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> than spend the money on QC/QA staff that could snuff the problem out in days or weeks even with relatively little training and in a way that can't be easily g

> than spend the money on QC/QA staff that could snuff the problem out in days or weeks even with relatively little training and in a way that can't be easily gamed by counterfeiters. This is the kind of "I don't know any details about the problem but I am certain it is simple and easy to solve" mindset that I hate. Do you seriously think that, if Amazon could snuff out the problem in days or weeks by hiring some people, they wouldn't do it? They absolutely would. The problem is more complicated as some other commenters have pointed out. Amazon sees itself as a marketplace for third-parties sellers and they see solutions such as 'stop allowing third party sellers' to be as ridiculous as 'stop charging for your products'. They have built logistic networks around this third party seller idea (e.g. co-mingling) that are clearly failing right now, but these are real world systems that have been built up over decades and are not easy to change without several years of investment. Do you even realize how much revenue Amazon has and how existential the counterfeit problem is? My guess would be that if you could actually solve the counterfeit problem given a budget of a $1B, Amazon would do it without a second thought.

gamblor956 6y ago
Do you seriously think that, if Amazon could snuff out the problem in days or weeks by hiring some people, they wouldn't do it? Yes, I do. Because that is the choice they have actually made. What i suggested is SOP for Amazon's competitors and indeed the retail market as a whole due to product liability laws in the US and UK. Not hiring QC is therefore a deliberate choice. My guess would be that if you could actually solve the counterfeit problem given a budget of a $1B, Amazon would do it without a second thought. Strongly disagree, because that's a far bigger budget then they would actually need to spend on QC staff and they still haven't done it. (They could hire over 25000 qc staffers for 1 billion. They don't need that many, a few hundred will suffice based on SOP qc processes.)
- solidasparagus 6y ago
  > They could hire over 25000 qc staffers for 1 billion. They don't need that many, a few hundred will suffice based on SOP qc processes How exactly would you do this? In the last year 3.4 billion items were sold by American SMBs alone on Amazon. That is 110 items per second. If you hired 25000 QC staffers working at perfect efficiency, they would need to each handle over 1 item per minute. And ensuring that something, often inside of packaging, is not counterfeit is not exactly trivial work that can be pumped out like this. Or you could approach it from the supply side. 45 new sellers join Amazon every minute, and many of those packages never even go through Amazon's hands. And catching a fraudulent seller does not solve the problem - they will just rebrand and reenter the platform. Comparable marketplaces like eBay have the exact same problem. You are applying principles from a completely different business model - retail - to any online marketplace and pretending they are the same when they are absolutely not. Please, show me how a few hundred QC people are going to solve this problem. If you have a real solution, Amazon will pay hand over first for it - but actually want to dig into the details of the problem is so much harder than standing on your soapbox and yelling about how Amazon is crippled by greed and stupidity. Curation at scale is hard.
  - alexvoda 6y ago
    I call bullshit. Do not mislead. The 110 items per second is the wrong metric and you know it. You only need to review all items, not all transactions. I can not believe you did not know this. And you keep ignoring the fact that users can not report items as counterfeit. That is a change that can be made in one sprint (form workflow + localisation). Without proper data on what is counterfeit your legion of ML people will do nothing. You are either willfully misleading in order to defend your employer or you drank too much kool-aid and are unable to escape the reality dispersion field.
Judgmentality 6y ago
The reason Amazon doesn't stop counterfeiters from selling on their marketplace is because Amazon makes money from counterfeiters selling on their marketplace. Why does Amazon not let you select "counterfeit item" when making a return? I mean what the hell good are all those ML researchers if they can't even get the input data because I'm not able to mark something as counterfeit? Garbage in garbage out. Amazon has long since moved from the "value creation" to the "value extraction" phase of being a growth-obsessed company. Fuck Amazon.

gamblor956 6y ago

Do you seriously think that, if Amazon could snuff out the problem in days or weeks by hiring some people, they wouldn't do it? Yes, I do. Because that is the choice they have actually made. What i suggested is SOP for Amazon's competitors and indeed the retail market as a whole due to product liability laws in the US and UK. Not hiring QC is therefore a deliberate choice. My guess would be that if you could actually solve the counterfeit problem given a budget of a $1B, Amazon would do it without a second thought. Strongly disagree, because that's a far bigger budget then they would actually need to spend on QC staff and they still haven't done it. (They could hire over 25000 qc staffers for 1 billion. They don't need that many, a few hundred will suffice based on SOP qc processes.)

solidasparagus 6y ago
> They could hire over 25000 qc staffers for 1 billion. They don't need that many, a few hundred will suffice based on SOP qc processes How exactly would you do this? In the last year 3.4 billion items were sold by American SMBs alone on Amazon. That is 110 items per second. If you hired 25000 QC staffers working at perfect efficiency, they would need to each handle over 1 item per minute. And ensuring that something, often inside of packaging, is not counterfeit is not exactly trivial work that can be pumped out like this. Or you could approach it from the supply side. 45 new sellers join Amazon every minute, and many of those packages never even go through Amazon's hands. And catching a fraudulent seller does not solve the problem - they will just rebrand and reenter the platform. Comparable marketplaces like eBay have the exact same problem. You are applying principles from a completely different business model - retail - to any online marketplace and pretending they are the same when they are absolutely not. Please, show me how a few hundred QC people are going to solve this problem. If you have a real solution, Amazon will pay hand over first for it - but actually want to dig into the details of the problem is so much harder than standing on your soapbox and yelling about how Amazon is crippled by greed and stupidity. Curation at scale is hard.
- alexvoda 6y ago
  I call bullshit. Do not mislead. The 110 items per second is the wrong metric and you know it. You only need to review all items, not all transactions. I can not believe you did not know this. And you keep ignoring the fact that users can not report items as counterfeit. That is a change that can be made in one sprint (form workflow + localisation). Without proper data on what is counterfeit your legion of ML people will do nothing. You are either willfully misleading in order to defend your employer or you drank too much kool-aid and are unable to escape the reality dispersion field.

Judgmentality 6y ago

The reason Amazon doesn't stop counterfeiters from selling on their marketplace is because Amazon makes money from counterfeiters selling on their marketplace. Why does Amazon not let you select "counterfeit item" when making a return? I mean what the hell good are all those ML researchers if they can't even get the input data because I'm not able to mark something as counterfeit? Garbage in garbage out. Amazon has long since moved from the "value creation" to the "value extraction" phase of being a growth-obsessed company. Fuck Amazon.