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Let's be real. Under no circumstance should you be ingesting anything you buy on Amazon. It's going to take a baby formula scandal like what happened in China

Let's be real. Under no circumstance should you be ingesting anything you buy on Amazon. It's going to take a baby formula scandal like what happened in China before the general public wakes up the problem.

anon1m0us 7y ago
Are you all for real about this? I buy coffee, soylent, various hard to find canned goods, and other things all the time off Amazon.
- walrus01 7y ago
  If you actually eat Soylent you're in like the 0.0001th percentile of Amazon shoppers.
  - wil421 7y ago
    Downvote walrus01 all you want but I’ve never met a person in real life who eats Soylent. If it weren’t for HN or Reddit I’ve never even know it existed.
    - OatMilkLatte 7y ago
      I have. He was ... a person of generally questionable life choices. Great developer and a true pleasure to work with though.
      - notduncansmith 7y ago
        As a formerly-Soylent-drinking engineer of questionable life choices, I hope there’s a causal relationship behind that correlation :)
    - rootusrootus 7y ago
      They must exist. I can buy Soylent off the shelf at my local Fred Meyer (Kroger for people who don't have Fred Meyer in their area). They are pretty aggressive about dropping products that don't sell in sufficient quantity.
- gumby 7y ago
  Look at how they mix stock under the same SKU and see if you’re still confident perhaps that Peet’s coffee came from Peet’s or perhaps a third party seller used counterfeit — Amazon’s will put hem into the same punnet and pull out one where it’s from amazon or “fulfilled by amazon”. Right now I’ve only seen it in electronics but I don’t buy much food that way. Amazon fresh is a different thing (all sourced / sold by amazon) so probably not a problem. Likewise oddball stuff (a low volume brand of tea) is unlikely to be worth counterfeiting. But mass market goods definitely are and the baby food example, while not amazon, is an excellent cautionary tale.
  - zifnab06 7y ago
    I gave up on Amazon once I wasn't able to buy the replaceable toothbrush heads for my electric toothbrush. Try ordering the name brand oral-b ones and see what shows up (in my case, cheap Chinese knockoffs that lasted about a week instead of however many weeks they're supposed to). I honestly miss being able to go to a unique store to buy things - that way you could look at what you were actually buying and (maybe!) find something better for what you're trying to do.
sjg007 7y ago
Amazon has their Essentials brand for vitamins which is apparently legit. I think brand name foods and drinks are probably OK since they are hard to counterfeit and if you did get a counterfeit I am sure the brand would be very interested in Amazon's role in it. Vitamins though and any kind of spice should be suspect... I think this is why they started Essentials. Costco also does product quality tests so buying stuff there should be ok. I'd be interested in lead testing Tumeric from Costco, Amazon, Whole foods etc... that's been a big thing recently. We also know Kona coffee is not legit for instance even at Costco.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  If there are problems with counterfeit Apple chargers, why wouldn't there be problems with "brand name" foods? Maybe things with very distinctive tastes (Doritos, Coke, etc) you might have a point but outside that it's largely packaging.
  - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
    When you get counterfeit electronics, you can usually tell right away. The packaging is off, misprinted, often has a Chinese name in small print on it somewhere. The product looks fine from a distance but up close, the mold alignment is off, it's too light, it feels cheap. More often than not you roll your eyes and use it anyway, because most of the time it works well enough, for a while at least. Branded food is a lot less likely to get a pass on any of those. We have a strong sense of what it's supposed to look like, smell like, taste like, feel like; we might put up with less from a clearly marked store-brand copy, but a name brand that doesn't taste like it should sets off alarm bells. And exactly reproducing a commercial food product is hard.
    - smachiz 7y ago
      That's very much not true. I've received many fake items - where if I didn't already own the product AND box and could compare side by side, I'd never know. Even then, until it doesn't work right, you wouldn't know. There are some _very_ good looking counterfeits on amazon.
techntoke 7y ago
Amazon sells lots of food items that are sold by Amazon.com. You have to use discretion, but there is nothing wrong with buying multi-vitamins, probiotics and supplements on Amazon. However, it is probably a good idea to not buy them from a third-party seller.
- detaro 7y ago
  On the front page right now: Amazon shipping counterfeit books as "sold by Amazon.com": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21243420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21243420
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > Amazon sells lots of food items that are sold by Amazon.com. “Sold by Amazon.com” is not safe, because of potential commingling with stock identified as the same SKU from Fulfilled by Amazon sellers. If you know of a reliable non-FBA third-party seller, that's the safest thing
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    At least in its SoCal warehouses, Amazon does not commingle its own inventory with FBA sellers for product liability reasons. It maintains separate internal warehousing SKUs for FBA inventory stockpiles.
    - colechristensen 7y ago
      Do you have sources for this?
      - gamblor956 7y ago
        Third party? No, but Amazon used to be a client so I got to see them firsthand.
- 80mph 7y ago
  Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-fake-supplements/ https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-fake-supplements/
nickpsecurity 7y ago
Supporting the counterfeiting point, this just hit the front page as well: https://twitter.com/nostarch/status/1183095004258099202 https://twitter.com/nostarch/status/1183095004258099202

anon1m0us 7y ago

Are you all for real about this? I buy coffee, soylent, various hard to find canned goods, and other things all the time off Amazon.

walrus01 7y ago
If you actually eat Soylent you're in like the 0.0001th percentile of Amazon shoppers.
- wil421 7y ago
  Downvote walrus01 all you want but I’ve never met a person in real life who eats Soylent. If it weren’t for HN or Reddit I’ve never even know it existed.
  - OatMilkLatte 7y ago
    I have. He was ... a person of generally questionable life choices. Great developer and a true pleasure to work with though.
    - notduncansmith 7y ago
      As a formerly-Soylent-drinking engineer of questionable life choices, I hope there’s a causal relationship behind that correlation :)
  - rootusrootus 7y ago
    They must exist. I can buy Soylent off the shelf at my local Fred Meyer (Kroger for people who don't have Fred Meyer in their area). They are pretty aggressive about dropping products that don't sell in sufficient quantity.
gumby 7y ago
Look at how they mix stock under the same SKU and see if you’re still confident perhaps that Peet’s coffee came from Peet’s or perhaps a third party seller used counterfeit — Amazon’s will put hem into the same punnet and pull out one where it’s from amazon or “fulfilled by amazon”. Right now I’ve only seen it in electronics but I don’t buy much food that way. Amazon fresh is a different thing (all sourced / sold by amazon) so probably not a problem. Likewise oddball stuff (a low volume brand of tea) is unlikely to be worth counterfeiting. But mass market goods definitely are and the baby food example, while not amazon, is an excellent cautionary tale.
- zifnab06 7y ago
  I gave up on Amazon once I wasn't able to buy the replaceable toothbrush heads for my electric toothbrush. Try ordering the name brand oral-b ones and see what shows up (in my case, cheap Chinese knockoffs that lasted about a week instead of however many weeks they're supposed to). I honestly miss being able to go to a unique store to buy things - that way you could look at what you were actually buying and (maybe!) find something better for what you're trying to do.

sjg007 7y ago

Amazon has their Essentials brand for vitamins which is apparently legit. I think brand name foods and drinks are probably OK since they are hard to counterfeit and if you did get a counterfeit I am sure the brand would be very interested in Amazon's role in it. Vitamins though and any kind of spice should be suspect... I think this is why they started Essentials. Costco also does product quality tests so buying stuff there should be ok. I'd be interested in lead testing Tumeric from Costco, Amazon, Whole foods etc... that's been a big thing recently. We also know Kona coffee is not legit for instance even at Costco.

colechristensen 7y ago
If there are problems with counterfeit Apple chargers, why wouldn't there be problems with "brand name" foods? Maybe things with very distinctive tastes (Doritos, Coke, etc) you might have a point but outside that it's largely packaging.
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago
  When you get counterfeit electronics, you can usually tell right away. The packaging is off, misprinted, often has a Chinese name in small print on it somewhere. The product looks fine from a distance but up close, the mold alignment is off, it's too light, it feels cheap. More often than not you roll your eyes and use it anyway, because most of the time it works well enough, for a while at least. Branded food is a lot less likely to get a pass on any of those. We have a strong sense of what it's supposed to look like, smell like, taste like, feel like; we might put up with less from a clearly marked store-brand copy, but a name brand that doesn't taste like it should sets off alarm bells. And exactly reproducing a commercial food product is hard.
  - smachiz 7y ago
    That's very much not true. I've received many fake items - where if I didn't already own the product AND box and could compare side by side, I'd never know. Even then, until it doesn't work right, you wouldn't know. There are some _very_ good looking counterfeits on amazon.

techntoke 7y ago

Amazon sells lots of food items that are sold by Amazon.com. You have to use discretion, but there is nothing wrong with buying multi-vitamins, probiotics and supplements on Amazon. However, it is probably a good idea to not buy them from a third-party seller.

detaro 7y ago
On the front page right now: Amazon shipping counterfeit books as "sold by Amazon.com": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21243420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21243420
dragonwriter 7y ago
> Amazon sells lots of food items that are sold by Amazon.com. “Sold by Amazon.com” is not safe, because of potential commingling with stock identified as the same SKU from Fulfilled by Amazon sellers. If you know of a reliable non-FBA third-party seller, that's the safest thing
- gamblor956 7y ago
  At least in its SoCal warehouses, Amazon does not commingle its own inventory with FBA sellers for product liability reasons. It maintains separate internal warehousing SKUs for FBA inventory stockpiles.
  - colechristensen 7y ago
    Do you have sources for this?
    - gamblor956 7y ago
      Third party? No, but Amazon used to be a client so I got to see them firsthand.
80mph 7y ago
Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-fake-supplements/ https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-fake-supplements/

nickpsecurity 7y ago

Supporting the counterfeiting point, this just hit the front page as well: https://twitter.com/nostarch/status/1183095004258099202 https://twitter.com/nostarch/status/1183095004258099202