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The categories of things that I've received counterfeit versions of on Amazon have been truly mind-blowing. It's been replacement HEPA filters, cat toys, even b

The categories of things that I've received counterfeit versions of on Amazon have been truly mind-blowing. It's been replacement HEPA filters, cat toys, even breakfast cereal. It's not just earphones/mics, batteries, usb cables, flash drives, extension cords, and other electronics. Who counterfeits breakfast cereal??? I've had this issue with both Quaker Oats and Raisin Bran. The scale of fraud is magnificent. And it really gaslights consumers; it took me forever to actually accept that I was eating an off-brand imitation of my favorite cereals. I do still buy from Amazon. The ease of returns still gives me confidence that I can decide after receiving an item whether the price:quality ratio is worth it. But not if I absolutely need it to conform to certain standards and I don't have the skills/tools to validate the performance myself (like HEPA filters). Then I tend to buy from somewhere with a more curated supply chain (Home Depot, direct from manufacturers website, etc).

jbay808 6y ago
My company got a counterfeit textbook. On the cover was the book we had ordered, about control theory. The printed pages were a veterinary textbook by a different publisher.
- ponker 6y ago
  That, frankly, is downright pleasant compared to counterfeit food.
  - awinter-py 6y ago
    you say that now but you'll change your tune when future control theory only works on dogs
- LegitShady 6y ago
  That must have been a hilarious return.
- CobrastanJorji 6y ago
  I'm curious about the incentive that leads to this. If you're going to print and sell counterfeit textbooks, why not use the actual content? Surely nearly every copy with a random other book will be returned. Is it possible that they meant to include the right content, but they counterfeit lots of books and have low quality control? My best guess is that they can easily grab a copy of a book's cover online, but actually acquiring and scanning a copy of each book is cost prohibitive, so they just sell entirely fake ones and hope that they get at least some money out of it.
  - arkades 6y ago
    I got a counterfeit book of knots. And I kept it. As far as I can tell, someone printed and hardbound a PDF of the actual book, which is otherwise I guess out of print. It's about the best I could hope to get under the circumstances. So ... there we are.
    - LaserPineapple 6y ago
      What book?
      - arkades 6y ago
        The Ashley Book of Knots.
        LgWoodenBadger 6y ago
        I bought (and returned) a legit copy of that book. At least in the sense that it wasn't a printed pdf. Weird.
        esaym 6y ago
        https://archive.org/details/TheAshleyBookOfKnots/page/n637/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/TheAshleyBookOfKnots/page/n637/m... nearly 700 pages of knots, nice!
  - rootusrootus 6y ago
- r00fus 6y ago
  Was that order fulfilled by Amazon? I have a suspicion that some of the "counterfeiting" is done by substitution of inventory by a bad actor, and FBA silently ignoring that. VendorA sells a good product with decent margin using FBA as their fulfillment mechanism. VendorFakeA claims to sell same product with discount and sends seemingly valid inventory to FBA - which co-mingles the inventory and throws away the receipts. Customer buys something from VendorA but gets VendorFakeA product instead. It's like a supply-chain joe-job but VendorFakeA profits.
julianozen 6y ago
Really interested to hear how you figured out the breakfast was fake
- rckoepke 6y ago
  Yeah, great question. Basically wrong flavor and texture. Visually looked quite similar but just had a cardboard consistency. Repeatedly compared vs. grocery store bought over a few months span of alternating purchases to confirm. It was somehow both immediately obvious and also subtle. My girlfriend eventually confirmed that something didn't seem right with it, so we started buying back-to-back orders alternating from grocery stores vs. amazon. Every once in awhile we'd get non-counterfeit cereal from Amazon but mostly it was "fake". Or at least diverted from another global region where the recipe/ingredients are somewhat different. I always wanted to do some quantitative analysis like density or fill size or precise box dimensions or spectrometry of the ink on the boxes. But at the time I was just trying to convince myself that I wasn't crazy, and eventually I was 100% sure so I stopped experimenting before bothering to collect quantitative data.
  - tqi 6y ago
    > Or at least diverted from another global region where the recipe/ingredients are somewhat different. Did you happen to check for differences in the packaging?
    - rckoepke 6y ago
      I did. They weren't identical but the "counterfeit" wasn't flawed enough to say it was definitely made by a different company as opposed to a different printing facility or box vendor.
  - ericd 6y ago
    You're sure it was not a storage condition or age issue? I think you might be right in your theory that it was made by the correct company but intended for a different market and was made with a different formulation. Perhaps there's some arbitrage opportunity there. I guess I don't understand why someone would try to counterfeit something like cereal. Seems like it would be hard to get enough scale to make it worth the effort, given the low per-unit profit.
gregmac 6y ago
I don't order food from Amazon at all because I don't trust them not to send something counterfeit or expired. It's just not worth the risk/hassle, and a lot of the time they're not the best price anyway. I'm also extremely cautious about electronics, but there are still certain categories (such as memory cards) that I won't even consider. Usually the only benefit from Amazon vs anywhere else is shipping, and saving $shipping is simply not worth the risk of using a fake card. This is a step in the right direction to fixing the problem, but I'm not sure I'd trust anything -- even stuff sold by Amazon itself -- so long as they co-mingle inventory.
numpad0 6y ago
They pretend to “fight counterfeit” occasionally but the “rampant” counterfeits on Amazon is structural and strategic. Marketplace seller competition is a race to the bottom against all of global online shopping so genuine examples can’t possibly survive.
jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
Oh my god you ordered food in the mail. Did you put it inside your body? Are you okay?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- nytesky 6y ago
  In times pandemic I’ve been ordering from Target, CVS, and Costco. Do is this a bad idea?
  - blondin 6y ago
    i am as surprised as OP that GP ordered cereals by mail too! first of all, transportation is not the same. food transportation to grocery stores is most of the time if not always different. in fact, some brands insist on having their own trucks. i feel like with amazon, even with the prime trucks, everything is thrown together with everything else.
- rckoepke 6y ago
  I thought this was hilarious personally but in general, this kind of comment doesn't really add to the discussion and feels not very appropriate for HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Comments should be more thoughtful and substantive, not less. However, I will absolutely take the opportunity to plug a food-by-mail company that is very near and dear to my heart: https://www.zingermans.com/OnlineCatalog.aspx https://www.zingermans.com/OnlineCatalog.aspx Prices are obviously a bit high, but the quality is amazing. They treat staff incredibly well. They do lots of employee training so people really can work their way up from Janitor to whatever they want. Pay has always been above average. All finances are essentially open-book to employees and they go through each businesses (it's a conglomerate now) monthly/quarterly finances on a whiteboard with the team members so that everyone understands where they're at. Sometimes ordering food by mail is awesome.
  - 6y ago
throwaway_jobs 6y ago
Here is one (plus the story of a defective product lawsuit behind it). A water slide. The type that bolts down into concrete for use with pools. If the first thing in your mind is...isn’t that something from the 70’s/80’s...yes it is. So the counterfeiter must have molded the entire slide (complete with the company logo that was embossed into the slide itself) thing is that company was dissolved back in the 80’s. So purchaser’s kid cuts their leg open on the slide and they sue for defective product. Of course the investigation leads to suing this Dissolved manufacturer. As I recall the dissolved entity actually defended (sort of rare from a dissolved Corp that dissolved so long ago) and it was only during expensive phase of discovery they learned they didn’t manufacture the slide In question, and that it was completely counterfeited. One day Amazon is going to get smacked with such a lawsuit resulting in billions in punitive damages, then and only then will you see real effort on their part to curb this behavior.
- raverbashing 6y ago
  Edit: theory probably doesn't work, see comments below > So the counterfeiter must have molded the entire slide (complete with the company logo that was embossed into the slide itself) thing is that company was dissolved back in the 80’s. I have a simpler explanation for that. Someone bought the tooling (injection moulds?), in an auction maybe, didn't bother to change the brand and is out there manufacturing slides. It's not "counterfeit" per se they just didn't give a f. (to use the technical term) and are selling it. Maybe outside branding is theirs but not the plastic one.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    The slide probably cut someone because it didn't fit together quite right or there was a sharp parting line because the tooling used to make it was worn out (hence why the cost was low enough that the segment of the market that doesn't give a F was able to buy it).
  - throwaway_jobs 6y ago
    > I have a simpler explanation for that. Someone bought the tooling (injection moulds?), in an auction maybe But the company never sold them, so even they from the beginning reasonably believed they had in fact manufactured the slide. Had they sold the molds (which I don’t think a company would do bearing their mark without selling the actual mark as well) it would have actually helped their defense and helped them consider/discover they were not the manufacturer of this particular slide.
snarf21 6y ago
The issue is so simple to solve and they don't have to have a crimes unit to do it. Simply segment reviews and ratings based on seller. All you have to do is have each seller put a scannable sticker on each product based each batch going through intake. You can even still colocate. Then all the returns and bad reviews go to the right person and they can just get banned. This is not rocket surgery.
- ConcernedCoder 6y ago
  counterfeit stickers...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - lozaning 6y ago
    A date string and or a string specified by amazon at the time of shipment creation signed with some sort of private key should fix this I think.
    - dylan604 6y ago
      You're assuming they want to fix the problem
      - rckoepke 6y ago
        Not sure that level of snark is appropriate for HN. Not that I explicitly disagree with you, of course. It's just we gotta have a higher bar around here. I'd love to see substantial elaboration on the topic that adds to the discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Comments should be more thoughtful and substantive, not less. > Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
jedberg 6y ago
My number one rule with Amazon is that I don't buy anything that is supposed to go in my body. I don't trust it enough to get legit safe items. Anything else I figure if it's counterfeit but still works it's not the end of the world (although I'm pretty cautious about which electronics I get).
draw_down 6y ago
If people can make a quick buck counterfeiting it then they will. For me it doesn't work to say "who would do that??", I'd rather focus on "Why has Amazon let the problem get this insanely bad?"
amelius 6y ago
Someone should counterfeit the Amazon website.
- elliekelly 6y ago
  If Azamon.com promises to be more diligent in monitoring for counterfeit items I would happily become a Preme subscriber.
- ilkan 6y ago
  Rocket Internet
29athrowaway 6y ago
There's fraud in clothing too. They reuse product photos from higher quality products to sell you a lower quality product.
pjc50 6y ago
Can anyone confirm if this happens in countries with functioning consumer protection? Or is it just an Amazon.us thing?
- mike_d 6y ago
  Even with strong consumer protections, the bad actors are often based overseas. There is little to no incentive for the Chinese government to inhibit fraud taking place in the US or Europe.
  - markdown 6y ago
    > Even with strong consumer protections, the bad actors are often based overseas. Nope. There aren't many countries that allow foreigners who've never set foot in their country to sell product there without local representation.
    - pjc50 6y ago
      Alibaba etc work just fine through the postal system without a local presence. (Mind you, using them is pretty much explicitly waiving your protection in exchange for much lower prices)
mfkp 6y ago
I've got a hard rule of not ordering anything from Amazon that goes in/on my body. Too many counterfeits and too much risk. I'll stick with trusted retailers for that (ordering from Target is just about as easy these days, maybe slightly slower shipping but can pick it up in-store if I need it fast). Even Walmart is getting hard to shop online and filter out products that are sold by "marketplace" sellers.
- BluePen7 6y ago
  I started following that rule a while ago too, I wouldn't trust some random off-brand food from amazon, but the brand name food has a fair bit of markup. If the counterfeiters are willing to produce anything to make a buck, and amazon is willing to sell counterfeit goods as legitimate, it makes sense we'd eventually have counterfeit brand name cereal or canned goods. A while ago my fiancee was having trouble finding some Eagle Brand Medicated Oil (it's this traditional asian stuff her mom rubbed on her), and I saw it was on amazon. It's possible they have changed their manufacturing processes slightly since her previous bottle, or it was different because it wasn't as old, but it just kept being every so slightly different in subtle ways, such as the feel of the bottle and even cap, the texture of the oil, the smell was a bit different, the box was a bit bigger, etc. I honestly still am not sure if it's counterfeit or not, but that's just the issue, I don't have the means to check. My only choice is to buy from sources with trusted supply chains. It's ironic, I was the first of all my friends to start using amazon excessively, and got them into it, but nowadays my fiancee remarks she found her workout supplement on there for a few dollars cheaper and I reflexively reply "Hell no! We don't put things from amazon in our body. At this point I only trust them with things that can fail on their own without causing damage, or for products so complicated no one has made a knock-off yet (I'm waiting on knock-off brand name monitors). They went from this amazing cheaper alternative to big-box stores, to AliExpress with 2 day shipping.
baybal2 6y ago
> Who counterfeits breakfast cereal??? I've had this issue with both Quaker Oats and Raisin Bran. The scale of fraud is magnificent. And it really gaslights consumers; it took me forever to actually accept that I was eating an off-brand imitation of my favorite cereals. Take a look on what is going in China for a fast forward look into the future. What you see in China now is exactly that. Pro counterfeiters mostly make money on rarely contested, or completely uncontested, hard to trace, abandoned, or obscure niches. Nobody nowadays buys into Abibas, but quite a few seekers of highly hyped boutique stuff often buy into exotic goods fakes. And on the other end of the spectrum, there are fake foods, and fake daily use goods, things few people would even mind being fake, or bothering to check for that.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
tintor 6y ago
I would never buy online food or anything similar from Amazon, only directly from the manufacturer.
wombat-man 6y ago
This is one of the reasons I don't buy a lot of stuff from amazon anymore. I don't have a printer to make return labels and easy returns are cold comfort. At the end of the day I just prefer to go in person to a store or order from a big box store. As long as you stay away from their weird 3rd party sellers, I feel pretty sure I'm getting real cereal or whatever.
- shotta 6y ago
  Where I’m at you can return products “as-is” to a Kohl’s Department Store and they will handle packaging and shipping back to Amazon. The refund starts processing sooner, too. I’m not sure how widespread this option is, though.
- boring_twenties 6y ago
  Recently you can just bring items to your choice of businesses near you like UPS Store or Whole Foods, they handle the packing and shipping for you.
  - wombat-man 6y ago
    That's great! And if I order a defective product then I'm happy to do that. But I can't always tell the difference between real and fake items. It took me a long time to realize I was using likely fake shaving soap. This just seems like a problem I can sidestep entirely by just going to Target or Walmart or whatever.
lotsofpulp 6y ago
> I do still buy from Amazon. The ease of returns still gives me confidence that I can decide after receiving an item whether the price:quality ratio is worth it. The time and labor spent refunding is well worth spending an extra few dollars at a competing vendor where I don’t have to worry about commingling nonsense. If you told me 12 years ago that I would be choosing to patronize Best Buy over Amazon, I would have told you Best Buy will be out of business. Lo and behold, I now pay Best Buy (or manufacturer website) whatever they want since I can’t trust Amazon to not send me some AliExpress garbage.
alexpetralia 6y ago
Can anyone clarify how they found out their purchases were counterfeit (e.g. if I buy a Bose product "Sold By" Bose, it could be a counterfeit?)? As someone who purchases things from Amazon and only care about if they work or not, I haven't had much an issue. If I've been loading up on counterfeits, it doesn't seem to have been a problem.
- ac29 6y ago
  > if I buy a Bose product "Sold By" Bose, it could be a counterfeit? Yes, because Amazon co-mingles item of the same SKU. A legit item could be shipped to someone who buys from a scammer, and a counterfeit could be shipped to someone who buys from a legit seller.
  - danielecook 6y ago
    I don’t get it. So when you see a listing on amazon it’s not as though one seller created it?
    - Izkata 6y ago
      My understanding: * Seller A creates Listing Q with Sku U (real) * Seller B creates Listing W with Sku U (counterfeit) * Amazon organizes stock by Sku * Ordering from Listing Q or W will pay to the appropriate Seller A or B, but get a random product with Sku U
- mleonhard 6y ago
  I bought a Bose headset from a third-party seller on Amazon in 2017-12. The sound quality was poor. The computerized voice had a non-native English accent. The Bose iOS app would not connect to it. I emailed Bose. They asked for the serial number and photos. They said "Yep, it's fake." That was all. They didn't even want to know who sold it to me. Amazon support also did not seem to care. They just told me to send it back.
- opencl 6y ago
  A few years ago I bought a $15 audio amplifier on Amazon. It failed a little while later and after a bit of googling I found a page from the manufacturer about identifying counterfeits which were apparently rampant. Different PCB layout etc. Amazon does have a brand registry which manufacturers can opt into and then actual proactive counterfeit enforcement will happen specifically for that brand. Some but not all items in the program have unique per-unit barcodes that Amazon verifies and customers can too through an app called Transparency. But as a customer you have no way to tell which brands are enrolled in the program unless you receive the item and see the Transparency barcode on it.
nabilhat 6y ago
The irony is that eliminating couterfeits would enable product quality for legit goods to actually be different for Amazon stock and brick and mortar grocery stock. It's already normal for brands to have Walmart-specific product releases; often cutting features and quality to meet a cost target (Levis "signature" line, for example). How long until we see Amazon Edition Fruit Loops, specially engineered to deliver consistent taste and texture under extreme and long term storage conditions, at a price that can't be beat?
TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
This comment demonstrates just how far Amazon has gone to shift the Overton Window[1] toward accepting counterfeits and outright fraud. People will actually go out of their way to say things like "I don't mind being defrauded, I don't mind having my time wasted, I don't being fucking GASTLIGHTED, because I can just return the item(s) with ease." Nothing against you personally. But fuck that! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
binarysolo 6y ago
Amazon seller here, we sell in grocery and have seen a buncha things in this space: There's a nontrivial possibility this is a transportation and/or storage issue. Most food items have some sort of temperature threshhold during transit and storage. We've had food products incorrectly commingled during shipment and storage over the years which ruined thousands of saleable products. Amazon's gotten a lot better about this by placing better ship/store standards from a subcategory level but it's a known issue.
tracer4201 6y ago
I’ve received counterfeit preworkout, counterfeit razor blades, and more recently counterfeit Optimum Nutrition Whey protein.
zyl1n 6y ago
Reading these comments, it feels a bit strange that I have never gotten a counterfeit product from Amazon, and I bought a dozen items from Amazon within last two months: RAM, electric kettle, wall clock, books, phone case, humidifier, ramen and fresh groceries (like fruits and cheese). The only problem I had was a few books were dented in corner of spines a bit. Is this phenomenon country specific? Or is it because I order only amazon prime items? Perhaps my luck will run out one day :)
- exhilaration 6y ago
  You probably can't tell. A friend bought a Samsung Bluetooth headset from Amazon several years ago, it looked genuine and worked well until it died. He sent it in for warranty service and Samsung sent it back with a note saying that it was counterfeit.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
Honestly reading all this, I'd treat Amazon like AliExpress - use it to buy cheap low quality shit you don't really need, go to the shops for everything else. Shops have actual quality control in place, and shops can be held liable if their products are defective or counterfeit.
- randycupertino 6y ago
  Our family's rule of thumb has been "nothing that goes on your body or in your body" can come from amazon, but after hearing about the counterfit bolts and ladder, think I'm gonna just not buy anything from there anymore. Have moved to ebay, Sephora, getting things direct from the hardware store and Target in person, and purchasing from other merchant shops that have their own websites.

jbay808 6y ago

My company got a counterfeit textbook. On the cover was the book we had ordered, about control theory. The printed pages were a veterinary textbook by a different publisher.

ponker 6y ago
That, frankly, is downright pleasant compared to counterfeit food.
- awinter-py 6y ago
  you say that now but you'll change your tune when future control theory only works on dogs
LegitShady 6y ago
That must have been a hilarious return.
CobrastanJorji 6y ago
I'm curious about the incentive that leads to this. If you're going to print and sell counterfeit textbooks, why not use the actual content? Surely nearly every copy with a random other book will be returned. Is it possible that they meant to include the right content, but they counterfeit lots of books and have low quality control? My best guess is that they can easily grab a copy of a book's cover online, but actually acquiring and scanning a copy of each book is cost prohibitive, so they just sell entirely fake ones and hope that they get at least some money out of it.
- arkades 6y ago
  I got a counterfeit book of knots. And I kept it. As far as I can tell, someone printed and hardbound a PDF of the actual book, which is otherwise I guess out of print. It's about the best I could hope to get under the circumstances. So ... there we are.
  - LaserPineapple 6y ago
    What book?
    - arkades 6y ago
      The Ashley Book of Knots.
      - LgWoodenBadger 6y ago
        I bought (and returned) a legit copy of that book. At least in the sense that it wasn't a printed pdf. Weird.
      - esaym 6y ago
        https://archive.org/details/TheAshleyBookOfKnots/page/n637/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/TheAshleyBookOfKnots/page/n637/m... nearly 700 pages of knots, nice!
- rootusrootus 6y ago
r00fus 6y ago
Was that order fulfilled by Amazon? I have a suspicion that some of the "counterfeiting" is done by substitution of inventory by a bad actor, and FBA silently ignoring that. VendorA sells a good product with decent margin using FBA as their fulfillment mechanism. VendorFakeA claims to sell same product with discount and sends seemingly valid inventory to FBA - which co-mingles the inventory and throws away the receipts. Customer buys something from VendorA but gets VendorFakeA product instead. It's like a supply-chain joe-job but VendorFakeA profits.

julianozen 6y ago

Really interested to hear how you figured out the breakfast was fake

rckoepke 6y ago
Yeah, great question. Basically wrong flavor and texture. Visually looked quite similar but just had a cardboard consistency. Repeatedly compared vs. grocery store bought over a few months span of alternating purchases to confirm. It was somehow both immediately obvious and also subtle. My girlfriend eventually confirmed that something didn't seem right with it, so we started buying back-to-back orders alternating from grocery stores vs. amazon. Every once in awhile we'd get non-counterfeit cereal from Amazon but mostly it was "fake". Or at least diverted from another global region where the recipe/ingredients are somewhat different. I always wanted to do some quantitative analysis like density or fill size or precise box dimensions or spectrometry of the ink on the boxes. But at the time I was just trying to convince myself that I wasn't crazy, and eventually I was 100% sure so I stopped experimenting before bothering to collect quantitative data.
- tqi 6y ago
  > Or at least diverted from another global region where the recipe/ingredients are somewhat different. Did you happen to check for differences in the packaging?
  - rckoepke 6y ago
    I did. They weren't identical but the "counterfeit" wasn't flawed enough to say it was definitely made by a different company as opposed to a different printing facility or box vendor.
- ericd 6y ago
  You're sure it was not a storage condition or age issue? I think you might be right in your theory that it was made by the correct company but intended for a different market and was made with a different formulation. Perhaps there's some arbitrage opportunity there. I guess I don't understand why someone would try to counterfeit something like cereal. Seems like it would be hard to get enough scale to make it worth the effort, given the low per-unit profit.

gregmac 6y ago

I don't order food from Amazon at all because I don't trust them not to send something counterfeit or expired. It's just not worth the risk/hassle, and a lot of the time they're not the best price anyway. I'm also extremely cautious about electronics, but there are still certain categories (such as memory cards) that I won't even consider. Usually the only benefit from Amazon vs anywhere else is shipping, and saving $shipping is simply not worth the risk of using a fake card. This is a step in the right direction to fixing the problem, but I'm not sure I'd trust anything -- even stuff sold by Amazon itself -- so long as they co-mingle inventory.

numpad0 6y ago

They pretend to “fight counterfeit” occasionally but the “rampant” counterfeits on Amazon is structural and strategic. Marketplace seller competition is a race to the bottom against all of global online shopping so genuine examples can’t possibly survive.

jacobwilliamroy 6y ago

Oh my god you ordered food in the mail. Did you put it inside your body? Are you okay?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nytesky 6y ago
In times pandemic I’ve been ordering from Target, CVS, and Costco. Do is this a bad idea?
- blondin 6y ago
  i am as surprised as OP that GP ordered cereals by mail too! first of all, transportation is not the same. food transportation to grocery stores is most of the time if not always different. in fact, some brands insist on having their own trucks. i feel like with amazon, even with the prime trucks, everything is thrown together with everything else.
rckoepke 6y ago
I thought this was hilarious personally but in general, this kind of comment doesn't really add to the discussion and feels not very appropriate for HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Comments should be more thoughtful and substantive, not less. However, I will absolutely take the opportunity to plug a food-by-mail company that is very near and dear to my heart: https://www.zingermans.com/OnlineCatalog.aspx https://www.zingermans.com/OnlineCatalog.aspx Prices are obviously a bit high, but the quality is amazing. They treat staff incredibly well. They do lots of employee training so people really can work their way up from Janitor to whatever they want. Pay has always been above average. All finances are essentially open-book to employees and they go through each businesses (it's a conglomerate now) monthly/quarterly finances on a whiteboard with the team members so that everyone understands where they're at. Sometimes ordering food by mail is awesome.
- 6y ago

throwaway_jobs 6y ago

Here is one (plus the story of a defective product lawsuit behind it). A water slide. The type that bolts down into concrete for use with pools. If the first thing in your mind is...isn’t that something from the 70’s/80’s...yes it is. So the counterfeiter must have molded the entire slide (complete with the company logo that was embossed into the slide itself) thing is that company was dissolved back in the 80’s. So purchaser’s kid cuts their leg open on the slide and they sue for defective product. Of course the investigation leads to suing this Dissolved manufacturer. As I recall the dissolved entity actually defended (sort of rare from a dissolved Corp that dissolved so long ago) and it was only during expensive phase of discovery they learned they didn’t manufacture the slide In question, and that it was completely counterfeited. One day Amazon is going to get smacked with such a lawsuit resulting in billions in punitive damages, then and only then will you see real effort on their part to curb this behavior.

raverbashing 6y ago
Edit: theory probably doesn't work, see comments below > So the counterfeiter must have molded the entire slide (complete with the company logo that was embossed into the slide itself) thing is that company was dissolved back in the 80’s. I have a simpler explanation for that. Someone bought the tooling (injection moulds?), in an auction maybe, didn't bother to change the brand and is out there manufacturing slides. It's not "counterfeit" per se they just didn't give a f. (to use the technical term) and are selling it. Maybe outside branding is theirs but not the plastic one.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  The slide probably cut someone because it didn't fit together quite right or there was a sharp parting line because the tooling used to make it was worn out (hence why the cost was low enough that the segment of the market that doesn't give a F was able to buy it).
- throwaway_jobs 6y ago
  > I have a simpler explanation for that. Someone bought the tooling (injection moulds?), in an auction maybe But the company never sold them, so even they from the beginning reasonably believed they had in fact manufactured the slide. Had they sold the molds (which I don’t think a company would do bearing their mark without selling the actual mark as well) it would have actually helped their defense and helped them consider/discover they were not the manufacturer of this particular slide.

snarf21 6y ago

The issue is so simple to solve and they don't have to have a crimes unit to do it. Simply segment reviews and ratings based on seller. All you have to do is have each seller put a scannable sticker on each product based each batch going through intake. You can even still colocate. Then all the returns and bad reviews go to the right person and they can just get banned. This is not rocket surgery.

ConcernedCoder 6y ago
counterfeit stickers...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- lozaning 6y ago
  A date string and or a string specified by amazon at the time of shipment creation signed with some sort of private key should fix this I think.
  - dylan604 6y ago
    You're assuming they want to fix the problem
    - rckoepke 6y ago
      Not sure that level of snark is appropriate for HN. Not that I explicitly disagree with you, of course. It's just we gotta have a higher bar around here. I'd love to see substantial elaboration on the topic that adds to the discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Comments should be more thoughtful and substantive, not less. > Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.

jedberg 6y ago

My number one rule with Amazon is that I don't buy anything that is supposed to go in my body. I don't trust it enough to get legit safe items. Anything else I figure if it's counterfeit but still works it's not the end of the world (although I'm pretty cautious about which electronics I get).

draw_down 6y ago

If people can make a quick buck counterfeiting it then they will. For me it doesn't work to say "who would do that??", I'd rather focus on "Why has Amazon let the problem get this insanely bad?"

amelius 6y ago

Someone should counterfeit the Amazon website.

elliekelly 6y ago
If Azamon.com promises to be more diligent in monitoring for counterfeit items I would happily become a Preme subscriber.
ilkan 6y ago
Rocket Internet

29athrowaway 6y ago

There's fraud in clothing too. They reuse product photos from higher quality products to sell you a lower quality product.

pjc50 6y ago

Can anyone confirm if this happens in countries with functioning consumer protection? Or is it just an Amazon.us thing?

mike_d 6y ago
Even with strong consumer protections, the bad actors are often based overseas. There is little to no incentive for the Chinese government to inhibit fraud taking place in the US or Europe.
- markdown 6y ago
  > Even with strong consumer protections, the bad actors are often based overseas. Nope. There aren't many countries that allow foreigners who've never set foot in their country to sell product there without local representation.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Alibaba etc work just fine through the postal system without a local presence. (Mind you, using them is pretty much explicitly waiving your protection in exchange for much lower prices)

mfkp 6y ago

I've got a hard rule of not ordering anything from Amazon that goes in/on my body. Too many counterfeits and too much risk. I'll stick with trusted retailers for that (ordering from Target is just about as easy these days, maybe slightly slower shipping but can pick it up in-store if I need it fast). Even Walmart is getting hard to shop online and filter out products that are sold by "marketplace" sellers.

BluePen7 6y ago
I started following that rule a while ago too, I wouldn't trust some random off-brand food from amazon, but the brand name food has a fair bit of markup. If the counterfeiters are willing to produce anything to make a buck, and amazon is willing to sell counterfeit goods as legitimate, it makes sense we'd eventually have counterfeit brand name cereal or canned goods. A while ago my fiancee was having trouble finding some Eagle Brand Medicated Oil (it's this traditional asian stuff her mom rubbed on her), and I saw it was on amazon. It's possible they have changed their manufacturing processes slightly since her previous bottle, or it was different because it wasn't as old, but it just kept being every so slightly different in subtle ways, such as the feel of the bottle and even cap, the texture of the oil, the smell was a bit different, the box was a bit bigger, etc. I honestly still am not sure if it's counterfeit or not, but that's just the issue, I don't have the means to check. My only choice is to buy from sources with trusted supply chains. It's ironic, I was the first of all my friends to start using amazon excessively, and got them into it, but nowadays my fiancee remarks she found her workout supplement on there for a few dollars cheaper and I reflexively reply "Hell no! We don't put things from amazon in our body. At this point I only trust them with things that can fail on their own without causing damage, or for products so complicated no one has made a knock-off yet (I'm waiting on knock-off brand name monitors). They went from this amazing cheaper alternative to big-box stores, to AliExpress with 2 day shipping.

baybal2 6y ago

> Who counterfeits breakfast cereal??? I've had this issue with both Quaker Oats and Raisin Bran. The scale of fraud is magnificent. And it really gaslights consumers; it took me forever to actually accept that I was eating an off-brand imitation of my favorite cereals. Take a look on what is going in China for a fast forward look into the future. What you see in China now is exactly that. Pro counterfeiters mostly make money on rarely contested, or completely uncontested, hard to trace, abandoned, or obscure niches. Nobody nowadays buys into Abibas, but quite a few seekers of highly hyped boutique stuff often buy into exotic goods fakes. And on the other end of the spectrum, there are fake foods, and fake daily use goods, things few people would even mind being fake, or bothering to check for that.

deleted 6y ago
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tintor 6y ago

I would never buy online food or anything similar from Amazon, only directly from the manufacturer.

wombat-man 6y ago

This is one of the reasons I don't buy a lot of stuff from amazon anymore. I don't have a printer to make return labels and easy returns are cold comfort. At the end of the day I just prefer to go in person to a store or order from a big box store. As long as you stay away from their weird 3rd party sellers, I feel pretty sure I'm getting real cereal or whatever.

shotta 6y ago
Where I’m at you can return products “as-is” to a Kohl’s Department Store and they will handle packaging and shipping back to Amazon. The refund starts processing sooner, too. I’m not sure how widespread this option is, though.
boring_twenties 6y ago
Recently you can just bring items to your choice of businesses near you like UPS Store or Whole Foods, they handle the packing and shipping for you.
- wombat-man 6y ago
  That's great! And if I order a defective product then I'm happy to do that. But I can't always tell the difference between real and fake items. It took me a long time to realize I was using likely fake shaving soap. This just seems like a problem I can sidestep entirely by just going to Target or Walmart or whatever.

lotsofpulp 6y ago

> I do still buy from Amazon. The ease of returns still gives me confidence that I can decide after receiving an item whether the price:quality ratio is worth it. The time and labor spent refunding is well worth spending an extra few dollars at a competing vendor where I don’t have to worry about commingling nonsense. If you told me 12 years ago that I would be choosing to patronize Best Buy over Amazon, I would have told you Best Buy will be out of business. Lo and behold, I now pay Best Buy (or manufacturer website) whatever they want since I can’t trust Amazon to not send me some AliExpress garbage.

alexpetralia 6y ago

Can anyone clarify how they found out their purchases were counterfeit (e.g. if I buy a Bose product "Sold By" Bose, it could be a counterfeit?)? As someone who purchases things from Amazon and only care about if they work or not, I haven't had much an issue. If I've been loading up on counterfeits, it doesn't seem to have been a problem.

ac29 6y ago
> if I buy a Bose product "Sold By" Bose, it could be a counterfeit? Yes, because Amazon co-mingles item of the same SKU. A legit item could be shipped to someone who buys from a scammer, and a counterfeit could be shipped to someone who buys from a legit seller.
- danielecook 6y ago
  I don’t get it. So when you see a listing on amazon it’s not as though one seller created it?
  - Izkata 6y ago
    My understanding: * Seller A creates Listing Q with Sku U (real) * Seller B creates Listing W with Sku U (counterfeit) * Amazon organizes stock by Sku * Ordering from Listing Q or W will pay to the appropriate Seller A or B, but get a random product with Sku U
mleonhard 6y ago
I bought a Bose headset from a third-party seller on Amazon in 2017-12. The sound quality was poor. The computerized voice had a non-native English accent. The Bose iOS app would not connect to it. I emailed Bose. They asked for the serial number and photos. They said "Yep, it's fake." That was all. They didn't even want to know who sold it to me. Amazon support also did not seem to care. They just told me to send it back.
opencl 6y ago
A few years ago I bought a $15 audio amplifier on Amazon. It failed a little while later and after a bit of googling I found a page from the manufacturer about identifying counterfeits which were apparently rampant. Different PCB layout etc. Amazon does have a brand registry which manufacturers can opt into and then actual proactive counterfeit enforcement will happen specifically for that brand. Some but not all items in the program have unique per-unit barcodes that Amazon verifies and customers can too through an app called Transparency. But as a customer you have no way to tell which brands are enrolled in the program unless you receive the item and see the Transparency barcode on it.

nabilhat 6y ago

The irony is that eliminating couterfeits would enable product quality for legit goods to actually be different for Amazon stock and brick and mortar grocery stock. It's already normal for brands to have Walmart-specific product releases; often cutting features and quality to meet a cost target (Levis "signature" line, for example). How long until we see Amazon Edition Fruit Loops, specially engineered to deliver consistent taste and texture under extreme and long term storage conditions, at a price that can't be beat?

TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago

This comment demonstrates just how far Amazon has gone to shift the Overton Window[1] toward accepting counterfeits and outright fraud. People will actually go out of their way to say things like "I don't mind being defrauded, I don't mind having my time wasted, I don't being fucking GASTLIGHTED, because I can just return the item(s) with ease." Nothing against you personally. But fuck that! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

binarysolo 6y ago

Amazon seller here, we sell in grocery and have seen a buncha things in this space: There's a nontrivial possibility this is a transportation and/or storage issue. Most food items have some sort of temperature threshhold during transit and storage. We've had food products incorrectly commingled during shipment and storage over the years which ruined thousands of saleable products. Amazon's gotten a lot better about this by placing better ship/store standards from a subcategory level but it's a known issue.

tracer4201 6y ago

I’ve received counterfeit preworkout, counterfeit razor blades, and more recently counterfeit Optimum Nutrition Whey protein.

zyl1n 6y ago

Reading these comments, it feels a bit strange that I have never gotten a counterfeit product from Amazon, and I bought a dozen items from Amazon within last two months: RAM, electric kettle, wall clock, books, phone case, humidifier, ramen and fresh groceries (like fruits and cheese). The only problem I had was a few books were dented in corner of spines a bit. Is this phenomenon country specific? Or is it because I order only amazon prime items? Perhaps my luck will run out one day :)

exhilaration 6y ago
You probably can't tell. A friend bought a Samsung Bluetooth headset from Amazon several years ago, it looked genuine and worked well until it died. He sent it in for warranty service and Samsung sent it back with a note saying that it was counterfeit.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago

Honestly reading all this, I'd treat Amazon like AliExpress - use it to buy cheap low quality shit you don't really need, go to the shops for everything else. Shops have actual quality control in place, and shops can be held liable if their products are defective or counterfeit.

randycupertino 6y ago
Our family's rule of thumb has been "nothing that goes on your body or in your body" can come from amazon, but after hearing about the counterfit bolts and ladder, think I'm gonna just not buy anything from there anymore. Have moved to ebay, Sephora, getting things direct from the hardware store and Target in person, and purchasing from other merchant shops that have their own websites.