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Amazon battles counterfeit masks, $400 hand sanitizer amid virus panic
- calmworm 7y agoThanks for reminding me to cancel Prime.
- calmworm 7y agoSince this was downvoted, I'm sure because it didn't add to the conversation, I'll add some more. This has been happening for multiple years with Amazon seemingly doing little about it. I've faced it from both sides, selling and buying. Selling: Counterfeiters were selling our item. We knew this because we were the manufacturer and only seller of the item. If we weren't selling it, it was counterfeit. In order to prove this, Amazon made us buy the counterfeit item from the other seller, and send in images to prove it. So when we did this, the counterfeit sellers caught on at some point and started simply shipping us random crap instead of the fake product. Then we had NO evidence they were selling a counterfeit item - we didn't have the photos to prove it. Buying: Recently in the market for a bike air pump, I search Amazon and see no less than 50 listings, all having 4.5-5 star reviews, all the same bike pump, all off-brand sounding names, but all identical. It made it impossible to find what I need/want and also made it impossible to know whether or not these bike pumps were really worth anything at all. I didn't buy anything from Amazon, and that experience has made me question all my purchases from Amazon since. So, as mentioned above, I had meant to cancel my Prime membership - this post reminded me to do so.
- neonate 7y agohttps://archive.md/pRD7w https://archive.md/pRD7w
- scrumbledober 7y agoAmazon has not done anything to combat counterfeit items on their website before now, I don't expect much from them now.
- Seenso 7y ago> Amazon has not done anything to combat counterfeit items on their website before now, I don't expect much from them now. I think they have, but their efforts are usually spastic and reactive, so they don't do much good. I remember during the eclipse a few years ago, they told everyone who bought eclipse glasses from them not to use them and refunded their money. There were lots of articles showing most of the ones being sold on Amazon were inadequate or had fake certification markings. Unfortunately, Amazon only took action a few days before the eclipse, after millions were sold and it was almost impossible to find alternatives.
- jrockway 7y agoDo we know that for a fact? Maybe they actually block 99.9% of counterfeits, but the volume is tremendous.
- ADSSDA 7y agoWhatever they're doing it's not working. Nearly every "Amazon's Choice" that I see in search results is some counterfeit Chinese garbage.
- Reedx 7y agoWell, they've removed millions of products. From the article: "The company scans billions of price changes a week and has removed 530,000 offers and suspended 2,500 accounts because of coronavirus-related price gouging, he said. The company also removed millions of products that make unsupported claims about the coronavirus"
- ezoe 7y agoWho trust Amazon and its marketplace on general goods nowaday? The only thing I can trust from Amazon is used foreign books.
- reaperducer 7y agoWho trust Amazon and its marketplace on general goods nowaday? About 95% of the people in the world who are not on HN. Average Joe Lunchbucket assumes that the products he buys through Amazon are vetted by Amazon, like at his local store. He has no idea that the stuff he buys are from a thousand different randos.
- j88439h84 7y agoYour local store vets products?
- jfim 7y agoDepending on the size of the local store, it should be sourcing its goods through a reputable distributor or have its own supply chain that connects directly to manufacturers (eg. for Walmart and other large chain stores). It's not impossible to get counterfeits, but it's a lot more reliable than marketplace sellers with no real brand to protect.
- Mountain_Skies 7y agoWal-Mart is notorious for their knowledge of the supply chain for their vendors, whether the vendor wanted to give up that information or not. On the other side of things, I've seen some pretty questionable items in dollar stores including food products that weren't labeled for the US market. The gas station near my house buys some of their products from Costco and breaks the packs into individual items, complete with "Not labeled for individual sale" warnings. Hopefully Costco is like Wal-Mart when it comes to supply chain knowledge.
- Frost1x 7y agoLarge brick and mortar stores get a bad knock because they provide cheap junk options. They also provide a lot of well researched reliable products for just a touch more. Say what you will about Walmart but they don't haphazardly choose what they throw in their stores--there's only so much physical space and they have to make chooses their local market will continue to return and buy more/other products.
- mike_n 7y agoPerhaps Amazon should manufacture masks/sanitizer/etc via its house brand, and churn them out by the billion.
- djannzjkzxn 7y agoI had the impression that Amazon’s house brand was about getting more margin by cutting out some layers of middlemen, not actually starting their own factories.
- altec3 7y agoFrom what I understand, that's how most house brands work.
- epicureanideal 7y agoBut it’s a great time to recover initial startup cost in starting a sanitizer factory...
- hyperbovine 7y agoThe famously nimble NY Department of Corrections did so in like a week. So I'm guessing the startup costs are not too onerous. https://qz.com/1815496/ny-forces-prisoners-to-make-hand-sanitizer-to-fight-coronavirus/ https://qz.com/1815496/ny-forces-prisoners-to-make-hand-sani...
- tyingq 7y agoThe headline is funny... "Incarcerated people tasked to make hand sanitizer to fight coronavirus are banned from using it themselves" I mean, it's basically 120 proof ethyl alcohol. Of course they aren't allowed to have it. I'm very sympathetic to better prison conditions, but soap should be fine.
- Seenso 7y ago> Perhaps Amazon should manufacture masks/sanitizer/etc via its house brand, and churn them out by the billion. Where would they do that? China is still pretty locked down, and I think they're still struggling to supply domestic needs of those items.
- einpoklum 7y agoWell, cash is known to be very dirty: https://time.com/4918626/money-germs-microbes-dirty/ https://time.com/4918626/money-germs-microbes-dirty/ * Antibiotic-resistant bacteria * Cocaine * Heroin * Pet DNA etc. So, the way the $400 hand sanitizer works is by making you let go of all your filthy, filthy money.
- blackrock 7y agoAlso, often contains bodily fluids, from a very voluptuous exotic dancer. It’s best to launder the money prior to using it.
- hef19898 7y agoThese services charge up to 30% of the amount laundered. Bt they take all the risk, sounds reasonable.
- zelly 7y agoI can't respond to the original post so I'm just replying here: You were right. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22334831 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22334831
- anticensor 7y agohttps://xkcd.com/1426/ https://xkcd.com/1426/
- einpoklum 7y agoPun-tastic :-\
- mNovak 7y agoI do hope this is an impetus for Amazon to finally address the huge counterfeiting problem on their platform.
- quaquaqua1 7y agoJust like how my employer sent an email saying "you are allowed to work from home" and then all the managers come and say "that doesn't apply to our team" :)
- lnsru 7y agoLooks like we are working in the same company :-)
- masonic 7y agoJust like the fake eclipse glasses did?
- gentleman11 7y agoI hope they battle it harder than they “battle” counterfeits in general. It seems like they generally like the money they make off of counterfeits and just pay lip service to preventing it so they don’t get yelled at too much for it
- luckylion 7y agoYeah, they don't seem to battle it too hard when you can just search your local amazon for a relevant keyword, sort by price descending and find the offers. Amazon has every incentive not to battle this, the higher the price, the higher their percentage.
- semerda 7y agoFew days before the corona virus chaos started, we ordered a pack of PURELL hand sanitizers from Amazon. Then the chaos started and we wondered what will happen to our package. We tracked the package move around, then delays, then messages about possible delays, then it just never arrived. I hit up Amazon.com and saw all these crazy markups on hand sanitizer. Eeek! But, I found 1 that was $10. Also from PURELL. Looked like the ones used at gyms. So I added it to my cart. Continued browsing and at checkout it got automatically removed. Subsequent searches revealed just the over priced hand sanitizers. Arrr! Thanks Amazon!
- enra 7y agoI ordered a pack of the amazon bran hand sanitizer on Feb 26, and was wondering if this will happen. Luckily I didn't the order arrived 2 days later. During that week time amazon algo had already increased the price from $12 to $20 per pack and next week when I checked everything was sold out.
- Gustomaximus 7y agoGood to see Amazon doing this but ultimately this should be a government driven initiative. E.g. Japan has put a fine and up to 1 year jail sentence for profiteering on masks and similar. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/03/10/national/japan-punish-reselling-face-masks/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/03/10/national/japan-...
- code4tee 7y agoI like Amazon, but at some level I find it hard to believe that a company that can build a store that automatically tracks my purchases with ML and let’s me walk out without a checkout can’t figure out how to flag some of the blatantly fake stuff being sold on their site. Sure given the scale there can always be a few bad apples but some of the stuff is clearly fake and stays up for ages.
- realusername 7y agoThat's because they really don't care, I doubt there's significant resources dedicated to that. Their store is full of counterfeit products and they don't even remove the most obvious ones.
- verst 7y agoIn the Amazon Grocery Store in the Capitol Hill Neighborhood of Seattle it takes them over an hour to charge you and send you a receipt. Doesn't seem like they perfected automated tracking yet. This screams manual human review of video footage -- seems like they are still collecting data for a future ML model.
- jlmorton 7y agoI doubt it. They send a push notification to your Amazon Go app immediately upon exiting the store. They then later send an email receipt, as you said, about an hour later. Because of the novelty of the store, and because it's on my way to work, I routinely go the store, and I've never noticed a discrepancy between the push notification and the emailed receipt. I have no specific knowledge why the receipt email is delayed, but I suspect a more mundane reason, like they're batching payments, in case of multiple trips in-and-out.
- tehlike 7y agoThey should know your location already, and can decide if you are coming back at all. I agree, it smells human review. Models probably produce a list and human gives the greenlight.
- robocat 7y agoMake your own hand sanitiser (WHO recipe): https://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/Guide_to_Local_Production.pdf https://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/Guide_to_Local_Production.pdf Buy 95% ethanol (from hardware/paint department, or maybe Everclear booze if in US) or isopropyl alcohol (hardware/paint department). Buy Glycerin (Chemist, or I found it cheap at Indian goods store, probably other places). IMHO the Hydrogen peroxide can be safely skipped if you can’t easily find it. Maybe also get some hand cream (frequent use of hand sanitiser will screw your skin).
- thinkmassive 7y ago> ethanol (from hardware/paint department...) Be careful with this. I checked the denatured alcohol available in the paint section of Home Depot and it said it may contain methanol. Everclear does seem like the next best thing after isopropyl, if it's available in your state.
- sitharus 7y agoYes - most ethanol is denatured by adding a small quantity of methanol, which renders it undrinkable. They also sometimes add a bitter compound to discourage drinking or a colour to identify it as non-drinkable. If you can get cheap high-proof food-grade ethanol that would be best, as methanol can be absorbed through the skin. You could also re-distill the ethanol (may not be legal in your jurisdiction), or find the MSDS to figure out the methanol range.
- VectorLock 7y agoWhen I found that the hand sanitizer was totally cleaned out this is what I did since isopropyl alcohol was still available and cheap. Maybe if things continue to get bad some of our E85 fuel production can be leave the gasoline off and offer pure ethanol for hand sanitizer, but we'll have to prevent people from drinking it.
- amiga 7y agoThey figured out how to prevent people from drinking it in the 1920's.
- rad_gruchalski 7y agoAmazon Germany. Before the panic started, I was looking to buy sanitizers for the office. 4x500ml was €120 at Amazon from third party seller, with delivery time 2 to 3 weeks. The same seller, directly on their website, ... €50, delivered 3 days later. Amazing.
- parliament32 7y ago€50 for 2L is still absolutely insane for something that costs pennies per liter to make.
- rad_gruchalski 7y agoConsidering the times we’re in.
- roenxi 7y agoIt'd be nice if everything were labeled honestly; but people get riled up around the wrong thing. High prices are necessary to get more production of these things quickly; and honestly the public buying counterfeit masks to leave real supplies for the hospitals is probably a win for us all. The only issue here is deceptive advertising.
- oldgradstudent 7y agoThey should try whatever methods were so effective in preventing Chromecast from being sold of the platform.