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I wonder if this is an oversight by Amazon on failing to scale its anti-counterfeit measures. Maybe they didn't appropriately evaluate how large the issue would
by Jaygles 7y ago
I wonder if this is an oversight by Amazon on failing to scale its anti-counterfeit measures. Maybe they didn't appropriately evaluate how large the issue would become and they're stuck with trying to amend a system that wasn't designed to combat the issue at the scale they are operating at.
I'm interested in what sort of solution will eventually be effective at stopping this. Hopefully for Amazon it won't be inspecting every single item that passes through its doors.
- viburnum 7y agoThey know what they’re doing and don’t care because it’s working.
- Jaygles 7y agoI think the viewpoint that Amazon doesn't care is too cynical. They probably do care but are stuck with the issue of looking at effective counter measures that are too expensive to consider. What is more realistic is that they are just stumped at this point.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoIf they cared, they would let you filter for items only sold by Amazon.com and not commingle inventory. What they really want is for others to take all the inventory risk and liability and take a 15% cut of all purchases. They used to let you filter for items sold by Amazon.com, but they removed it, so I think that clearly proves their goal of being a platform rather than a retailer one can rely on for quality goods, as presumably the former has nice profit margins whereas the latter is famous for barely having profit margins.
- occamrazor 7y agoI can still filter by vendor, at least on the European websites.
- dman 7y agoDoes not mean anything because of commingling. If you have 500 merchants selling the same item you have no way to control whose inventory you get things from. No filtering by merchant doesnt help, I wish it did. As a result I have mostly stopped buying from Amazon after running into a few obvious fakes.
- BeetleB 7y ago> I can still filter by vendor, at least on the European websites. At least in the US, Amazon comingles new products unless the seller requests them not to. So if you buy something shipped and sold by Amazon.com, you may be getting the one vendor ABC had shipped to Amazon's warehouses. Agree with GP. If they cared, they wouldn't comingle. Comingling saves Amazon money, though, as they don't have to track whose goods are in which warehouses.
- didibus 7y agoIt doesn't. Even when commingling, they individually track each good. The only advantage is that comingling is faster and cheaper deliveries, because they can just and you the item nearest to your house.
- toast0 7y agoMost goods aren't individually tracked. If I send three, and you send four of some ASIN to some distribution center, and it is a comingled SKU, to all indications, all seven items are in one bin, and can't be distinguished afterward. Having one bin instead of two saves space (and therefore cost) in the distribution center. If the goods were stored separately, even if they still did buy from any vendor and ship from the most cost effective inventory, they would be able to track down counterfeit goods much more effectively.
- didibus 7y agoI don't know, I'm just going off based on their documentation: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/200141480?language=en-US&ref=mpbc_200243180_cont_200141480 https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/200141480?... It says: > For inventory tracked with the manufacturer barcode, each seller’s sourced inventory of the same ASIN is stored separately in our fulfillment centers. We can also track the original seller of each unit. So at least their documentation clearly says that each seller's items are stored grouped by seller.
- Waterluvian 7y agoThe amount to which they care is proportional to their apparent ability to fix the problem. You'd be amazed how quickly something can get fixed if their company is burning down over it. In this case I expect their response will be just enough to avoid any truly damaging outcomes while not spending any resources beyond that.
- bb88 7y agoI'm in the camp they just don't care. There was a point in time not too long ago where amazon refused to sell Google Chromecasts, but they would sell knock-offs including those that were marked with a "G" in an apparent trademark violation. Some retailers are selling repackaged medical equipment -- in this case cpap masks -- in ziploc bags. There may or may not be anything wrong with the mask itself, but the real bags are high quality packaging and factory sealed -- not a ziploc bag with a sticker on it.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoI have seen it many times that companies can fix things rapidly if they really want to. I think they don't care enough, as far as their revenues are going, things are fine, and there is is no easy way to fix this without making less money.
- creato 7y agoThe problem is the long tail of sellers operating on the marketplace. With a long tail of sellers, you get a long tail of fraud and bullshit too. When you search on Amazon for random basic goods, you'll get thousands of results from insane numbers of gibberish sounding sellers. But there might be only a few dozen unique results. It's going to be basically impossible to combat fraud when this is allowed. I'd even consider the "legitimate" case of this (an OEM selling the same product to hundreds/thousands of sellers to resell) to be borderline fraud as well. It's basically reputation/review laundering.
- erik_seaberg 7y agoThis. As a buyer I only ever want Amazon sending me stock they got directly from the OEM, because they're so often better at fulfillment and defect returns.
- Lammy 7y agoThese days when I end up on one of those Amazon search results filled with obviously-identical no-name goods it’s my cue to head over to Aliexpress instead. The product I’m getting is the same garbage, but at least I recalibrate my expectations and even save a few bucks by cutting out one layer of middleman.
- ClumsyPilot 7y agoLots of Ali Express experience here, some of the Chinese stuff can be great, it's just hard to know which is which amongst tge sea of good knows what
- imtringued 7y agoI have never understood this argument. I have seen lots of American/Japanese high quality brands that manufacture in China and they often cost an insignificantly higher amount than the chinese equivalent The difference is that I don't have to wait months for the product to arrive and the trusted brand is massively reducing the risk of poor quality because they actually have to follow the QC standards of the developing wolrd. Meanwhile on Aliexpress the truly cheap stuff is often just garbage. No savings there.
- duxup 7y agoI don't think they care. There was a story about a guy who self publishes his own book and on Amazon there are cheap fakes with identical title, cover and etc... Amazon just doesn't do anything.
- anonymousab 7y agoWell, once in a blue moon they'll take action and ban you and your original products for 'copying' the counterfeits.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 7y agoProbably after the original competitor hired someone, probably an examz employee, to backchannel the takedown for a princely sum.
- erik_seaberg 7y agoI seem to recall an author complaining about some random on Amazon "selling" a book that the author hadn't finished writing yet.
- sharpneli 7y agoDoesn’t that make Amazon liable for commercial copyright infringement? Cynical person might say that the copyright law is only applicable when people torrent or upload stuff to youtube.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 7y agoPersonal, expensive, and hard to evade, liability is the solution. Make Amazon liable for the products they sell and in turn Amazon will move mountains to make their sellers more liable.