that improved recently.
  - jfaat 7y ago
    I recently got a counterfeit pair of socks.
    - blondin 7y ago
      you mean from a well known brand like nike, adidas, etc.? why not get it from their own website or app directly? sometimes it's even cheaper and the perks you get far out-weights what amazon has to offer.
      - jfaat 7y ago
        You basically never get free shipping on a pair of socks from a brand like Nike though, right? Usually you have to spend ~$50. These were ‘Darn Tough’, a more niche hiking/active brand. Amazon had the best price. I only found out they were counterfeit by doing some research when they got a hole way too soon, but just after the return window. I mended the hole and they’re serviceable for now. In the future, I’ll only buy these from either REI or direct from the manufacturer. Lesson learned. But yeah not your typical sock-buying situation, I’m way too big of a hipster for that ;)
        selimthegrim 7y ago
        Darn Toughs are nice enough when I left a pair behind by mistake at my hostel after a Grand Canyon trip I prevailed upon the hostel to mail them back to me for $2 for their time + postage. Thanks for the heads up about Amazon.
        smolder 7y ago
        I know someone who buys a LOT of shoes from them (though just for himself) and they just awarded him a free pair recently.
      - krick 7y ago
        That's a weird question. I mean, it may totally make sense to do what you are saying, but people tend to get used to shopping in one place, not even to mention that every sane wholesaler does everything in his power to make people used to that (relevant ads, promos, personalized discounts or bonus points, unobtrusive UI...) That's kinda the whole point of being a reseller.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    I used to order seaweed snacks. The type of things I enjoy but is hard to find locally. I can't take the chance anymore, Amazon needs a perfect reputation before I'm willing to eat something from them.
- ademup 7y ago
  7/10 garbage??? Are you not receiving the items you ordered? Or are you ordering the lowest-priced items and expecting premium product? We have two couples living in our house and receive 5-15 Amazon packages a week and have never had a single "OMG this is counterfeit/fake/literal garbage" moment. And all of us LOVE to complain about any opportunity that has a sliver of a chance at a discount. Meanwhile, I have read numerous HN accounts of "OMG, Amazon is always sending me counterfeit/fake stuff" At this point, I'm honestly thinking there are troll(s) on HN bashing Amazon. Also, the returns are EASY, so... What gives? I hate that Amazon is TBTF and Bezos controls more resources than some Nations, but the facts for me are: Amazon delivers what I want very quickly at reasonable prices. They often have items that I literally cannot buy locally. I wish I could always support my local people, but often as not, Amazon does a better job with less friction. Seriously? 7\10?? You buy 10 widgets and (want to) return 7 of them? I'm just going to say this now: you are either pulling numbers out of your ass (on a technical-loving web site) or you are outright lying.
  - threezero 7y ago
    Not the person you’re replying to, (and not a troll) but I just looked at my orders and I was at almost a 50% return/exchange rate for damaged/counterfeit/not-as-described items in the last year before I completely stopped ordering from Amazon. As someone who buys at least one item a day over the internet, that’s a lot of mistakes. At one point I talked to my local UPS shop doing one of my weekly mass Amazon return drop offs, and he said I wouldn’t believe how much of their business was amazon returns. On the other hand, I order a lot of items that I have a lot of knowledge about, so it’s not hard for me to spot a fake or find the damage almost immediately. However, I could see the average consumer just accepting an item without paying too much attention. Since then I’ve switched to specialty retailers, and Target and Walmart for everything else.
- TheRealPomax 7y ago
  That has literally nothing to do with Amazon, the company. If you don't buy products on Amazon.com you're still paying online companies who pay Amazon for using their web services. THAT'S what it means for Amazon to be too big to fail: the consumer does NOT have any power anymore. We passed that point. Simply by participating in society, some of your money will end up in Amazon's hands, because they own the infrastructure on which society now runs.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
not_a_cop75 7y ago
As long as they have 3-4 other solid competitors in each market they work, they haven't exactly won. And honestly, Amazon service is less than stellar at times, and most of the services people use them for amount to brokering the purchase or rental of a product. This sounds like a service model that in under 20 years will be completely unprofitable and replicated across all competition. Certainly they'll edge up somehow, but it's unclear how.
bradleyjg 7y ago
> no regulation exists (nor is likely to exist in the future) I wouldn't be so sure. It's true that they have a ton of money, but they also have a lot of exposure. Lobbying is most effective for companies that are obscure and their interests are adverse to either very few people or to everybody but only in a virtually unnoticeable way. Even very wealthy industries that are high profile and piss off everyone tend to eventually get regulated. See e.g. banks.
- TheRealPomax 7y ago
  It's not about them having a ton of money. Money on gets you so far. Amazon owns (part of) the infrastructure that modern connected society relies on. I look forward to it getting broken up once the old guard leaves politics and some better educated younger politicians swap in, but Amazon is offering good deals to too many people, except the people that work the warehouses for their distributed global shopping mall. Even if Amazon got legislated to treat all those folks right, hire 100% more people to cut shit times, and raise salaries by 100% for all warehouse workers, all that would do is slow down growth of a company that literally owns part of the internet we all rely on.
whyenot 7y ago
> Unlike banks, Amazon is now simply too big to fail. A generation ago, you could have said that about Microsoft. Somebody can indeed force them to "fix their shit" -- government. ...and they will. You can already see some ripples on the pond. Watch out, though, because the government can have a heavy hand and often the cure is worse than the disease.
- awakeasleep 7y ago
  In my opinion it's not that the government has a 'heavy hand' but that Amazon pumps enough money into the system to suborn any regulation that'll eventually occur. You can bet they already have drafts of laws that'll suit them just fine while making it impossible for smaller players to compete.
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  Well, wake me up when Microsoft get to fix their shit.
  - vnorilo 7y ago
    You may not like MS products, but I think their capability to seek rent is much, much lower than the antitrust days. The story looks like the competition did it instead of regulation, but who knows if an undeterred, ruthless Microsoft would have fought back better and dirtier.
    - marcosdumay 7y ago
      > their capability to seek rent is much, much lower than the antitrust days Well, I do agree with that, with two large caveats: - their capability to seek rent is still enormous, they are still one of the most powerful companies in the world on that; - and I have no idea how much of that loss comes from government intervention and competition, instead of previous bad management.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    Microsoft deserves a reputation for poor quality software, but they are at least 10x higher quality than just about everything else of similar complexity. Only software that can kill (medical and flight) is generally of higher quality.
jldugger 7y ago
Does this mean ebay fights counterfeits?
- TheRealPomax 7y ago
  Why would someone not liking coffee make you think that some very specific other person must therefore like coffee?
el_programmador 7y ago
In theory, they can't be a monopoly. What exactly is stopping anyone else from starting an online bookstore or a mart? In India, there is already Flipkart and Big Basket, just two large e-commerce companies among several others who are giving cut-throat competition to Amazon each day, are there no others in the US?
tomrod 7y ago
This is nonsense. Amazon moves in and takes over an industry due to both economies of scale and scope (i.e. shared services/costs). If they allow lower quality, niche or competing substitutes can exist. If they offer inferior products, people will substitute away to a better quality option. This is why Walmart is not the only retailer, and space for mid quality retailers like Target or grocery chains exist.
mcv 7y ago
Amazon is not too big too fail. We can easily do without it. Sure, Amazon disappearing would seriously shake up the market, but other platforms would appear, and local shops might get more business again. Please do let Amazon fail if they do not go out of their way to fix this as soon as possible.

jhloa2 7y ago

That might be the case but individuals are still free to refuse to buy items from amazon. I know that they won’t fail anytime soon because of AWS but I absolutely refuse to buy any items from their store because 7/10 times it’s garbage. They might not fail but luckily there’s still good online alternatives

leetcrew 7y ago
> I absolutely refuse to buy any items from their store because 7/10 times it’s garbage. genuinely curious, what kinds of things do you order? I place 1-2 orders every month and I've never received anything that I suspected was counterfeit.
- colejohnson66 7y ago
  I place 5-20 orders a month and have never received counterfeit
  - Hypx 7y ago
    Are you sure? It's not like a counterfeit broadcasts itself as a counterfeit. Totally possible you've already bought a counterfeit.
  - foobiekr 7y ago
    I was the same way, and then one day, got a set of completely obvious counterfeit undersink water filters that had nothing in them.
  - wetpaws 7y ago
    This is usually called 'survivor bias'
- jhloa2 7y ago
  Maybe not counterfeits, but many of the listing are very poorly made. Most of the clothing I've bought through them (even supposed name brands) have fallen apart extremely quickly. Looking through my history: - a car battery maintainer that doens't really charge the battery - 2 puzzles that the pieces don't fit together and many of them broke. - a snowboard edge tuner that ended up breaking after about 5 uses. - an iphone charging cable that fell apart after about a year even though it claimed to be kevlar braided. - a spatula that must have been 24 gauge sheet metal stamped into a "spatula" shape. - some glass screen protectors for my iphone that don't fit. - an air filter for my car that doensn't fit the car it's listed for. - a wireless charger that the micro-usb port broke within 2 months. All of those were from 2018. Now that I look through my history I'll change the 7/10 to 5/10 but in my book that's sill absolutely unacceptable. I'm sure there's more diligence I can do to make sure that I only buy name brand products but Amazon has lost my trust.
  - weiming 7y ago
    Try to find the real manufacturer. If it's a no-name/no-brand seller from China, then you should know what to expect. Example: 1. Search for "car battery charger" 2. "Amazon's Choice" result is a brand called Ampeak 3. Google "Ampeak trademark" 4. Ahhhh, "AMPEAK is a trademark of SHENZHEN JIADING ECOMMERCE LTD." Exercise of trying to find any information about "Shenzhen Jiading Ecommerce LTD" left to the reader. Also: 1. Try to find a website for both the brand and the manufacturer. "Ampeak" does have a website but lacks company information. 2. Note if the listing is dominated by gushing 5-star reviews and 1-star "what the heck did I just buy" reviews, something you can observe in the Ampeak charger listing.
    - ar0 7y ago
      If this is really the only way to successfully shop at Amazon, I wonder why so many people are still doing that. It seems to me that it would be the role of the shop I am shopping at to perform this kind of due diligence and quality assurance.
      - baybal2 7y ago
- Spooky23 7y ago
  Some categories are worse than others. Bluetooth anything, cables, phone accessories are often fake. For awhile, iPhone accessories were either fake or grey market. I think that improved recently.
- jfaat 7y ago
  I recently got a counterfeit pair of socks.
  - blondin 7y ago
    you mean from a well known brand like nike, adidas, etc.? why not get it from their own website or app directly? sometimes it's even cheaper and the perks you get far out-weights what amazon has to offer.
    - jfaat 7y ago
      You basically never get free shipping on a pair of socks from a brand like Nike though, right? Usually you have to spend ~$50. These were ‘Darn Tough’, a more niche hiking/active brand. Amazon had the best price. I only found out they were counterfeit by doing some research when they got a hole way too soon, but just after the return window. I mended the hole and they’re serviceable for now. In the future, I’ll only buy these from either REI or direct from the manufacturer. Lesson learned. But yeah not your typical sock-buying situation, I’m way too big of a hipster for that ;)
      - selimthegrim 7y ago
        Darn Toughs are nice enough when I left a pair behind by mistake at my hostel after a Grand Canyon trip I prevailed upon the hostel to mail them back to me for $2 for their time + postage. Thanks for the heads up about Amazon.
      - smolder 7y ago
        I know someone who buys a LOT of shoes from them (though just for himself) and they just awarded him a free pair recently.
    - krick 7y ago
      That's a weird question. I mean, it may totally make sense to do what you are saying, but people tend to get used to shopping in one place, not even to mention that every sane wholesaler does everything in his power to make people used to that (relevant ads, promos, personalized discounts or bonus points, unobtrusive UI...) That's kinda the whole point of being a reseller.
- bluGill 7y ago
  I used to order seaweed snacks. The type of things I enjoy but is hard to find locally. I can't take the chance anymore, Amazon needs a perfect reputation before I'm willing to eat something from them.
ademup 7y ago
7/10 garbage??? Are you not receiving the items you ordered? Or are you ordering the lowest-priced items and expecting premium product? We have two couples living in our house and receive 5-15 Amazon packages a week and have never had a single "OMG this is counterfeit/fake/literal garbage" moment. And all of us LOVE to complain about any opportunity that has a sliver of a chance at a discount. Meanwhile, I have read numerous HN accounts of "OMG, Amazon is always sending me counterfeit/fake stuff" At this point, I'm honestly thinking there are troll(s) on HN bashing Amazon. Also, the returns are EASY, so... What gives? I hate that Amazon is TBTF and Bezos controls more resources than some Nations, but the facts for me are: Amazon delivers what I want very quickly at reasonable prices. They often have items that I literally cannot buy locally. I wish I could always support my local people, but often as not, Amazon does a better job with less friction. Seriously? 7\10?? You buy 10 widgets and (want to) return 7 of them? I'm just going to say this now: you are either pulling numbers out of your ass (on a technical-loving web site) or you are outright lying.
- threezero 7y ago
  Not the person you’re replying to, (and not a troll) but I just looked at my orders and I was at almost a 50% return/exchange rate for damaged/counterfeit/not-as-described items in the last year before I completely stopped ordering from Amazon. As someone who buys at least one item a day over the internet, that’s a lot of mistakes. At one point I talked to my local UPS shop doing one of my weekly mass Amazon return drop offs, and he said I wouldn’t believe how much of their business was amazon returns. On the other hand, I order a lot of items that I have a lot of knowledge about, so it’s not hard for me to spot a fake or find the damage almost immediately. However, I could see the average consumer just accepting an item without paying too much attention. Since then I’ve switched to specialty retailers, and Target and Walmart for everything else.
TheRealPomax 7y ago
That has literally nothing to do with Amazon, the company. If you don't buy products on Amazon.com you're still paying online companies who pay Amazon for using their web services. THAT'S what it means for Amazon to be too big to fail: the consumer does NOT have any power anymore. We passed that point. Simply by participating in society, some of your money will end up in Amazon's hands, because they own the infrastructure on which society now runs.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

not_a_cop75 7y ago

As long as they have 3-4 other solid competitors in each market they work, they haven't exactly won. And honestly, Amazon service is less than stellar at times, and most of the services people use them for amount to brokering the purchase or rental of a product. This sounds like a service model that in under 20 years will be completely unprofitable and replicated across all competition. Certainly they'll edge up somehow, but it's unclear how.

bradleyjg 7y ago

> no regulation exists (nor is likely to exist in the future) I wouldn't be so sure. It's true that they have a ton of money, but they also have a lot of exposure. Lobbying is most effective for companies that are obscure and their interests are adverse to either very few people or to everybody but only in a virtually unnoticeable way. Even very wealthy industries that are high profile and piss off everyone tend to eventually get regulated. See e.g. banks.

TheRealPomax 7y ago
It's not about them having a ton of money. Money on gets you so far. Amazon owns (part of) the infrastructure that modern connected society relies on. I look forward to it getting broken up once the old guard leaves politics and some better educated younger politicians swap in, but Amazon is offering good deals to too many people, except the people that work the warehouses for their distributed global shopping mall. Even if Amazon got legislated to treat all those folks right, hire 100% more people to cut shit times, and raise salaries by 100% for all warehouse workers, all that would do is slow down growth of a company that literally owns part of the internet we all rely on.

whyenot 7y ago

> Unlike banks, Amazon is now simply too big to fail. A generation ago, you could have said that about Microsoft. Somebody can indeed force them to "fix their shit" -- government. ...and they will. You can already see some ripples on the pond. Watch out, though, because the government can have a heavy hand and often the cure is worse than the disease.

awakeasleep 7y ago
In my opinion it's not that the government has a 'heavy hand' but that Amazon pumps enough money into the system to suborn any regulation that'll eventually occur. You can bet they already have drafts of laws that'll suit them just fine while making it impossible for smaller players to compete.
marcosdumay 7y ago
Well, wake me up when Microsoft get to fix their shit.
- vnorilo 7y ago
  You may not like MS products, but I think their capability to seek rent is much, much lower than the antitrust days. The story looks like the competition did it instead of regulation, but who knows if an undeterred, ruthless Microsoft would have fought back better and dirtier.
  - marcosdumay 7y ago
    > their capability to seek rent is much, much lower than the antitrust days Well, I do agree with that, with two large caveats: - their capability to seek rent is still enormous, they are still one of the most powerful companies in the world on that; - and I have no idea how much of that loss comes from government intervention and competition, instead of previous bad management.
- bluGill 7y ago
  Microsoft deserves a reputation for poor quality software, but they are at least 10x higher quality than just about everything else of similar complexity. Only software that can kill (medical and flight) is generally of higher quality.

jldugger 7y ago

Does this mean ebay fights counterfeits?

TheRealPomax 7y ago
Why would someone not liking coffee make you think that some very specific other person must therefore like coffee?

el_programmador 7y ago

In theory, they can't be a monopoly. What exactly is stopping anyone else from starting an online bookstore or a mart? In India, there is already Flipkart and Big Basket, just two large e-commerce companies among several others who are giving cut-throat competition to Amazon each day, are there no others in the US?

tomrod 7y ago

This is nonsense. Amazon moves in and takes over an industry due to both economies of scale and scope (i.e. shared services/costs). If they allow lower quality, niche or competing substitutes can exist. If they offer inferior products, people will substitute away to a better quality option. This is why Walmart is not the only retailer, and space for mid quality retailers like Target or grocery chains exist.

mcv 7y ago

Amazon is not too big too fail. We can easily do without it. Sure, Amazon disappearing would seriously shake up the market, but other platforms would appear, and local shops might get more business again. Please do let Amazon fail if they do not go out of their way to fix this as soon as possible.