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Speaking of incentives, why would Amazon want to place such onerous restrictions on their suppliers? Are consumers supposed to demand this? Would regulation req

Speaking of incentives, why would Amazon want to place such onerous restrictions on their suppliers? Are consumers supposed to demand this? Would regulation require it? Amazon's success at being "the everything store" is fundamentally opposed to vetting their suppliers like this.

ckastner 6y ago
> why would Amazon want to place such onerous restrictions on their suppliers? Because they have a massive counterfeiting problem, as evident by this submission. To reiterate, what I suggested would only be onerous for the highest-risk suppliers. > Amazon's success at being "the everything store" is fundamentally opposed to vetting their suppliers like this. Certainly, Amazon is also fundamentally opposed to customers becoming victims of counterfeiters on a platform they provide them with.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  > Certainly, Amazon is also fundamentally opposed to customers becoming victims of counterfeiters on a platform they provide them with. You can't even select "This item is a counterfeit/I suspect this item is a counterfeit" when filing for a return. Surely if they cared about their customers becoming victims of counterfeiters, they'd give the customers who did become victims of counterfeiters on Amazon's marketplace the ability to return and report such items accordingly. During my last return of a counterfeit item, I had to lie about the reason for the return during the return process. I had to choose between the vaguely related, but Amazon-approved, platitudes of "Wrong item was sent", "Inaccurate website description" or "Item defective or doesn't work".
  - ckastner 6y ago
    Just to be clear, my argument was rhetorical. I fully agree that in practice, we're seeing something completely different.
debbiedowner 6y ago
I agree. Because of Amazon's scale selling counterfeit items is good for business. Only a minority of customers will notice the fake and return it, which they've streamlined so that it's no big deal. Counterfeit items likely get Amazon more customers than it loses. The cheapness of counterfeit is attractive to new customers, and the ease of returns retains customers. Besides, everybody can't be a conesieur in everything they buy, so it's feasible to still be successful at high rates of counterfeit goods on the site. Some econ student could probably share some good studies on this kind of economy for us. Maybe Amazon can try the pirate Bay argument that they just host the content they're not responsible for it respecting copyright?

ckastner 6y ago

> why would Amazon want to place such onerous restrictions on their suppliers? Because they have a massive counterfeiting problem, as evident by this submission. To reiterate, what I suggested would only be onerous for the highest-risk suppliers. > Amazon's success at being "the everything store" is fundamentally opposed to vetting their suppliers like this. Certainly, Amazon is also fundamentally opposed to customers becoming victims of counterfeiters on a platform they provide them with.

heavyset_go 6y ago
> Certainly, Amazon is also fundamentally opposed to customers becoming victims of counterfeiters on a platform they provide them with. You can't even select "This item is a counterfeit/I suspect this item is a counterfeit" when filing for a return. Surely if they cared about their customers becoming victims of counterfeiters, they'd give the customers who did become victims of counterfeiters on Amazon's marketplace the ability to return and report such items accordingly. During my last return of a counterfeit item, I had to lie about the reason for the return during the return process. I had to choose between the vaguely related, but Amazon-approved, platitudes of "Wrong item was sent", "Inaccurate website description" or "Item defective or doesn't work".
- ckastner 6y ago
  Just to be clear, my argument was rhetorical. I fully agree that in practice, we're seeing something completely different.

debbiedowner 6y ago

I agree. Because of Amazon's scale selling counterfeit items is good for business. Only a minority of customers will notice the fake and return it, which they've streamlined so that it's no big deal. Counterfeit items likely get Amazon more customers than it loses. The cheapness of counterfeit is attractive to new customers, and the ease of returns retains customers. Besides, everybody can't be a conesieur in everything they buy, so it's feasible to still be successful at high rates of counterfeit goods on the site. Some econ student could probably share some good studies on this kind of economy for us. Maybe Amazon can try the pirate Bay argument that they just host the content they're not responsible for it respecting copyright?