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The article talks about fake Hermes bracelets being sold for $25, when a real one is closer to $600. It's obviously a counterfeit. Does Amazon not have any requ

The article talks about fake Hermes bracelets being sold for $25, when a real one is closer to $600. It's obviously a counterfeit. Does Amazon not have any requirement for a human to review a listing before allowing it up for sale?

tyingq 7y ago
I don't think there's even a reliable exception process to review items/sellers with lots of bad reviews. You would have to have that working first.
- jschwartzi 7y ago
  The problem here is that Amazon wants an automated process, which is fundamentally incompatible with how sales works. You can't reliably go through and identify all of the products you sell by trademark and verify that the pricing is within a certain reasonable percentage of the seller's price or MSRP. And if there's no posted MSRP you're stuck assessing the market price based on how much others have paid for the same piece. This isn't a process you can automate. And Amazon is so deeply a software company that they can't conceive of a way to do this without using software.
  - tyingq 7y ago
    I'm not convinced they have automated processes for simple stuff like "> 500 sold AND > 50% returned"
    - binarysolo 7y ago
      They do. 4% triggers an automated-ish warning and 10% triggers a serious notification which usually gets scrutinized by some Amazon member -- this happens inconsistently on low volume long tail items too which cause sellers massive ammounts of grief (example: we sell a bath robe from XXXS-XXXL and sold tens of thousands of units, but 5 XXXS items of which 2 were returned and labeled as "not as described" (which puts the return cost on us instead of the consumer), this triggers a Performance Notification and suddenly our entire account - 40M in sales in 5k SKUs is now at risk of shutting down. It's weird that it happens very inconsistently; we've also had store accounts which have 20% return rate on 1000s of items (pallet got damaged somewhere along shipping and crushed 20% of product) and just get an automated notice and no followup. source: Amazon seller
throwaway35784 7y ago
And they are both worthless pieces of jewelry. Who really cares about fake fake stuff? Some counterfeit stuff causes real harm though. Counterfeit electronics can catch on fire. Food could poison you.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 7y ago
  And lead contaminated toys could give children lead poisoning, developmental delays, etc. I'm just waiting for Amazon to get sued for their reckless endangerment.
- chadash 7y ago
  I'm not particularly upset about fake luxury goods either. My point is more that if you can't stop things that an average person can tell you are obvious fakes, them how much worse are you going to be at spotting the fakes on categories where it matters more?

tyingq 7y ago

I don't think there's even a reliable exception process to review items/sellers with lots of bad reviews. You would have to have that working first.

jschwartzi 7y ago
The problem here is that Amazon wants an automated process, which is fundamentally incompatible with how sales works. You can't reliably go through and identify all of the products you sell by trademark and verify that the pricing is within a certain reasonable percentage of the seller's price or MSRP. And if there's no posted MSRP you're stuck assessing the market price based on how much others have paid for the same piece. This isn't a process you can automate. And Amazon is so deeply a software company that they can't conceive of a way to do this without using software.
- tyingq 7y ago
  I'm not convinced they have automated processes for simple stuff like "> 500 sold AND > 50% returned"
  - binarysolo 7y ago
    They do. 4% triggers an automated-ish warning and 10% triggers a serious notification which usually gets scrutinized by some Amazon member -- this happens inconsistently on low volume long tail items too which cause sellers massive ammounts of grief (example: we sell a bath robe from XXXS-XXXL and sold tens of thousands of units, but 5 XXXS items of which 2 were returned and labeled as "not as described" (which puts the return cost on us instead of the consumer), this triggers a Performance Notification and suddenly our entire account - 40M in sales in 5k SKUs is now at risk of shutting down. It's weird that it happens very inconsistently; we've also had store accounts which have 20% return rate on 1000s of items (pallet got damaged somewhere along shipping and crushed 20% of product) and just get an automated notice and no followup. source: Amazon seller

throwaway35784 7y ago

And they are both worthless pieces of jewelry. Who really cares about fake fake stuff? Some counterfeit stuff causes real harm though. Counterfeit electronics can catch on fire. Food could poison you.

Red_Leaves_Flyy 7y ago
And lead contaminated toys could give children lead poisoning, developmental delays, etc. I'm just waiting for Amazon to get sued for their reckless endangerment.
chadash 7y ago
I'm not particularly upset about fake luxury goods either. My point is more that if you can't stop things that an average person can tell you are obvious fakes, them how much worse are you going to be at spotting the fakes on categories where it matters more?