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So I hear this line over and over in Hacker News. Do people really have that many authenticity issues? I average well into 5 figures a year on Amazon stuff. Ha

So I hear this line over and over in Hacker News. Do people really have that many authenticity issues? I average well into 5 figures a year on Amazon stuff. Have been for years. Have never had an authenticity issue. I buy sold by Amazon and 3rd party. Name brand and white label. Electronics and home goods. I’m just not getting it?

hprotagonist 6y ago
After one especially dangerous purchase from a Fulfilled By Amazon seller, I will no longer buy bicycle components on amazon. Nothing happened after i reported it, either.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > Nothing happened after i reported it, either. That's what's so infuriating about Amazon. Amazon should proactively police their store for counterfeits, but they don't. To add insult to injury, they won't even respond in a timely manner to reports of physically and economically impossible counterfeit items that are sold as part of a well known type of fraud [1]. [1] IIRC, I reported some "2TB" microsd cards selling for $10 a few years back, and the listings remained up for weeks. Had the same experience reporting price-gouging on N95 masks and hand sanitizer early in the pandemic, too.
deleted 6y ago
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acrispino 6y ago
I've received counterfeits of items worth as little as $15, fulfilled by Amazon.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
I don't go into the five figures but I haven't had any issues. Or at least nobody who buys through my account has reported any. Pretty much none of it is high margin consumer stuff though. Kinda hard to fake plumbing fittings and fasteners without doing pretty much all the work it takes to do it right in the first place.
kenjackson 6y ago
I've had it happen a fair bit, but I buy a LOT on Amazon. Most recently Amazon contacted me about some Gillette razors. They told me to throw them out and they refunded me. That said, the razors were working great, but I threw them away anyways.
- unclebucknasty 6y ago
  I purchased Gillette blades a few years back--the Fusion model--at a great price. Packaging and design looked legitimate. But, on first, use I immediately realized they were counterfeit. The shave was awful (think cheaper blades that are also dull from use). Returning items is a PITA to me, so I just tossed them and vowed to never buy blades from Amazon again. I never heard anything from Amazon, but it's interesting that years later they still have a problem with Gillette blades.
  - kenjackson 6y ago
    Yep, mine were Fusion too. Maybe I'm just not sensitive to dull blades.
astuyvenberg 6y ago
I do not spend that much on Amazon, but have encountered fraudulent products (shipped & sold by 3rd party). Confirmation bias on both sides aside, I agree with the top comment. Anything I really care about, I buy in store somewhere which matches prices.
SamReidHughes 6y ago
I didn't realize I had an inauthentic pocket knife from Amazon until I lost it and bought a replacement in a store. The shape was the same, but the real one functioned better.
- kd5bjo 6y ago
  How do you know this wasn’t just due to normal manufacturing variances?
  - SamReidHughes 6y ago
    It was a multi tool, and many aspects were better and crisper.
rosywoozlechan 6y ago
The WSJ has done numerous articles detailing the many problems of Amazon's third party marketplace. Lead in toy products, counter fit products, products that otherwise violate recalls and safety requirements. They've also documented how easy it is to find these products, to buy them, and they're sometimes even recommended by Amazon's algorithm with that label they put on their top search result. Amazon has responded to lawsuits with the hands off "hey it's not us, it's the seller and we're not going to vet our sellers stuff." So apparently it's the customer's job. I don't have the time or knowledge to know how to test toys I buy for my daughter for lead so I just don't buy from Amazon unless it's a hard to find book or something I'm pretty sure won't be dangerous. I used to buy all my home gym stuff from Amazon stuff and since have switched to directly buying from brands like Rogue Fitness, or Titan and the difference in the quality of even basic stuff like weights, is just worth skipping Amazon. The dumbbells I've bought from Amazon all have some form of rust on them now. It's that way for clothing and everything else I've tried. Amazon is a game of hit or miss trash. In the midst of the pandemic I actually could not find a Surface charger for my laptop anywhere but Amazon and had to buy it from them and I was so worried it was counterfeit. It wasn't. I was lucky.
- monadic2 6y ago
  Has WSJ released any figures as to the prevalence with this or are they just presenting individual accounts? If I’ve gotten counterfeits they were certainly of the quality i was expecting from the brand name and I really don’t care, that’s the free marketplace baby, capitalism at full health.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
    > If I’ve gotten counterfeits they were certainly of the quality i was expecting from the brand name and I really don’t care, that’s the free marketplace baby, capitalism at full health. A free market, by definition, has full transparency; if you can unwittingly get a counterfeit, it's not a free market.
    - monadic2 6y ago
dkersten 6y ago
Would you notice, if you did? Remember when the guy tested all the USB cables? Some of them were downright broken, but many worked just fine (except not to specification, so were perhaps damaging or even dangerous, but they worked), so most people would never notice that something was amiss. I’ve also heard of counterfeit books: they look the same as real books, but are of lower quality print and paper. Would you notice? Would you just think the book wasn’t as good quality as other books, without questiining whether you actually got a counterfeit product? I’m not convinced I’d necessarily notice.
- social_quotient 6y ago
  Reminded me of this video a while back with yeti tumblers https://youtu.be/Uo2GFh6FGsg https://youtu.be/Uo2GFh6FGsg
  - dkersten 6y ago
    Seems like the only sure way to know, for a person who isn’t intimately familiar with the real product, is to have a real and the potential-fake side by side, which, realistically, isn’t going to be the case for most amazon purchases.
ndesaulniers 6y ago
Within the past month for Amazon orders, I had a book with 100 pages missing in the middle, and pillows that weren't the size I ordered. YMMV?
dhosek 6y ago
I used to buy things like trousers and socks at Amazon for convenience's sake. The last orders I've gotten have been counterfeits: They're made from material that develops holes within two or three wearings. I can't trust Amazon to deliver what they say they'll deliver. It's a big shift from 20 years ago when I would actually pay more to order something from Amazon because I had more trust in them than some random on-line retailer.
zaphoyd 6y ago
Yes, many counterfeit products across many product areas. Small electronics and children's toys have been the worst. No outright scams yet (brick in a box) but we’ve stopped using Amazon for most things because it’s just not worth the hassle.
- rietta 6y ago
  Co-worker got a glass jar in a box instead of a Blue Yeti Microphone. Sadly he lost everything because his dad threw out the trash before he could get pictures and return it to Amazon.
  - sukilot 6y ago
    Credit card chargeback on that.
    - rietta 6y ago
      I think the fear is that doing a charge back would have repercussions worse than the loss of that order if you continually do business with Amazon.
- sickcodebruh 6y ago
  The children’s toys are insane! My wife and I stopped buying anything for our daughter from Amazon when she was a few months old. We kept on getting products that were either counterfeits or cheap knockoffs. The most obvious was a book that had clearly been scanned, reprinted, and had a new label very poorly copied/pasted over the original publisher’s name.
jentist_retol 6y ago
I've been nailed more than a few times, mostly on lower cost items without prime (i dont mind saving a few bucks and waiting). Items I've gotten that are counterfeit: - Brand name lock - Serial Adapter (knockoff chipset) - Apple Watch charger (these are endemic) - Dell brand charger You likely don't realize it but you probably have counterfeit items in your home right now, that were either very carefully copied or part of a "third shift". You also likely have refurbished items sold as new, and if you've ever gotten brand name things in plain packaging, cross-market items (such as intel CPUs that are sold at much lower prices in other regions, and then sold for a profit to the US).
- psalminen 6y ago
  CPUs might be a different story, but I have the same experience as others: if I've gotten counterfeit goods I haven't been able to tell. At that point I don't really care.
  - mehrdadn 6y ago
    My initial reaction is the same every time, but then about safety issues. Everything from toxic materials to potential fire hazards -- you won't know unless it's too late.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    > if I've gotten counterfeit goods I haven't been able to tell. At that point I don't really care. On an individual level, sure. If the real product fails 1/1000 of the time, and the counterfeit fails 1/100 of the time, you've got 99%+ happy customers of both. The damage is only really evident in the aggregate.
  - FPGAhacker 6y ago
    You will when your house burns down.
- tzs 6y ago
  When I wanted a second Apple Watch charger cable, I could not find any on Amazon that I was willing to order. The ones that were listed as being actually from Apple and sold by Amazon were no cheaper than buying at the local Best Buy or Target or I think Walmart (I know they sell Apple watches and bands, but I'm not actually sure if they have Apple brand chargers). Every single less expensive third party one had either almost exclusively terrible reviews, or an overwhelming majority of the positive reviews were for completely unrelated products (and the reviews that were not obviously for other products usually omitted actually saying what they were for so you could not tell if they were actually for the charger or for some previous item that once had the same listing).
egsmi 6y ago
I’m sure it depends on product and category. It’s hard to get a legitimate STM32 on a Blue Pill, for example, from Amazon. But I’ve never received a fake Apple charger. My wife has received two fake BCBG dresses from Amazon and will no longer buy clothes from them. You’ll need some skill to spot clothes fakes. I certainly couldn’t do it.
- e_y_ 6y ago
  I imagine companies like Apple spend time scouring Amazon and other websites for unauthorized sellers or even buying one or two to check for fakes. But clearly it's too much for many brands to keep up with, especially if Amazon is only minimally cooperative.
sidlls 6y ago
This happens in every segment Amazon has a store or products for. Another anecdote: my wife wanted to buy a refill for the Clorox brand hydrogen peroxide based sanitizer she prefers to use. There weren't any in stock on Amazon, but she found a third-party that was advertising effectively the same thing (right down to the ingredients indicating a 1.86% by volume solution of hydrogen peroxide). What came from Amazon was something closer to an industrial-grade bleach-like cleaning solution. It's not the first time this has happened, either: we've had shoddy device charging cables, rechargeable batteries, etc. It has happened enough in the last year that we have substantially drawn back our spending on Amazon, and we will not under any circumstances buy any electronics (devices, accessories, etc.) from there. I'm actually quite close to stopping my Prime membership and cutting them out altogether.
grumple 6y ago
The most obvious counterfeits I’ve gotten were books from third party sellers. Obviously scanned and reprinted tech books.
- HideousKojima 6y ago
  And they can't even be bothered to OCR them and format them
antjanus 6y ago
I probably spend as much as you -- though in the past year or so, I've been shopping elsewhere. There are some products that are "safe" to buy and you won't have to worry but there's a ton of stuff that will randomly be counterfeit. -- even prime stuff. It's also common for me to order something several times -- and then suddenly get a counterfeit product. I honestly recommend people use eBay instead or BestBuy :) or Newegg or anyone else essentially.
tlow 6y ago
How would you know if you had authenticity issues or not?
deleted 6y ago
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replwoacause 6y ago
Never had one in ~15 years buying everything I want and can find on Amazon...at least that I’ve noticed.
Xixi 6y ago
Do you actually check if the products you get are counterfeit? It's not like it's written "counterfeat, beware!" on it, so I mean the question literally: what steps did you take to ensure that these products where actually what you think you were buying? I avoid buying electronics from Amazon precisely because distinguishing a counterfeit USB charger from a real one is not easy. And the counterfeit one might result in my house burning down... Although to be fair there's a Yamada Denki less than a 10 minutes walk away from home, so in terms of convenience it's even better than Amazon...
ponker 6y ago
1) It's not that common, it's not like rolling a 6, but it is very alarming when it happens to you. I've had it happen once and never again bought anything food or baby-related from Amazon. 2) Some of the fakes are very good, you may not know you're getting a fake. But if it's something like a fake Apple charging brick, it won't have anywhere near the safety engineering of the Apple product, so you may not ever notice it but you had a fake. Or you could have a food product that wasn't made to safety standards.
kart23 6y ago
Look up 'Samsung earbuds s9' Every single wired pair sold by 3rd parties with the samsung/akg branding is fake, even when they claim to be 'oem' or 'original'. And theres tons of legit looking results.
astura 6y ago
Would you know if you purchased a fake yeti tumbler[1], for example, if you didn't have a real one to compare to side-by-side? [1] https://youtu.be/Uo2GFh6FGsg https://youtu.be/Uo2GFh6FGsg The "Amazon's Choice" for "high security lock" is actually a Chinese knockoff [2] but you wouldn't know that unless you are familiar with the original. [2] https://youtu.be/Gflpf0DrCgw https://youtu.be/Gflpf0DrCgw Even people dying doesn't seem to get products removed https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/08/report-finds-more-than-4100-unsafe-or-recalled-listings-on-amazon/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/08/report-finds-mor... >A 23-year-old man in Missouri purchased a motorcycle helmet from Amazon that was at the time listed as certified as meeting US Department of Transportation safety standards. Later that year, however, he was killed in a crash while riding. A federal investigation later found that the helmet did not meet DOT standards and was recalled. The WSJ, however, found the product still for sale, with an active listing promising compliance, until the WSJ contacted Amazon to inquire about it.
sokoloff 6y ago
I’ve definitely gotten fakes from Amazon before. Most recent was a (pretty well done) fake Nike soccer shorts and shirt for my kid. It didn’t look quite right and I was able to confirm it as a fake. A2Z took care of it. It seems quite possible you may have had a fake and simply not detected it.
addicted 6y ago
I’ve received crap from Amazon. I’ve stopped buying from there entirely. The good thing was I noticed it. My worry is when I don’t. I can usually find something cheaper on a different site (best buy, B&H, Microcenter, Newegg...although Newegg has been really bad for me lately, monoprice, Walmart). And the rare couple of times I don’t, I’m willing to pay the $1-$2 more (I’m much better off in the long run anyways). Honestly, it’s really really hard to find something that is also available elsewhere, cheaper on Amazon than anywhere else for me. So I’m not willing to take the counterfeit risk, for basically no benefit.
- mattferderer 6y ago
  It seems Newegg & Walmart have started selling a lot of 3rd party items. I do not like this trend at all. I've bought from Newegg & been a huge fan for decades. Sad to see them ruin their image.
  - boring_twenties 6y ago
    If I'm not mistaken, Newegg was sold to some Chinese company in 2017 or so. Even so, I haven't had any trouble with products bought directly from them since then (though the introduction of a captcha just to log into the damn site was rather annoying). Their third party marketplace appears to be a total cesspool, however. I bought some "new" hard drives from two separate vendors... both batches arrived beat to shit, with 35-50k hours of runtime and some with significant error counts. Only after the fact did I bother looking into it, and notice that ALL vendors in the hard drive category have ratings less than 80%, and plenty of reviews accusing them of selling used as new. Newegg obviously doesn't care. Sad, indeed.
  - miek 6y ago
    On both Walmart and Newegg, you can filter for products sold only by Walmart/Newegg. It's a slightly annoying step, and I agree with you, it damages their image.
- ciabattabread 6y ago
  I just bought a car battery jump starter, and two years ago, when I was blissfully ignorant of the severity of the counterfeiting problem, I would’ve bought it from Amazon. Instead, I ordered from Home Depot. I’m still willing to buy from Amazon items that aren’t potential fire hazards.
Anon4Now 6y ago
Amazon sells over 100 million different products. At that scale, especially with 3rd party vendors, some customers are bound be to victims of fraud, while others are unaffected.
irrational 6y ago
How do you know that they weren’t counterfeit? It’s often hard to tell.
miek 6y ago
Another datapoint: an SD card purchased this week by a friend was fake. Seller was amazon, not a third party. If you want to test an SD card, this site details how: https://www.raymond.cc/blog/test-and-detect-fake-or-counterfeit-usb-flash-drives-bought-from-ebay-with-h2testw/ https://www.raymond.cc/blog/test-and-detect-fake-or-counterf...
lol636363 6y ago
I stopped buying water filters from Amazon after a few which looked exactly like real thing but tasted funny. Upon very close inspection, there were tiny differences but impossible to notice casually.
- 29athrowaway 6y ago
  I use a water tester and pH indicator before drinking from a new water filter.
  - pfranz 6y ago
    Do you have one that's not a counterfeit to recommend? ;)
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  Same here. Bought some fridge water filters, but they made otherwise perfectly good tap water taste like it had been chlorinated. I have no idea what nastiness was inside. Now I just suck it up and pay full price at HD.
- MattSayar 6y ago
  I've had multiple water filters break in the filter housing in my fridge, causing a leak onto the floor. I'm only thankful I was home when it happened or it would have flooded the kitchen, and likely more. Now I just don't use filters. The utility company filters the water well enough.
smcleod 6y ago
I've bought several things from Amazon (all electronics) that looked completely legit, but when they failed and I worked with the manufacturer on a warranty claim they turned out to be fakes/counterfeits - very clever ones but identifiable when you knew what to look for.
K2h 6y ago
I got a pair of Salomon running shoes, from the authenticated seller SALOMON , fulfilled by AMAZON and they looked great but felt just a little off. I put them next to my friends shoes and we found about 10 things of extremely minor differences that contributed to an entirely different fit and on very close inspection much poorer materials and construction. It would have not been possible to see this without putting my fakes from amazon directly next to the name brand. I had no idea! I did all the right things, verified the seller, the fulfiller, the manufacturer, the listing. Amazon only partially refunded as I didn't figure it out until after 30 days. They (Amazon) should be liable for fraud! and I say that as a stock holder and prime member of 10+ years. co-mingled inventory will be the death of them, or it should be if they ever get held accountable, but who knows maybe now too big to fail. This was full retail price, proper SKU, MFG picture. when I went back to review the order it seems a third party seller was substituted at check out which I could have missed. I went through extreme and deliberate lengths to purchase exactly what I wanted from the manufacture and pay retail prices and still got fooled. I was actively going through mental checklists during the purchasing stage on amazon to avoid counterfeit and didn't succeed. Majorly annoyed. I have even worked the packing line at amazon. Over Christmas in 2000 I worked the line to pay some school bills, so I can even visualize some of the failure modes. yup.. still not enough.
- Osiris 6y ago
  I've also thought that I haven't received counterfeit products from Amazon, but hearing your story it's possible I have but they were good enough that I didn't notice as I didn't have an authentic product to compare it to.
annoyingnoob 6y ago
Maybe you didn't notice. I've purchased many products from Amazon that were fakes. The worst was a SanDisk SD card that died with my honeymoon pictures on it. Turns out it was a knock-off, missing some SanDisk factory hot stamps. It came in full retail packaging, with user manual - it looked completely correct if you didn't know to look for the hot stamp on the back. By the time I figured it out that vendor was gone from Amazon.
pfranz 6y ago
I haven't looked too closely, but I've bought Duracell / Energizer batteries from Amazon and I suspect they're counterfeit because they die suspiciously quickly. I thought my hardware was broken, but Amazon's batteries seem to work well.
- jacobkg 6y ago
  I guess that’s an advantage of buying Amazon branded merchandise? It’s the only brand you know won’t be counterfeited since no other seller has it in their stock.
dboreham 6y ago
Definitely had it happen more than once. Photographic filters. Clothing. Many items I consider buying have review comments relating to fakes. Plus it's well documented Amzn deliberately comingles inventory. So I buy my filters from B&H and my North Face from...North Face. Hopefully they aren't using Amazon fultillment.
nikanj 6y ago
It's like saying car crashes are not a problem, because you drive thousands of miles per year and have never gotten in a crash

hprotagonist 6y ago

After one especially dangerous purchase from a Fulfilled By Amazon seller, I will no longer buy bicycle components on amazon. Nothing happened after i reported it, either.

ardy42 6y ago
> Nothing happened after i reported it, either. That's what's so infuriating about Amazon. Amazon should proactively police their store for counterfeits, but they don't. To add insult to injury, they won't even respond in a timely manner to reports of physically and economically impossible counterfeit items that are sold as part of a well known type of fraud [1]. [1] IIRC, I reported some "2TB" microsd cards selling for $10 a few years back, and the listings remained up for weeks. Had the same experience reporting price-gouging on N95 masks and hand sanitizer early in the pandemic, too.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

acrispino 6y ago

I've received counterfeits of items worth as little as $15, fulfilled by Amazon.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

I don't go into the five figures but I haven't had any issues. Or at least nobody who buys through my account has reported any. Pretty much none of it is high margin consumer stuff though. Kinda hard to fake plumbing fittings and fasteners without doing pretty much all the work it takes to do it right in the first place.

kenjackson 6y ago

I've had it happen a fair bit, but I buy a LOT on Amazon. Most recently Amazon contacted me about some Gillette razors. They told me to throw them out and they refunded me. That said, the razors were working great, but I threw them away anyways.

unclebucknasty 6y ago
I purchased Gillette blades a few years back--the Fusion model--at a great price. Packaging and design looked legitimate. But, on first, use I immediately realized they were counterfeit. The shave was awful (think cheaper blades that are also dull from use). Returning items is a PITA to me, so I just tossed them and vowed to never buy blades from Amazon again. I never heard anything from Amazon, but it's interesting that years later they still have a problem with Gillette blades.
- kenjackson 6y ago
  Yep, mine were Fusion too. Maybe I'm just not sensitive to dull blades.

astuyvenberg 6y ago

I do not spend that much on Amazon, but have encountered fraudulent products (shipped & sold by 3rd party). Confirmation bias on both sides aside, I agree with the top comment. Anything I really care about, I buy in store somewhere which matches prices.

SamReidHughes 6y ago

I didn't realize I had an inauthentic pocket knife from Amazon until I lost it and bought a replacement in a store. The shape was the same, but the real one functioned better.

kd5bjo 6y ago
How do you know this wasn’t just due to normal manufacturing variances?
- SamReidHughes 6y ago
  It was a multi tool, and many aspects were better and crisper.

rosywoozlechan 6y ago

The WSJ has done numerous articles detailing the many problems of Amazon's third party marketplace. Lead in toy products, counter fit products, products that otherwise violate recalls and safety requirements. They've also documented how easy it is to find these products, to buy them, and they're sometimes even recommended by Amazon's algorithm with that label they put on their top search result. Amazon has responded to lawsuits with the hands off "hey it's not us, it's the seller and we're not going to vet our sellers stuff." So apparently it's the customer's job. I don't have the time or knowledge to know how to test toys I buy for my daughter for lead so I just don't buy from Amazon unless it's a hard to find book or something I'm pretty sure won't be dangerous. I used to buy all my home gym stuff from Amazon stuff and since have switched to directly buying from brands like Rogue Fitness, or Titan and the difference in the quality of even basic stuff like weights, is just worth skipping Amazon. The dumbbells I've bought from Amazon all have some form of rust on them now. It's that way for clothing and everything else I've tried. Amazon is a game of hit or miss trash. In the midst of the pandemic I actually could not find a Surface charger for my laptop anywhere but Amazon and had to buy it from them and I was so worried it was counterfeit. It wasn't. I was lucky.

monadic2 6y ago
Has WSJ released any figures as to the prevalence with this or are they just presenting individual accounts? If I’ve gotten counterfeits they were certainly of the quality i was expecting from the brand name and I really don’t care, that’s the free marketplace baby, capitalism at full health.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
  > If I’ve gotten counterfeits they were certainly of the quality i was expecting from the brand name and I really don’t care, that’s the free marketplace baby, capitalism at full health. A free market, by definition, has full transparency; if you can unwittingly get a counterfeit, it's not a free market.
  - monadic2 6y ago

dkersten 6y ago

Would you notice, if you did? Remember when the guy tested all the USB cables? Some of them were downright broken, but many worked just fine (except not to specification, so were perhaps damaging or even dangerous, but they worked), so most people would never notice that something was amiss. I’ve also heard of counterfeit books: they look the same as real books, but are of lower quality print and paper. Would you notice? Would you just think the book wasn’t as good quality as other books, without questiining whether you actually got a counterfeit product? I’m not convinced I’d necessarily notice.

social_quotient 6y ago
Reminded me of this video a while back with yeti tumblers https://youtu.be/Uo2GFh6FGsg https://youtu.be/Uo2GFh6FGsg
- dkersten 6y ago
  Seems like the only sure way to know, for a person who isn’t intimately familiar with the real product, is to have a real and the potential-fake side by side, which, realistically, isn’t going to be the case for most amazon purchases.

ndesaulniers 6y ago

Within the past month for Amazon orders, I had a book with 100 pages missing in the middle, and pillows that weren't the size I ordered. YMMV?

dhosek 6y ago

I used to buy things like trousers and socks at Amazon for convenience's sake. The last orders I've gotten have been counterfeits: They're made from material that develops holes within two or three wearings. I can't trust Amazon to deliver what they say they'll deliver. It's a big shift from 20 years ago when I would actually pay more to order something from Amazon because I had more trust in them than some random on-line retailer.

zaphoyd 6y ago

Yes, many counterfeit products across many product areas. Small electronics and children's toys have been the worst. No outright scams yet (brick in a box) but we’ve stopped using Amazon for most things because it’s just not worth the hassle.

rietta 6y ago
Co-worker got a glass jar in a box instead of a Blue Yeti Microphone. Sadly he lost everything because his dad threw out the trash before he could get pictures and return it to Amazon.
- sukilot 6y ago
  Credit card chargeback on that.
  - rietta 6y ago
    I think the fear is that doing a charge back would have repercussions worse than the loss of that order if you continually do business with Amazon.
sickcodebruh 6y ago
The children’s toys are insane! My wife and I stopped buying anything for our daughter from Amazon when she was a few months old. We kept on getting products that were either counterfeits or cheap knockoffs. The most obvious was a book that had clearly been scanned, reprinted, and had a new label very poorly copied/pasted over the original publisher’s name.

jentist_retol 6y ago

I've been nailed more than a few times, mostly on lower cost items without prime (i dont mind saving a few bucks and waiting). Items I've gotten that are counterfeit: - Brand name lock - Serial Adapter (knockoff chipset) - Apple Watch charger (these are endemic) - Dell brand charger You likely don't realize it but you probably have counterfeit items in your home right now, that were either very carefully copied or part of a "third shift". You also likely have refurbished items sold as new, and if you've ever gotten brand name things in plain packaging, cross-market items (such as intel CPUs that are sold at much lower prices in other regions, and then sold for a profit to the US).

psalminen 6y ago
CPUs might be a different story, but I have the same experience as others: if I've gotten counterfeit goods I haven't been able to tell. At that point I don't really care.
- mehrdadn 6y ago
  My initial reaction is the same every time, but then about safety issues. Everything from toxic materials to potential fire hazards -- you won't know unless it's too late.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  > if I've gotten counterfeit goods I haven't been able to tell. At that point I don't really care. On an individual level, sure. If the real product fails 1/1000 of the time, and the counterfeit fails 1/100 of the time, you've got 99%+ happy customers of both. The damage is only really evident in the aggregate.
- FPGAhacker 6y ago
  You will when your house burns down.
tzs 6y ago
When I wanted a second Apple Watch charger cable, I could not find any on Amazon that I was willing to order. The ones that were listed as being actually from Apple and sold by Amazon were no cheaper than buying at the local Best Buy or Target or I think Walmart (I know they sell Apple watches and bands, but I'm not actually sure if they have Apple brand chargers). Every single less expensive third party one had either almost exclusively terrible reviews, or an overwhelming majority of the positive reviews were for completely unrelated products (and the reviews that were not obviously for other products usually omitted actually saying what they were for so you could not tell if they were actually for the charger or for some previous item that once had the same listing).

egsmi 6y ago

I’m sure it depends on product and category. It’s hard to get a legitimate STM32 on a Blue Pill, for example, from Amazon. But I’ve never received a fake Apple charger. My wife has received two fake BCBG dresses from Amazon and will no longer buy clothes from them. You’ll need some skill to spot clothes fakes. I certainly couldn’t do it.

e_y_ 6y ago
I imagine companies like Apple spend time scouring Amazon and other websites for unauthorized sellers or even buying one or two to check for fakes. But clearly it's too much for many brands to keep up with, especially if Amazon is only minimally cooperative.

sidlls 6y ago

This happens in every segment Amazon has a store or products for. Another anecdote: my wife wanted to buy a refill for the Clorox brand hydrogen peroxide based sanitizer she prefers to use. There weren't any in stock on Amazon, but she found a third-party that was advertising effectively the same thing (right down to the ingredients indicating a 1.86% by volume solution of hydrogen peroxide). What came from Amazon was something closer to an industrial-grade bleach-like cleaning solution. It's not the first time this has happened, either: we've had shoddy device charging cables, rechargeable batteries, etc. It has happened enough in the last year that we have substantially drawn back our spending on Amazon, and we will not under any circumstances buy any electronics (devices, accessories, etc.) from there. I'm actually quite close to stopping my Prime membership and cutting them out altogether.

grumple 6y ago

The most obvious counterfeits I’ve gotten were books from third party sellers. Obviously scanned and reprinted tech books.

HideousKojima 6y ago
And they can't even be bothered to OCR them and format them

antjanus 6y ago

I probably spend as much as you -- though in the past year or so, I've been shopping elsewhere. There are some products that are "safe" to buy and you won't have to worry but there's a ton of stuff that will randomly be counterfeit. -- even prime stuff. It's also common for me to order something several times -- and then suddenly get a counterfeit product. I honestly recommend people use eBay instead or BestBuy :) or Newegg or anyone else essentially.

tlow 6y ago

How would you know if you had authenticity issues or not?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

replwoacause 6y ago

Never had one in ~15 years buying everything I want and can find on Amazon...at least that I’ve noticed.

Xixi 6y ago

Do you actually check if the products you get are counterfeit? It's not like it's written "counterfeat, beware!" on it, so I mean the question literally: what steps did you take to ensure that these products where actually what you think you were buying? I avoid buying electronics from Amazon precisely because distinguishing a counterfeit USB charger from a real one is not easy. And the counterfeit one might result in my house burning down... Although to be fair there's a Yamada Denki less than a 10 minutes walk away from home, so in terms of convenience it's even better than Amazon...

ponker 6y ago

1) It's not that common, it's not like rolling a 6, but it is very alarming when it happens to you. I've had it happen once and never again bought anything food or baby-related from Amazon. 2) Some of the fakes are very good, you may not know you're getting a fake. But if it's something like a fake Apple charging brick, it won't have anywhere near the safety engineering of the Apple product, so you may not ever notice it but you had a fake. Or you could have a food product that wasn't made to safety standards.

kart23 6y ago

Look up 'Samsung earbuds s9' Every single wired pair sold by 3rd parties with the samsung/akg branding is fake, even when they claim to be 'oem' or 'original'. And theres tons of legit looking results.

astura 6y ago

Would you know if you purchased a fake yeti tumbler[1], for example, if you didn't have a real one to compare to side-by-side? [1] https://youtu.be/Uo2GFh6FGsg https://youtu.be/Uo2GFh6FGsg The "Amazon's Choice" for "high security lock" is actually a Chinese knockoff [2] but you wouldn't know that unless you are familiar with the original. [2] https://youtu.be/Gflpf0DrCgw https://youtu.be/Gflpf0DrCgw Even people dying doesn't seem to get products removed https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/08/report-finds-more-than-4100-unsafe-or-recalled-listings-on-amazon/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/08/report-finds-mor... >A 23-year-old man in Missouri purchased a motorcycle helmet from Amazon that was at the time listed as certified as meeting US Department of Transportation safety standards. Later that year, however, he was killed in a crash while riding. A federal investigation later found that the helmet did not meet DOT standards and was recalled. The WSJ, however, found the product still for sale, with an active listing promising compliance, until the WSJ contacted Amazon to inquire about it.

sokoloff 6y ago

I’ve definitely gotten fakes from Amazon before. Most recent was a (pretty well done) fake Nike soccer shorts and shirt for my kid. It didn’t look quite right and I was able to confirm it as a fake. A2Z took care of it. It seems quite possible you may have had a fake and simply not detected it.

addicted 6y ago

I’ve received crap from Amazon. I’ve stopped buying from there entirely. The good thing was I noticed it. My worry is when I don’t. I can usually find something cheaper on a different site (best buy, B&H, Microcenter, Newegg...although Newegg has been really bad for me lately, monoprice, Walmart). And the rare couple of times I don’t, I’m willing to pay the $1-$2 more (I’m much better off in the long run anyways). Honestly, it’s really really hard to find something that is also available elsewhere, cheaper on Amazon than anywhere else for me. So I’m not willing to take the counterfeit risk, for basically no benefit.

mattferderer 6y ago
It seems Newegg & Walmart have started selling a lot of 3rd party items. I do not like this trend at all. I've bought from Newegg & been a huge fan for decades. Sad to see them ruin their image.
- boring_twenties 6y ago
  If I'm not mistaken, Newegg was sold to some Chinese company in 2017 or so. Even so, I haven't had any trouble with products bought directly from them since then (though the introduction of a captcha just to log into the damn site was rather annoying). Their third party marketplace appears to be a total cesspool, however. I bought some "new" hard drives from two separate vendors... both batches arrived beat to shit, with 35-50k hours of runtime and some with significant error counts. Only after the fact did I bother looking into it, and notice that ALL vendors in the hard drive category have ratings less than 80%, and plenty of reviews accusing them of selling used as new. Newegg obviously doesn't care. Sad, indeed.
- miek 6y ago
  On both Walmart and Newegg, you can filter for products sold only by Walmart/Newegg. It's a slightly annoying step, and I agree with you, it damages their image.
ciabattabread 6y ago
I just bought a car battery jump starter, and two years ago, when I was blissfully ignorant of the severity of the counterfeiting problem, I would’ve bought it from Amazon. Instead, I ordered from Home Depot. I’m still willing to buy from Amazon items that aren’t potential fire hazards.

Anon4Now 6y ago

Amazon sells over 100 million different products. At that scale, especially with 3rd party vendors, some customers are bound be to victims of fraud, while others are unaffected.

irrational 6y ago

How do you know that they weren’t counterfeit? It’s often hard to tell.

miek 6y ago

Another datapoint: an SD card purchased this week by a friend was fake. Seller was amazon, not a third party. If you want to test an SD card, this site details how: https://www.raymond.cc/blog/test-and-detect-fake-or-counterfeit-usb-flash-drives-bought-from-ebay-with-h2testw/ https://www.raymond.cc/blog/test-and-detect-fake-or-counterf...

lol636363 6y ago

I stopped buying water filters from Amazon after a few which looked exactly like real thing but tasted funny. Upon very close inspection, there were tiny differences but impossible to notice casually.

29athrowaway 6y ago
I use a water tester and pH indicator before drinking from a new water filter.
- pfranz 6y ago
  Do you have one that's not a counterfeit to recommend? ;)
rootusrootus 6y ago
Same here. Bought some fridge water filters, but they made otherwise perfectly good tap water taste like it had been chlorinated. I have no idea what nastiness was inside. Now I just suck it up and pay full price at HD.
MattSayar 6y ago
I've had multiple water filters break in the filter housing in my fridge, causing a leak onto the floor. I'm only thankful I was home when it happened or it would have flooded the kitchen, and likely more. Now I just don't use filters. The utility company filters the water well enough.

smcleod 6y ago

I've bought several things from Amazon (all electronics) that looked completely legit, but when they failed and I worked with the manufacturer on a warranty claim they turned out to be fakes/counterfeits - very clever ones but identifiable when you knew what to look for.

K2h 6y ago

I got a pair of Salomon running shoes, from the authenticated seller SALOMON , fulfilled by AMAZON and they looked great but felt just a little off. I put them next to my friends shoes and we found about 10 things of extremely minor differences that contributed to an entirely different fit and on very close inspection much poorer materials and construction. It would have not been possible to see this without putting my fakes from amazon directly next to the name brand. I had no idea! I did all the right things, verified the seller, the fulfiller, the manufacturer, the listing. Amazon only partially refunded as I didn't figure it out until after 30 days. They (Amazon) should be liable for fraud! and I say that as a stock holder and prime member of 10+ years. co-mingled inventory will be the death of them, or it should be if they ever get held accountable, but who knows maybe now too big to fail. This was full retail price, proper SKU, MFG picture. when I went back to review the order it seems a third party seller was substituted at check out which I could have missed. I went through extreme and deliberate lengths to purchase exactly what I wanted from the manufacture and pay retail prices and still got fooled. I was actively going through mental checklists during the purchasing stage on amazon to avoid counterfeit and didn't succeed. Majorly annoyed. I have even worked the packing line at amazon. Over Christmas in 2000 I worked the line to pay some school bills, so I can even visualize some of the failure modes. yup.. still not enough.

Osiris 6y ago
I've also thought that I haven't received counterfeit products from Amazon, but hearing your story it's possible I have but they were good enough that I didn't notice as I didn't have an authentic product to compare it to.

annoyingnoob 6y ago

Maybe you didn't notice. I've purchased many products from Amazon that were fakes. The worst was a SanDisk SD card that died with my honeymoon pictures on it. Turns out it was a knock-off, missing some SanDisk factory hot stamps. It came in full retail packaging, with user manual - it looked completely correct if you didn't know to look for the hot stamp on the back. By the time I figured it out that vendor was gone from Amazon.

pfranz 6y ago

I haven't looked too closely, but I've bought Duracell / Energizer batteries from Amazon and I suspect they're counterfeit because they die suspiciously quickly. I thought my hardware was broken, but Amazon's batteries seem to work well.

jacobkg 6y ago
I guess that’s an advantage of buying Amazon branded merchandise? It’s the only brand you know won’t be counterfeited since no other seller has it in their stock.

dboreham 6y ago

Definitely had it happen more than once. Photographic filters. Clothing. Many items I consider buying have review comments relating to fakes. Plus it's well documented Amzn deliberately comingles inventory. So I buy my filters from B&H and my North Face from...North Face. Hopefully they aren't using Amazon fultillment.

nikanj 6y ago

It's like saying car crashes are not a problem, because you drive thousands of miles per year and have never gotten in a crash