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This happens because Amazon allows inventory commingling. For example Amazon has their own, legitimate inventory in a West Coast warehouse, and a third party se

This happens because Amazon allows inventory commingling. For example Amazon has their own, legitimate inventory in a West Coast warehouse, and a third party seller has the same inventory with the original UPC manufacturer bar code on it, sitting in an East Coast warehouse. Amazon considers this 1:1 inventory. Amazon will debit their inventory on the West Coast, and credit the inventory that belongs to the third party seller on the East Coast but they will send the inventory from the East Coast to the customer since it's closer to them. Now in theory this seems like a reasonable approach to deliver products to customers faster, the catch 22 is that third party vendors have clearly taken advantage of Amazon's complete lack of quality control. Third party sellers can sign up for a Seller Central account, and send in counterfeit products with fake bar codes because Amazon doesn't check at all. I could sit here and talk for hours about mess that is Seller Central. I've dabbled with Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA), and I would never recommend any company use AMZN for third party logistics.

lawkwok 7y ago
This is probably old news to seasoned Seller Central users, but I was surprised how easy it was to "take over" product pages from already existing products. Our sales figures definitely weren't high. I think it may have been related to how much stock we had for all the sizes of the product. Soon the product images and descriptions we provided became the canonical version and overrode whatever was there before. Even previous customer reviews from other sellers would continue to be shown on was what now basically our product page.
- ikeboy 7y ago
  Product reviews are meant to be of the product, so it shouldn't matter which seller it is if you're all selling the same product.
  - lkschubert8 7y ago
    But without Amazon doing their own QC there is no way to say it is the same product. You should at least be able to see reviews based on the supplier and pick the supplier you will be fulfilled by. But I suspect that would ruin their whole 2-day/1-day shipping bit.
    - ikeboy 7y ago
      They do QC: sellers that have too many complaints get kicked off.
      - noodlesUK 7y ago
        But you can’t identify which seller your product came from. That’s the whole problem here.
        shawnz 7y ago
        But when you return the defective product, Amazon can see what seller it came from.
        beerandt 7y ago
        Only if they only purchased one.
        4A414B56 7y ago
        Counterfeit products are still a huge problem on their platform. Great QC.
        MertsA 7y ago
        Are you sure about that? I thought part of the whole incentive for commingled inventory was that Amazon no longer kept track of it separately per vendor and just lumped it all into the same bin without a unique serial number.
        ikeboy 7y ago
        Am sure and posted the link elsewhere on this thread
      - nostoc 7y ago
        If they wait for complaints, that's not amazon doing the QC, it's the client.
  - wongarsu 7y ago
    If the product is a "Philips Boilermaster 3000" kettle then this is true (if we ignore counterfeits). But not all Amazon products work that way. The "t-shirt with eagle print" could be made by a number of companies with wildly varying quality, all fitting this product description. Similarly there are lots of 10m Cat 7 S/FTP lan cables.
    - ikeboy 7y ago
      If you buy a generic product with no brand name and no intellectual property, then all you have is the pictures. If they all look the same, they could technically be different quality but there's no reason to expect a certain level of quality without a brand name.
      - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
        You should expect to get the same product if you buy the same product, though, whatever the quality.
      - dx034 7y ago
        Reviews can still be important. If you have a lot of positive reviews and don't need a brand name, it could be worth the risk to save money. But you don't want to be the first to test out.
  - jhbadger 7y ago
    Even for non-counterfeit books, Amazon defines "product" too broadly -- reviews for a book tend to combine both the printed and Kindle versions and you'll see people complaining about the formatting of the Kindle version on the page for the printed copy.
    - ikeboy 7y ago
      That's a fair point, although people should read the reviews and can tell if it's content or formatting. The alternative of separating Kindle reviews seems wrong. Most reviews are useful to buyers of both formats.
    - TylerE 7y ago
      The one thing that really frustrates me is how poorly they curate editions. This is especially bad with translated works. Like - you're on the hardcopy version of a nice, modern translation, then you click over to the e-book version and it's some random bowlderdized public domain version from 150 years ago.
      - 4A414B56 7y ago
        This is a problem with everything being sold on amazon. I read reviews for a stamp (dates for ISO8601) and very few of the reviews are relevant to the product I was looking at. Almost none of them made sense for the product I was viewing, actually.
      - moultano 7y ago
        I was trying to buy a Grimm's Stories book for my kids and it was basically impossible. They had 5 different translations and selections of stories under the same entry.
  - bloak 7y ago
    Perhaps people who write product reviews should get into the habit of starting their review with a description of what they are reviewing, who they ordered it from, and how much they paid for it. That last bit of information is definitely very relevant if you're going to comment in your review on whether the product was good value for money. Perhaps also put the date in the review itself and state that you do not give permission for the review to be edited. Unfortunately, I think that some sites don't allow reviews to mention prices. Even if the T&Cs say you give up all your rights in the review you perhaps still have a right not to be misrepresented so they shouldn't edit your review if the review is still going to be attributed or attributable to you.
- billpollock 7y ago
  We've had a very similar experience. On more than one book our product pages were replaced with images from the counterfeit. In a certain way it was quite funny. Ultimately it was very frustrating
  - klyrs 7y ago
    This sounds very much like amazon is actively participating in conspiracy to mail fraud, across state lines. Have you called the FBI?
- bredren 7y ago
  Haven’t taken over images but have sold into oem equipment on ebike stuff before. It’s pretty cool because you get sales you can’t from an independent listing of the same product. When I’ve done it, it is legit the same thing and verify it, but I can easily see scale or greed causing people to do the wrong thing with this.
- manigandham 7y ago
  There seems to be a scam where product pages are sold off to host a completely different item. They usually have lots of 5 star reviews and high search rank but the reviews are all talking about something different than what's now being sold. I thought it was a bug at first but I've seen this too often. I don't understand how Amazon doesn't know this is happening, or why it even lets it happen in the first place. Product pages should be immutable.
  - emerongi 7y ago
    What they also do is that they sell a quality product for 1-2 years, get good reviews and then switch to inferior materials. Luckily the review system can catch this, as long as you look at recent reviews and the seller isn't buying any new reviews.
    - toxik 7y ago
      I find this happening everywhere. Loss leader, great product, next season the product cost the same and is now crap. Anecdote: in my country they sell Toppits brand cling film, and it used to be great. Now it’s absolutely useless! Doesn’t self adhere at all.
      - godarni 7y ago
        Not familiar with that brand of cling wrap, but they probably reformulated from PVDC to LDPE like Saran did due to toxicity concerns.
        behringer 7y ago
        I found some old Saran wrap when I moved in to a new place from like the 70s and that stuff was the bomb. Anyway, I ban brands that do this, and I never buy them again. Kingston and PNY, you've lost me forever. https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/184253-ssd-shadiness-kingston-and-pny-caught-bait-and-switching-cheaper-components-after-good-reviews https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/184253-ssd-shadiness-kin...
    - 7y ago
nextos 7y ago
This is sadly so true. I have stopped using Amazon after 15 years due to the unacceptably high rate of counterfeit, grey market or used items I got on a daily basis. It's totally insane. I have even emailed Jeff Bezos and got into the trouble of talking to all middle managers. They don't care.
- paulcole 7y ago
  How could you identify a grey market item? And what/how much were you ordering that this was a daily issue?
  - nextos 7y ago
    At some point I was using Amazon for almost all shopping. Obviously daily is an oxymoron, but it'd happen several times a month. I can identify grey market items easily. Buy an item in Amazon UK of product X and get version packed to be sold in Italy (with all labels in Italian) or Russian (with all labels in Russian), instead of the UK version. This is because some smart supplier is doing arbitrage.
    - Silhouette 7y ago
      I've noticed that a significant number of my recent TV/film purchases from Amazon UK looked new on the packaging but had some sort of mark on at least one of the discs, suggesting that something had been handled previously. This seems to be a clear trend over the past 1-2 years that I had never previously encountered. In some cases, it's been obvious enough that I've returned the product, though I also have lingering doubts about whether others with just a small mark might have been me when opening the packet but might have been something else. I already basically gave up buying anything important and/or fragile from Amazon and now avoid them for almost everything around holiday seasons. Far too many instances a few years ago of things like different sizes of items thrown into a box with obviously inadequate packaging, resulting in damaged electrical items, would-be Christmas presents turning up unfit to give as gifts, and so on. They're pretty good about accepting returns without quibbling much these days, but it's still a huge hassle when things go wrong so often and so avoidably. It's a shame, because for a while Amazon was a convenient alternative to bricks and mortar stores and carried a wider range of books and TV/film/music than any physical store. I'm glad I supported the better local stores now, and that some of them are still there so I can buy from them instead today.
mc32 7y ago
Can people who know they got a knock-off return the item for a legit copy? Don’t know if the counterfeit volume is high enough to force Amazon to care...
- ikeboy 7y ago
  Yes. Amazon cares enough to push for higher criminal penalties for counterfeiters (see https://www.aboutamazon.com/our-company/our-positions https://www.aboutamazon.com/our-company/our-positions)
  - dbcurtis 7y ago
    But they don't care enough to actually stop co-mingling stock, which would nearly eliminate the problem.
    - ikeboy 7y ago
      It wouldn't help significantly. People would still get counterfeits when buying from bad sellers.
      - msbarnett 7y ago
        What? That would help enormously. If they stopped commingling it would be easy to quickly identify and eliminate bad sellers. Consumers would also have the option of sticking to a known-good seller like Amazon and be able to trust that they weren’t going to get some comingled bullshit copy. That’s a pretty damn far cry from the current situation.
        ikeboy 7y ago
        Easy for who? Amazon knows which seller sent in the inventory for every order, so they know to punish the right seller when a complaint comes in. You are correct that customers could themselves choose better sellers, but most customers don't care and prefer cheaper over more reliable. That effect is not enough to help "enormously".
beerandt 7y ago
This is why, IMHO, Walmart will eventually win this aspect of the online shopping war. Supply chain control. Amazon may continue to dominate AWS and even the 3rd party marketplace, but they've already ruined their brand reputation as a supplier. Edit: Sold and shipped 3rd party marketplace may survive.
- toast0 7y ago
  Unfortunately, Walmart has integrated a 3rd party marketplace onto their site too; so who knows when they will start fulfilled by Walmart and comingling. There's also persistent stories of Walmart demanding lower priced items and being ok with the lower quality, not always with different UPCs.
  - nordsieck 7y ago
    > so who knows when they will start fulfilled by Walmart and comingling. Fulfillment is just fine (indeed - beneficial to small businesses) as long as there is no inventory co-mingling.
  - beerandt 7y ago
    The funny thing about Walmart 3rd party, is it always seems to be drop shipped by a competitor, and comes in a clearly branded box. I've gotten boxes from Newegg, Target, Wayfair, and even Sam's Club. Still a better option than Amazon (for now, at least).
    - Scoundreller 7y ago
      Arbitrage at its finest!
    - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
      I opened a Wal-Mart account for a product that was "reserved for Prime" and I couldn't buy from Amazon. It came from the same third party supplier.
    - DiabloD3 7y ago
billpollock 7y ago
Unfortunately this case may be a bit different. When you order this book by pressing just the Buy button, as in shipped and sold by Amazon, you get the counterfeit. I know because I ordered two copies last week. Both came and both were counterfeit.
- zkms 7y ago
  > When you order this book by pressing just the Buy button, as in shipped and sold by Amazon, you get the counterfeit. i think most items that are "sold and shipped by amazon" are commingled as well.
- perspective1 7y ago
  I think you're thinking Amazon separates its own SKUs from third party SKUs. That's not the case, it's all comingled.
  - beerandt 7y ago
    The only way to be somewhat sure, is to find a 3rd party seller who doesn't use Fulfilled by Amazon. Amazon has managed to completely invert the original hierarchy of seller trust.
- jcrawfordor 7y ago
  Do we know that Amazon doesn't comingle their "sold by amazon" stock with FBA third-party sellers? I can't see anywhere that they say they don't on some research, and it would seem to be an obvious thing to do.
  - nebulous1 7y ago
    I found this: https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/12/13/how-to-protect-your-family-from-dangerous-fakes-on-amazon-this-holiday-season/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/12/13/how-to-p... Which says they do commingle their "sold by Amazon" stock with their FBA stock. I'm actually pretty surprised, I had no idea this was the case.
stephencanon 7y ago
Certainly makes for a convenient excuse for Amazon.
- GetOutOfBed 7y ago
  I don't see how it's an excuse. I don't care how they handle their processes internally. If they sell me counterfeit items I will report them to the police.
mcv 7y ago
It might be the result of a clever trick by Amazon, but it makes Amazon directly responsible for selling fakes. Even without this, Amazon should be taking more responsibility to fight counterfeit products, but with this, they're making themselves directly responsible, and I don't see how they're not criminally liable now. Instead of hoping for Amazon to make this slightly less bad, I think legal action is called for at this point.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > I don't see how they're not criminally liable now. Amazon's protection against state action has always been that it offers a good enough return experience that people will turn to it rather than public authorities with problems. It's not a legal shield so much as a practical one, though.
  - RugnirViking 7y ago
    What is a "good enough" return experience? When I've tried to use it, I have to pay money and my own time to organise and ship things back to them. I only get that money back if they decide I was right to return the item. I can only return the item in a very short window after it is purchased. People seem to talk about amazon as if it has some unprecedented customer service and that is why it's so successful. But this is the bare minimum for pretty much any shop. Is it different in America?
    - dwild 7y ago
      > What is a "good enough" return experience? When I've tried to use it, I have to pay money and my own time to organise and ship things back to them. I only get that money back if they decide I was right to return the item. I can only return the item in a very short window after it is purchased. I feel like you didn't returns something with Amazon, but a third party seller instead. Amazon will ship you the replacement as soon as you confirm and give you a return shipping label to print and stick on the package, which you can bring to your local post office. The process is quite painless. > I can only return the item in a very short window after it is purchased. Their return windows is 30 days for most stuff, which is good enough.
philjohn 7y ago
Indeed - and there have been cases of dangerous goods being shipped, e.g. counterfeit chargers. I've stopped buying things from Amazon and instead gone back to using bricks and mortar stores with online presences and do click and collect, there's just too much crap to sift through these days.
- sithadmin 7y ago
  I've found that (at least when it comes to lower-end electronics) even brick and mortars appear to have supply chain problems that allow counterfeit items into stores en masse. In the USA, I've encountered things like counterfeit Microsoft mice at Microcenter, and counterfeit Audio Technica earbuds at Fry's Electronics (both confirmed as fakes by the manufacturer). I'm starting to suspect there are other cases of this that I simply haven't noticed.
  - philjohn 7y ago
    I wonder if this differs at all between the EU and the US?

lawkwok 7y ago

This is probably old news to seasoned Seller Central users, but I was surprised how easy it was to "take over" product pages from already existing products. Our sales figures definitely weren't high. I think it may have been related to how much stock we had for all the sizes of the product. Soon the product images and descriptions we provided became the canonical version and overrode whatever was there before. Even previous customer reviews from other sellers would continue to be shown on was what now basically our product page.

ikeboy 7y ago
Product reviews are meant to be of the product, so it shouldn't matter which seller it is if you're all selling the same product.
- lkschubert8 7y ago
  But without Amazon doing their own QC there is no way to say it is the same product. You should at least be able to see reviews based on the supplier and pick the supplier you will be fulfilled by. But I suspect that would ruin their whole 2-day/1-day shipping bit.
  - ikeboy 7y ago
    They do QC: sellers that have too many complaints get kicked off.
    - noodlesUK 7y ago
      But you can’t identify which seller your product came from. That’s the whole problem here.
      - shawnz 7y ago
        But when you return the defective product, Amazon can see what seller it came from.
        beerandt 7y ago
        Only if they only purchased one.
        4A414B56 7y ago
        Counterfeit products are still a huge problem on their platform. Great QC.
        MertsA 7y ago
        Are you sure about that? I thought part of the whole incentive for commingled inventory was that Amazon no longer kept track of it separately per vendor and just lumped it all into the same bin without a unique serial number.
        ikeboy 7y ago
        Am sure and posted the link elsewhere on this thread
    - nostoc 7y ago
      If they wait for complaints, that's not amazon doing the QC, it's the client.
- wongarsu 7y ago
  If the product is a "Philips Boilermaster 3000" kettle then this is true (if we ignore counterfeits). But not all Amazon products work that way. The "t-shirt with eagle print" could be made by a number of companies with wildly varying quality, all fitting this product description. Similarly there are lots of 10m Cat 7 S/FTP lan cables.
  - ikeboy 7y ago
    If you buy a generic product with no brand name and no intellectual property, then all you have is the pictures. If they all look the same, they could technically be different quality but there's no reason to expect a certain level of quality without a brand name.
    - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
      You should expect to get the same product if you buy the same product, though, whatever the quality.
    - dx034 7y ago
      Reviews can still be important. If you have a lot of positive reviews and don't need a brand name, it could be worth the risk to save money. But you don't want to be the first to test out.
- jhbadger 7y ago
  Even for non-counterfeit books, Amazon defines "product" too broadly -- reviews for a book tend to combine both the printed and Kindle versions and you'll see people complaining about the formatting of the Kindle version on the page for the printed copy.
  - ikeboy 7y ago
    That's a fair point, although people should read the reviews and can tell if it's content or formatting. The alternative of separating Kindle reviews seems wrong. Most reviews are useful to buyers of both formats.
  - TylerE 7y ago
    The one thing that really frustrates me is how poorly they curate editions. This is especially bad with translated works. Like - you're on the hardcopy version of a nice, modern translation, then you click over to the e-book version and it's some random bowlderdized public domain version from 150 years ago.
    - 4A414B56 7y ago
      This is a problem with everything being sold on amazon. I read reviews for a stamp (dates for ISO8601) and very few of the reviews are relevant to the product I was looking at. Almost none of them made sense for the product I was viewing, actually.
    - moultano 7y ago
      I was trying to buy a Grimm's Stories book for my kids and it was basically impossible. They had 5 different translations and selections of stories under the same entry.
- bloak 7y ago
  Perhaps people who write product reviews should get into the habit of starting their review with a description of what they are reviewing, who they ordered it from, and how much they paid for it. That last bit of information is definitely very relevant if you're going to comment in your review on whether the product was good value for money. Perhaps also put the date in the review itself and state that you do not give permission for the review to be edited. Unfortunately, I think that some sites don't allow reviews to mention prices. Even if the T&Cs say you give up all your rights in the review you perhaps still have a right not to be misrepresented so they shouldn't edit your review if the review is still going to be attributed or attributable to you.
billpollock 7y ago
We've had a very similar experience. On more than one book our product pages were replaced with images from the counterfeit. In a certain way it was quite funny. Ultimately it was very frustrating
- klyrs 7y ago
  This sounds very much like amazon is actively participating in conspiracy to mail fraud, across state lines. Have you called the FBI?
bredren 7y ago
Haven’t taken over images but have sold into oem equipment on ebike stuff before. It’s pretty cool because you get sales you can’t from an independent listing of the same product. When I’ve done it, it is legit the same thing and verify it, but I can easily see scale or greed causing people to do the wrong thing with this.
manigandham 7y ago
There seems to be a scam where product pages are sold off to host a completely different item. They usually have lots of 5 star reviews and high search rank but the reviews are all talking about something different than what's now being sold. I thought it was a bug at first but I've seen this too often. I don't understand how Amazon doesn't know this is happening, or why it even lets it happen in the first place. Product pages should be immutable.
- emerongi 7y ago
  What they also do is that they sell a quality product for 1-2 years, get good reviews and then switch to inferior materials. Luckily the review system can catch this, as long as you look at recent reviews and the seller isn't buying any new reviews.
  - toxik 7y ago
    I find this happening everywhere. Loss leader, great product, next season the product cost the same and is now crap. Anecdote: in my country they sell Toppits brand cling film, and it used to be great. Now it’s absolutely useless! Doesn’t self adhere at all.
    - godarni 7y ago
      Not familiar with that brand of cling wrap, but they probably reformulated from PVDC to LDPE like Saran did due to toxicity concerns.
      - behringer 7y ago
        I found some old Saran wrap when I moved in to a new place from like the 70s and that stuff was the bomb. Anyway, I ban brands that do this, and I never buy them again. Kingston and PNY, you've lost me forever. https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/184253-ssd-shadiness-kingston-and-pny-caught-bait-and-switching-cheaper-components-after-good-reviews https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/184253-ssd-shadiness-kin...
  - 7y ago

nextos 7y ago

This is sadly so true. I have stopped using Amazon after 15 years due to the unacceptably high rate of counterfeit, grey market or used items I got on a daily basis. It's totally insane. I have even emailed Jeff Bezos and got into the trouble of talking to all middle managers. They don't care.

paulcole 7y ago
How could you identify a grey market item? And what/how much were you ordering that this was a daily issue?
- nextos 7y ago
  At some point I was using Amazon for almost all shopping. Obviously daily is an oxymoron, but it'd happen several times a month. I can identify grey market items easily. Buy an item in Amazon UK of product X and get version packed to be sold in Italy (with all labels in Italian) or Russian (with all labels in Russian), instead of the UK version. This is because some smart supplier is doing arbitrage.
  - Silhouette 7y ago
    I've noticed that a significant number of my recent TV/film purchases from Amazon UK looked new on the packaging but had some sort of mark on at least one of the discs, suggesting that something had been handled previously. This seems to be a clear trend over the past 1-2 years that I had never previously encountered. In some cases, it's been obvious enough that I've returned the product, though I also have lingering doubts about whether others with just a small mark might have been me when opening the packet but might have been something else. I already basically gave up buying anything important and/or fragile from Amazon and now avoid them for almost everything around holiday seasons. Far too many instances a few years ago of things like different sizes of items thrown into a box with obviously inadequate packaging, resulting in damaged electrical items, would-be Christmas presents turning up unfit to give as gifts, and so on. They're pretty good about accepting returns without quibbling much these days, but it's still a huge hassle when things go wrong so often and so avoidably. It's a shame, because for a while Amazon was a convenient alternative to bricks and mortar stores and carried a wider range of books and TV/film/music than any physical store. I'm glad I supported the better local stores now, and that some of them are still there so I can buy from them instead today.

mc32 7y ago

Can people who know they got a knock-off return the item for a legit copy? Don’t know if the counterfeit volume is high enough to force Amazon to care...

ikeboy 7y ago
Yes. Amazon cares enough to push for higher criminal penalties for counterfeiters (see https://www.aboutamazon.com/our-company/our-positions https://www.aboutamazon.com/our-company/our-positions)
- dbcurtis 7y ago
  But they don't care enough to actually stop co-mingling stock, which would nearly eliminate the problem.
  - ikeboy 7y ago
    It wouldn't help significantly. People would still get counterfeits when buying from bad sellers.
    - msbarnett 7y ago
      What? That would help enormously. If they stopped commingling it would be easy to quickly identify and eliminate bad sellers. Consumers would also have the option of sticking to a known-good seller like Amazon and be able to trust that they weren’t going to get some comingled bullshit copy. That’s a pretty damn far cry from the current situation.
      - ikeboy 7y ago
        Easy for who? Amazon knows which seller sent in the inventory for every order, so they know to punish the right seller when a complaint comes in. You are correct that customers could themselves choose better sellers, but most customers don't care and prefer cheaper over more reliable. That effect is not enough to help "enormously".

beerandt 7y ago

This is why, IMHO, Walmart will eventually win this aspect of the online shopping war. Supply chain control. Amazon may continue to dominate AWS and even the 3rd party marketplace, but they've already ruined their brand reputation as a supplier. Edit: Sold and shipped 3rd party marketplace may survive.

toast0 7y ago
Unfortunately, Walmart has integrated a 3rd party marketplace onto their site too; so who knows when they will start fulfilled by Walmart and comingling. There's also persistent stories of Walmart demanding lower priced items and being ok with the lower quality, not always with different UPCs.
- nordsieck 7y ago
  > so who knows when they will start fulfilled by Walmart and comingling. Fulfillment is just fine (indeed - beneficial to small businesses) as long as there is no inventory co-mingling.
- beerandt 7y ago
  The funny thing about Walmart 3rd party, is it always seems to be drop shipped by a competitor, and comes in a clearly branded box. I've gotten boxes from Newegg, Target, Wayfair, and even Sam's Club. Still a better option than Amazon (for now, at least).
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    Arbitrage at its finest!
  - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
    I opened a Wal-Mart account for a product that was "reserved for Prime" and I couldn't buy from Amazon. It came from the same third party supplier.
  - DiabloD3 7y ago

billpollock 7y ago

Unfortunately this case may be a bit different. When you order this book by pressing just the Buy button, as in shipped and sold by Amazon, you get the counterfeit. I know because I ordered two copies last week. Both came and both were counterfeit.

zkms 7y ago
> When you order this book by pressing just the Buy button, as in shipped and sold by Amazon, you get the counterfeit. i think most items that are "sold and shipped by amazon" are commingled as well.
perspective1 7y ago
I think you're thinking Amazon separates its own SKUs from third party SKUs. That's not the case, it's all comingled.
- beerandt 7y ago
  The only way to be somewhat sure, is to find a 3rd party seller who doesn't use Fulfilled by Amazon. Amazon has managed to completely invert the original hierarchy of seller trust.
jcrawfordor 7y ago
Do we know that Amazon doesn't comingle their "sold by amazon" stock with FBA third-party sellers? I can't see anywhere that they say they don't on some research, and it would seem to be an obvious thing to do.
- nebulous1 7y ago
  I found this: https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/12/13/how-to-protect-your-family-from-dangerous-fakes-on-amazon-this-holiday-season/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/12/13/how-to-p... Which says they do commingle their "sold by Amazon" stock with their FBA stock. I'm actually pretty surprised, I had no idea this was the case.

stephencanon 7y ago

Certainly makes for a convenient excuse for Amazon.

GetOutOfBed 7y ago
I don't see how it's an excuse. I don't care how they handle their processes internally. If they sell me counterfeit items I will report them to the police.

mcv 7y ago

It might be the result of a clever trick by Amazon, but it makes Amazon directly responsible for selling fakes. Even without this, Amazon should be taking more responsibility to fight counterfeit products, but with this, they're making themselves directly responsible, and I don't see how they're not criminally liable now. Instead of hoping for Amazon to make this slightly less bad, I think legal action is called for at this point.

dragonwriter 7y ago
> I don't see how they're not criminally liable now. Amazon's protection against state action has always been that it offers a good enough return experience that people will turn to it rather than public authorities with problems. It's not a legal shield so much as a practical one, though.
- RugnirViking 7y ago
  What is a "good enough" return experience? When I've tried to use it, I have to pay money and my own time to organise and ship things back to them. I only get that money back if they decide I was right to return the item. I can only return the item in a very short window after it is purchased. People seem to talk about amazon as if it has some unprecedented customer service and that is why it's so successful. But this is the bare minimum for pretty much any shop. Is it different in America?
  - dwild 7y ago
    > What is a "good enough" return experience? When I've tried to use it, I have to pay money and my own time to organise and ship things back to them. I only get that money back if they decide I was right to return the item. I can only return the item in a very short window after it is purchased. I feel like you didn't returns something with Amazon, but a third party seller instead. Amazon will ship you the replacement as soon as you confirm and give you a return shipping label to print and stick on the package, which you can bring to your local post office. The process is quite painless. > I can only return the item in a very short window after it is purchased. Their return windows is 30 days for most stuff, which is good enough.

philjohn 7y ago

Indeed - and there have been cases of dangerous goods being shipped, e.g. counterfeit chargers. I've stopped buying things from Amazon and instead gone back to using bricks and mortar stores with online presences and do click and collect, there's just too much crap to sift through these days.

sithadmin 7y ago
I've found that (at least when it comes to lower-end electronics) even brick and mortars appear to have supply chain problems that allow counterfeit items into stores en masse. In the USA, I've encountered things like counterfeit Microsoft mice at Microcenter, and counterfeit Audio Technica earbuds at Fry's Electronics (both confirmed as fakes by the manufacturer). I'm starting to suspect there are other cases of this that I simply haven't noticed.
- philjohn 7y ago
  I wonder if this differs at all between the EU and the US?