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When I left Amazon the fastest growing team in the country was the antifraud team and they already had like 2 floors of agents working on it. But I also heard t

by yomly 6y ago

When I left Amazon the fastest growing team in the country was the antifraud team and they already had like 2 floors of agents working on it. But I also heard that issues which hadn't occured 3 times in a row were dropped on the floor because of Amazon's scale. This was quite a few years ago now, I can only imagine Amazon is spending more money on the problem now vs then. not to defend Amazon, but maybe the scale of the problem is too big - maybe there is a long tail of fraudsters similar to the long tail of illicit content on youtube.

markdown 6y ago
> but maybe the scale of the problem is too big They control the scale of the problem, and can raise the barrier to entry for new 3rd party vendors at any time.
myself248 6y ago
Somehow Home Depot sells a lot of things and none of them appear graymarket or fraudulent. This problem exists because Amazon wanted it to exist. They chose to do business in a way that avoids traditional checks and balances. The scale of the problem is entirely on them.
- ianai 6y ago
  Agree. I think the regulation should include “if your platform is too large for you to police then you and your platform must be broken up into smaller, manageable parts”
- nogabebop23 6y ago
  What about Walmart? They have a big online presence and sell a lot of 3rd party - anyone know what their counterfeit situation looks like? I've only ever bought diapers from them and if they were fakes it seems oily rags (or whatever is in the fakes ones) absorb as well as the real deal...
  - brianwawok 6y ago
    As a seller, you can generally create your own listings on either platform. Or sell on an existing listing. So nothing to stop you from selling counterfeits. I don’t keep up with the marketplace requirements as maybe I should, but historically the biggest difference was Walmart.com required sellers to be based in the US, and amazon.com allowed sellers from all countries. This hurdle alone can make sellers much easier to chase down and throw the legal book at them.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
mumblemumble 6y ago
My guess is that, in this case, "too big" actually means "above the fraud team on the org chart." They could presumably pull the rug out from under fraudsters, at relatively little cost. Perhaps by making some policy changes that alter the cost/benefit tradeoff for fraud, or that limit the blast radius so that it doesn't render he entire platform untrustworthy. But I'm guessing the changes in question would be tantamount to an attack on some executive's golden calf. I could hazard a few specific ideas in Amazon's case, but really I'm just extrapolating from the fact that I've seen that this is how it generally works at any sufficiently large company.
dutch3000 6y ago
if these companies can’t handle the scale, then maybe they need to reduce their scope. “it’s hard to find a solution” doesn’t cut it anymore. either amazon and these giant tech companies find solutions (privacy, graphic content, insert big scale tech problem) to these problems or they suffer the consequences of liability. or they reduce the scope of the service.
- Spivak 6y ago
  Which is nice in theory but what happens when legislators (and customers) come back with the case that the value of them operating at their scale outweighs the harm of fraud.
  - dutch3000 6y ago
    facebook? value?
rorykoehler 6y ago
If the scale is too big for Amazon to handle then Amazons business model has failed and they should be shut down until they get a handle on it. I don’t understand why common sense and the law went out the window just because we changed the medium?
- Spivak 6y ago
  Because if you were trying to make a case to Congress to get legislation passed that would them down you wouldn’t get past “even with the fraud Amazon is still delivering a huge amount of value to consumers because of their scale and we don’t want to disrupt that.” Like you will get nowhere arguing that billion dollar US controlled giants should get shut down or broken up unless it’s a last resort.
  - rorykoehler 6y ago
    They could shut out all 3rd party sellers until they are verified. Amazon would still be making truck loads of money from Amazon basics etc. Most customers might not even notice any change when buying.
    - salawat 6y ago
      Verifying is useless if you aren't also tracking inventory provenance, which Amazon can't do while also being able to compete in their own market, as they would have absolutely no way to argue they weren't operating on the basis of privileged access to third-party information via analyzing specific inventory granularity sales flow. That's the issue Amazon absolutely does not want to happen. Getting locked out of their own marketplace or aggregated sales data would hugely undermine the value proposition in terms of de facto earning and profit taking potential, while at the same time undermining public faith in the overall market. Amazon can't admit they can do anything about counterfeits because no one in their right mind wants to contribute to a platform that empowers and informs a potential competitor. This is becoming what I consider velvet glove business combat 101 that no one openly admits to.
      - 6y ago
lotsofpulp 6y ago
> not to defend Amazon, but maybe the scale of the problem is too big There is no defense for Amazon. The solution is simple. Put back the ability to filter for items shipped and sold by Amazon.com only, and stop commingling inventory. Amazon will never do this because they don’t want to be in the retail business with 3% profit margins, they want to be in the platform business with 15%+ profit margins. Hence I take my business to other retailers willing to sacrifice some of their profit margin to ensure I don’t receive garbage the first time.
heavyset_go 6y ago
> I can only imagine Amazon is spending more money on the problem now vs then. They might be spending money, but that doesn't mean the money is actually going towards fixing the problem at hand. When I go to return an item, I can't even select that the reason for my return is that I suspect or know that the item is counterfeited. I have to lie and choose between several somewhat related options like "Inaccurate website description" or "Wrong item was sent" among other things. To me, it seems like if Amazon were serious about addressing rampant counterfeiting on their platform, they would collect stats from the customers that suffer from Amazon's lack of quality control.

by yomly 6y ago

markdown 6y ago

> but maybe the scale of the problem is too big They control the scale of the problem, and can raise the barrier to entry for new 3rd party vendors at any time.

myself248 6y ago

Somehow Home Depot sells a lot of things and none of them appear graymarket or fraudulent. This problem exists because Amazon wanted it to exist. They chose to do business in a way that avoids traditional checks and balances. The scale of the problem is entirely on them.

ianai 6y ago
Agree. I think the regulation should include “if your platform is too large for you to police then you and your platform must be broken up into smaller, manageable parts”
nogabebop23 6y ago
What about Walmart? They have a big online presence and sell a lot of 3rd party - anyone know what their counterfeit situation looks like? I've only ever bought diapers from them and if they were fakes it seems oily rags (or whatever is in the fakes ones) absorb as well as the real deal...
- brianwawok 6y ago
  As a seller, you can generally create your own listings on either platform. Or sell on an existing listing. So nothing to stop you from selling counterfeits. I don’t keep up with the marketplace requirements as maybe I should, but historically the biggest difference was Walmart.com required sellers to be based in the US, and amazon.com allowed sellers from all countries. This hurdle alone can make sellers much easier to chase down and throw the legal book at them.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

mumblemumble 6y ago

My guess is that, in this case, "too big" actually means "above the fraud team on the org chart." They could presumably pull the rug out from under fraudsters, at relatively little cost. Perhaps by making some policy changes that alter the cost/benefit tradeoff for fraud, or that limit the blast radius so that it doesn't render he entire platform untrustworthy. But I'm guessing the changes in question would be tantamount to an attack on some executive's golden calf. I could hazard a few specific ideas in Amazon's case, but really I'm just extrapolating from the fact that I've seen that this is how it generally works at any sufficiently large company.

dutch3000 6y ago

if these companies can’t handle the scale, then maybe they need to reduce their scope. “it’s hard to find a solution” doesn’t cut it anymore. either amazon and these giant tech companies find solutions (privacy, graphic content, insert big scale tech problem) to these problems or they suffer the consequences of liability. or they reduce the scope of the service.

Spivak 6y ago
Which is nice in theory but what happens when legislators (and customers) come back with the case that the value of them operating at their scale outweighs the harm of fraud.
- dutch3000 6y ago
  facebook? value?

rorykoehler 6y ago

If the scale is too big for Amazon to handle then Amazons business model has failed and they should be shut down until they get a handle on it. I don’t understand why common sense and the law went out the window just because we changed the medium?

Spivak 6y ago
Because if you were trying to make a case to Congress to get legislation passed that would them down you wouldn’t get past “even with the fraud Amazon is still delivering a huge amount of value to consumers because of their scale and we don’t want to disrupt that.” Like you will get nowhere arguing that billion dollar US controlled giants should get shut down or broken up unless it’s a last resort.
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  They could shut out all 3rd party sellers until they are verified. Amazon would still be making truck loads of money from Amazon basics etc. Most customers might not even notice any change when buying.
  - salawat 6y ago
    Verifying is useless if you aren't also tracking inventory provenance, which Amazon can't do while also being able to compete in their own market, as they would have absolutely no way to argue they weren't operating on the basis of privileged access to third-party information via analyzing specific inventory granularity sales flow. That's the issue Amazon absolutely does not want to happen. Getting locked out of their own marketplace or aggregated sales data would hugely undermine the value proposition in terms of de facto earning and profit taking potential, while at the same time undermining public faith in the overall market. Amazon can't admit they can do anything about counterfeits because no one in their right mind wants to contribute to a platform that empowers and informs a potential competitor. This is becoming what I consider velvet glove business combat 101 that no one openly admits to.
    - 6y ago

lotsofpulp 6y ago

> not to defend Amazon, but maybe the scale of the problem is too big There is no defense for Amazon. The solution is simple. Put back the ability to filter for items shipped and sold by Amazon.com only, and stop commingling inventory. Amazon will never do this because they don’t want to be in the retail business with 3% profit margins, they want to be in the platform business with 15%+ profit margins. Hence I take my business to other retailers willing to sacrifice some of their profit margin to ensure I don’t receive garbage the first time.

heavyset_go 6y ago

> I can only imagine Amazon is spending more money on the problem now vs then. They might be spending money, but that doesn't mean the money is actually going towards fixing the problem at hand. When I go to return an item, I can't even select that the reason for my return is that I suspect or know that the item is counterfeited. I have to lie and choose between several somewhat related options like "Inaccurate website description" or "Wrong item was sent" among other things. To me, it seems like if Amazon were serious about addressing rampant counterfeiting on their platform, they would collect stats from the customers that suffer from Amazon's lack of quality control.