11 ms·

Amazon Still Has a Counterfeit Problem

117 points by yedava 2y ago

mrsilencedogood 2y ago
Is amazon's model even profitable for these low-price high-volume parts without its binning system? I literally do not buy things off amazon that fall into these "binning problem" categories, or anything easily counterfeitable. I'll buy from amazon for things that essentially cannot be counterfeit (GPUs, hard drives, things where counterfeits would be more likely to be a brick of the same weight rather than something that worked but was crappy or dangerous), or where i'm essentially trying to get "counterfeit"-grade stuff (stuff like plastic or metal garden spikes, where i just want the cheapest possible thing that will hold my irrigating tubing in place). Everything else comes from target or the OEM's website store.
- mitthrowaway2 2y ago
  In my area at least, even garden spikes on Amazon generally cost at least $14.99, while I can get them at my dollar store for $3.99. I think prices on Amazon are pretty absurd for "counterfeit"-grade stuff. But they apparently expect you aren't going to do any price comparison, because that would require getting up and going to the dollar store to see if they have garden spikes. (HN entrepreneurs: I'd love a map-based consumer-products search engine where I could just type an item description into a search bar and see a map of stores in my area with prices and inventory.)
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    Because the shipping price is included cheaper items have a higher percentage of the price going to Amazon for shipping. That's why cheap things are always much cheaper in person.
    - mitthrowaway2 2y ago
      No doubt, but Amazon communicates it to the consumer as $14.99 "with free shipping". To the consumer who habitually shops on Amazon and doesn't realize their dollar store sells it for $3.99, this sends the message that "$14.99 is just how much garden stakes cost these days, so I may as well buy them from Amazon who will ship them for free". If Amazon listed them for $3.99 with $11 shipping, it's the same total expense, but it would transparently signal to the consumer that the item itself ought to be cheaply available nearby if they get up and look for it. Amazon doesn't want that thought to interrupt the 1-click checkout flow. And it apparently works; enough people seem to have internalized the idea that everything costs at least $15-$20 that they don't question it anymore. Soon your local dollar store is losing the economies of scale it used to have, cutting inventory and raising prices...
- tanjtanjtanj 2y ago
  > GPUs I wouldn’t be so sure, a good friend of mine ordered a GPU and it was an older and much cheaper model with the shroud replaced and flashed to call itself the newer model in windows. He would not have found out except he immediately ran a benchmark that returned an extremely low score and then investigated from there.
  - marxisttemp 2y ago
    I’ve heard tell of people doing the same with CPUs at Walmart.
  - devsda 2y ago
    I wonder how the conversation with Amazon customer support goes in that situation. If it says X model on the label, and OS also reports it as X it becomes tough to make a case for returns.
  - ProllyInfamous 2y ago
    >GPUs Additionally, there is fear that you receive the "actual item," but it has been used detrimentally (usually: operated 24/7 too hot) for cryptomining or genAI. This actually happened to me once (VEGA64) and I was surprised when Amazon authorized a full refund after the GPU failed.
  - mrsilencedogood 2y ago
    "it was an older and much cheaper model with the shroud replaced and flashed to call itself the newer model in windows" I really though that anyone going to these lengths wouldn't be bothering to do this to scam on amazon and would instead be gainfully employed??? What the hell. I guess I can't buy anything on amazon anymore. Oh well.
- zrobotics 2y ago
  Hard drives are definitely a suspect item, they are counterfeited. I needed some 6TB Seagate drives ~6 months ago to replace the drives in a security NVR, our local supplier was out of stock and they were available on Amazon. The drives appeared genuine, they showed up in OEM style packaging which was expected, I connected 1 of 6 to a Debian machine to check it an it reported the correct capacity. Flash forward to 2 weeks later and I get a notification the storage is full, when the capacity should have been enough for 5-6 weeks of storage. Further benchmarking showed they were actually 2TB drives that reported incorrect size. Fwiw they did match the read/write performance if the genuine drives, which doesn't mean much since that class of drives isn't terribly fast but are supposedly optimized for reliability for drives that spend ~99% of their life continuously writing and rarely reading. At least Amazon took them back as a return and did offer a refund. I had thought it was only memory sticks and SSDs that were being counterfeited, but apparently that is also happening for spinning rust drives as well.
  - mrsilencedogood 2y ago
    "Further benchmarking showed they were actually 2TB drives that reported incorrect size." what. ugh. one less thing i can buy on amazon, I guess. gosh dangit.
    - xsmasher 2y ago
      You're going to love this. https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/1atu0tk/this_fake_2tb_external_hard_drive_contains_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/1atu0tk/...
- advisedwang 2y ago
  Printer ink feels about as low-price high-volume as my own blood.
ProllyInfamous 2y ago
Louis Rossmann just released a video on this about Toshiba hard disks [1]. I canceled my Prime account in 2018, after my last online order for memory. Now, I only purchase in-person from large vendors with direct-from-manufacturer custody [this costs more, obviously]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeUNC7z5MM0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeUNC7z5MM0
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  > Now, I only purchase in-person from large vendors with direct-from-manufacturer custody [this costs more, obviously]. Could you say which you've had luck with?
  - ProllyInfamous 2y ago
    Really depends on the item/product, but for example I only purchase uniterruptable power supplies from CostCo, because if it breaks I can get a new one immediately without shipping fees. For hard drives, I usually wait for OfficeMax sales/coupons, and then stock up. Sometimes I have to drive to Atlanta (about three hours, round trip) but there are some incredible electronic parts stores in huge cities. Regardless of what/where I purchase, I always open items inside the store (before leaving, near the customer service desk) because I have literally had "new" items contain hazmat returns (e.g. a "new" septic pump, a la feces).
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
  I've had better luck buying memory on EBay from Shenzhen recyclers! I'm done with Amazon.
- dudus 2y ago
  Ask about price match. Often times they are happy to match the price with Amazon as long as it's shipped from Amazon.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  The only downside about canceling Prime is that you can only do it once. I canceled prime because they started putting ads in their video service, despite the fact that I was paying for it. That was a fun one. Now it’s like, well, what else can I do? I guess I’m boycotting Amazon, but is it really boycotting when their store is “here’s a random electronic device, maybe it is what you ordered,” I mean, why would I place an order for that in the first place? I’m also boycotting gun store that only sells footguns.
tomwheeler 2y ago
What do you mean "still" here? It seems like it's as bad as it ever was to me.
- orwin 2y ago
  I do think that in Europe at least, it seems to be better. A bit more fencing it seems but the quality seems to be better than during covid from what I heard.
- liquidpele 2y ago
  What do you mean, is a company named “TIFHSGFN” not normal??
Mistletoe 2y ago
I don’t really get the argument in this article. If a consumer can’t notice the brand name in big caps letters of LEMERO or MYTONER as the first word and throughout the text instead of Epson this seems like a PEBKAC problem.
- advisedwang 2y ago
  I agree. In fact I am glad there is a certain amount of low-cost knock-offs. It gives me a cheap (if unreliable) option and is a bit of a force to making brands make their products reasonably priced.
- pixxel 2y ago
  Congratulations! You know something that others are completely unaware of.
- DianVDWalt 2y ago
  [flagged]
AnotherGoodName 2y ago
Surprisingly I couldn’t reproduce a glaring and longstanding issue. You can google 2tb flash drives and see a ton advertised for <$100. These are all fake. Surprisingly Amazon doesn’t have any!
- michaelt 2y ago
  Come to the UK where Amazon offers 512GB flash drives for £15 [1] [1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/512GB-High-Waterproof-Compatible-Computer-External/dp/B0D9PWKTTL/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/512GB-High-Waterproof-Compatible-Co...
  - AnotherGoodName 2y ago
    Ooof. I honestly don’t know how you can buy a usb thumb drive anymore. Even when you pay the right price you might still get a scam.
    - Ekaros 2y ago
      And I wonder how good some of the real ones are either... To certain capacity the prices feel laughably cheap.
    - radicality 2y ago
      For electronics, some reputable places are B&H, Digikey, Mouser
ilamont 2y ago
This why I buy Brother cartridges from Staples, and one of the reasons I cancelled Prime. Amazon can’t be trusted thanks its inability to manage 3rd party sellers and grey market inventory.
- marknutter 2y ago
  My wife recently bought a brother toner cartridge off Amazon and it ended up damaging our printer. We later found out it was counterfeit when the flimsy brother logo pealed off (and after a printer repair person mentioned there was something weird about the toner we had used). I'm on the verge of cancelling Prime myself.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  I guess they have a "counterfeit crimes unit" now, news to me but I abandonded Amazon over 5 years ago. > “if we find them”—neatly describes the problem. Doesn't pass the smell test. Amazon has more compute than almost anyone and could easily afford to run AI or heuristics to find and shut down these stores the moment they pop up.
- FireBeyond 2y ago
  I refuse to buy at Staples. Last time I went to buy memory and a new HDD from them (and very common brands, and well stocked, so nothing esoteric) they wanted nearly twice the MSRP - over $200 for a $129 hard drive. And they wouldn't budge.
dehrmann 2y ago
> Amazon, which reaps ad revenue from the infringing competitors I've actually found ads on Amazon to be more detrimental to my experience than marketplace shenanigans and ALLCAPS sellers.
nothercastle 2y ago
Ordered 2 flash drives both are probably counterfeit the first 1-2gb of write are at spec and then the speed drops to 1/3 of spec. Anything you order from Amazon has to be tested for counterfeit. If you can’t verify it’s not counterfeit then assume it is. Even if Amazon is listed as the seller they are clearly swapping in someone else’s fakes. Mine has a secondary retail barcode label on them. I’m going to send them back with a note in a text file saying they are fake. See if Amazon resells them.
- jerf 2y ago
  "Ordered 2 flash drives both are probably counterfeit the first 1-2gb of write are at spec and then the speed drops to 1/3 of spec." If you're writing to them constantly, that doesn't prove they are counterfeit. They will thermally throttle. Naturally, specs don't talk so much about that part. I have an older one that throttles down to almost nothing, but it is still technically writing correctly. I don't use it much anymore, because it's like 16GB which is nothing now, but I used to "liquid cool" it... by holding it with my fingers while writing. I suppose you could call it blood cooling for some metal cred. It wouldn't recover full speed, my blood cooling rig didn't have enough heat transfer (it's got some pretty serious rate limits on how much heat it can handle), but it would noticeably speed back up. Now, if you can't write the entire space and read it all back with the data being retained, you've got counterfeit.
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    This has nothing to do with heat. Almost all SSD's have an SLC mode where part of the drive is operated in fast SLC mode. After the SLC cache is filled it will write to the slower TLC/QLC area. Any SSD benchmark will show this. SMR hard drives also do this.
    - jerf 2y ago
      SSDs I know about, but is that true of every USB flash drive? Or any? And it definitely sometimes has to do with heat, or I couldn't speed my drive up on-the-fly by cooling it.
bromuk 2y ago
Pretty much correct, I received a fake razer mouse that I ordered last month. Luckily it was a direct replacement for the same one I purchased > 3 years ago so could compare. Amazon provided no way to report the counterfeit and when talking to their support just wanted me to return it as fault. No doubt this will go back into the supply chain and someone unbeknownst to counterfeits will receive it.
- meowster 2y ago
  Take a sharpie and write "counterfeit" on it before sending it back.
massysett 2y ago
None of the examples given in this article are counterfeit. A counterfeit HP ink cartridge says it's HP, but it's not. None of these products claim to be HP. One bears no brand mark at all. One is "Ankink" brand. Same for Epson: we have "MYTONER" and "LEMERO". Amazon is a flea market trafficking in huge quantities of suspect goods. When I go on there I know to be on guard. But the article is wrong when it says that goods that do not bear an HP, Canon, or Epson brand mark - with some of them bearing clear brand marks for other companies - are "counterfeit" or even "knock-offs". This doesn't even seem to be a problem to me - if you shop at a flea market, be on guard lest you get junk. If you don't like it, try avoiding the flea market.
- groby_b 2y ago
  I'd like avoiding the flea market, but all the reputable vendors either only sell via flee market or have egregious policies like "fax in your request in triplicate, wait three weeks, we'll ship something, you can't return it". The problem here is a near-monopoly enabling a flea market that skirts just this site of legality. Sure, it's a lookalike, not a counterfeit, but with misleading copy to make sure people fall for it.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    It’s nowhere near a monopoly. You can go to hp.com or epson.com or staples.com if you want to avoid the flea market.
    - meepmorp 2y ago
      But I want flea market prices!
- Joel_Mckay 2y ago
  I looked into the fake issues while looking for Mitutoyo tools for our friends kid that started first year engineering. This is difficult as the counterfeits look almost identical. 1. went to Mitutoyo website to get list of authorized sellers 2. surprised Amazon itself is on the list 3. Purchased a number of authentic Mitutoyo calipers and micrometers from Amazon itself 4. Ran down Clough42 list of 17 signs to double check if the tool is fake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG6I2gNGVwM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG6I2gNGVwM 5. Successfully registered equipment on Mitutoyo website 6. Checked quality on reference standards Note, Starrett has a website with an estore, so is far easier to verify NIST certificate. If the work is low tolerance, than accuracy and repeatability won't matter anyway. However, when it comes to metrology or PPE the high-end products set the best possible outcome for your workmanship and safety. Mind you, I couldn't convince a golden retriever to stop obsessing over the taste of free garbage. =3
rahimnathwani 2y ago
Packaging meant to emulate a brand’s design without using its logo can be a violation of copyright laws. HP actually won a federal court case in March against a Chinese manufacturing company called Ejet, which HP accused of infringing upon its “trade dress,” the technical term for packaging design. The linked court case says nothing about copyright. And as far as I can tell, 'trade dress' protection isn't rooted in copyright law at all. IANAL.
- oyashirochama 2y ago
  You're thinking trademark for the USA, which is a MUCH stronger protection and rules, and quicker to prosecute too.
yazaddaruvala 2y ago
AMA, I led the eng team that built Project Zero (named in the article) and also designed or helped design most of Amazon's automated detection systems for Brands. Disclaimer: I haven't worked at Amazon for 3 years - my info is likely stale.
- jlund-molfese 2y ago
  If I'm ordering a particular product from Amazon, is there a way to know if commingling is done? Does Amazon commingle everything fulfilled by Amazon by default, or just high-volume items?
  - yazaddaruvala 2y ago
    I don't believe commingling is customer visible. That said, as I understand it, Sellers can opt-out. FWIW, while "counterfeit", technically Amazon doesn't consider commingling to be Brand related abuse which is what I worked on. Abuse of commingling would be handled by other systems related to Seller fraud.
- tmoertel 2y ago
  Did that Transparency thing with the code stickers and the verification app ever make an appreciable difference?
  - yazaddaruvala 2y ago
    Oh man.. buy me a G&T for the whole story :) I would say Not enough for how many engineers they had. It had all of the promise, and was frankly mismanaged. They kept promoting engineers who wanted it to become an AWS service (agnostic of Amazon) rather than solving the Amazon problems at hand. For example they built a new product identifier… Amazon did not need yet another database of products. This stuff was constantly slowing them down to less than a crawl. Last I heard all of that was canceled, and their focus brought back to Amazon Retail only problems. But tech debt and culture issues like that are really hard to unwind.
eth0up 2y ago
Project Farm did a great episode on counterfeit tool batteries [1]. If I remember correctly, both ebay and Amazon were culprits, at least in the comments. I personally find that one of Amazon's main affronts is interfering with customer reviews in order to maintain artificially higher ratings. For example, my reviews stopped processing and would never post. This happened after leaving honest critical reviews. Note that +90% of my reviews are neutral or positive. Additionally, they removed my ability to search reviews, replacing it with Rufus, a completely incompetent and worthless search bot. This, I believe, cleverly prevents prospective buyers from accessing useful customer feedback or experience unless the buyer is willing to manually parse all reviews, which ain't happening. Amazon does a lot to convolute reviews, including jumping to the wrong review after selecting a product to review from the order history. It's an extremely useful and convenient resource, but thoroughly rotten. The algorithms are flagrantly evil and a very deliberate and specific search for a high-end product, the desired product will often be displayed below several or many more cereal-box quality products worth less than their packaging. Where they win is shipping, variety and pricing. Hard to beat, but I never order anything serious on Amazon unless the seller is the actual company of the product, and even then... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kTTGGv6-syA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kTTGGv6-syA
- datadrivenangel 2y ago
  You could get rufus to answer questions about python code though!
  - eth0up 2y ago
    I've been using Perplexity for that and have been impressed, when it works. I'm not sure if it's token caching or what, but the session inevitably turns to shit at some point and for the last two weeks I am convinced I've seen a reduction in general/overall quality. Rufus is a good example of the deleterious capabilities of AI.
neilv 2y ago
I don't have a big problem with the Amazon listings that don't claim to be genuine, other than that Amazon lets them DoS search results with tens or hundreds of listings of essentially the same product. What I hate is outright counterfeits. Especially given Amazon's commingling of product sourced by third-party "sellers". (Solely due to counterfeits, I don't buy OTC pharmaceuticals on Amazon, I mostly avoid buying flash and SSD devices on Amazon, and I've recently started buying shoes and clothing direct from the brands' DTC Web sites when possible.) I hate counterfeits so much, I worked at an anti-counterfeiting early startup. In our marketing and sales efforts -- analyzing many kinds of product categories, and approaching many companies (unfortunately, much of it during peak Covid panic) -- we actually didn't have much success getting brands willing to pay for an anti-counterfeiting solution. For reasons unclear to me, we had more success by pitching the same tech&process cost as anti-gray-market-diversion, rather than for the rampant counterfeiting of their brand that we could show. (Maybe sometimes because there were always a bunch of execs charged with global distribution, and this was on their plates.) More predictably, some brands seemed most interested in using variations on the technology for end consumer engagement. Once stakeholders brought into enterprise sales meetings started latching on, when you initially approached with anti-counterfeiting or anti-gray-market story. I can see that, but please let me end counterfeits in the process.
BenFranklin100 2y ago
Pro tip: avoid buying expensive electronics or power tools on Amazon. For instance, Amazon is not a distributor for Milwaukee power tools. Milwaukee will honor the date of manufacture stamp for the warranty, but not the date of purchase from Amazon. I bought a ‘new’ Milwaukee power tool off Amazon which had a manufacturer date of three years ago. Another “new” tool was obviously used. Milwaukee will however honor the date of purchase if bought from Home Depot, which is an official distributor. Amazon still has a huge problem with its third party vendors. We got screwed with several ‘new’ Lenovo laptops that went belly up in six months. And I don’t believe Amazon has fully sorted out their SKU problem where third party vendors launder used products with new. If you see something cheap on Amazon, there’s almost always a reason.
- hellcow 2y ago
  It should be illegal for companies to sell products like this without a giant warning. "Your warranty will not be valid, since we're not even supposed to sell this product." It feels like fraud. Wild that it's A-OK for Amazon to profit on this at the expense of the consumer.
  - BenFranklin100 2y ago
    It’s sleazy behavior for sure, which is why I no longer buy any expensive items off Amazon.
  - dingaling 2y ago
    "Unauthorized retailer" doesn't mean they shouldn't be selling the product, just that they don't adhere to the manufacturer's pricing and advertising policies. So to flip it on its head, why should the manufacturer be allowed to constrain the warranty just because a retailer doesn't toe the line on pricing?
miked85 2y ago
I really only buy stuff from Amazon that is unlikely to be counterfeit. I haven't even had great luck with that approach. Better to go through the manufacturer's site, or a more reputable site.
i_love_cookies 2y ago
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BenFranklin100 2y ago
I recently ordered a bag of candy from Amazon. It arrived inside a closed Amazon package, but was opened. I’m guessing the packing person was hungry that day. (Amazon refused to accept a return as it was foodstuff and I didn’t have the energy to spend 45 minutes on the phone/chat arguing with them.)
bluGill 2y ago
When I want something I look for a small company that sells it. Usually under a name like thing-supplies.com. they are similar prices but the small company is focused on that thing and so can tell you the differencs in what looks the same.
MattSteelblade 2y ago
My wife purchased a Stanley cup through Amazon and 5 months later its thermal regulation stopped working. She contacted Stanley about their lifetime warranty and after some back and forth with Stanley's rep, they determined that the item was counterfeit and because Amazon is not one of their authorized resellers there wasn't anything they would do. This was purchased through the "Stanley" store but was fulfilled by a third party and not Amazon directly, something my wife wasn't even aware Amazon did. The seller never responded to contact and Amazon refused to post the review complaining that it was counterfeit.
- tantalor 2y ago
  > refused to post the review complaining that it was counterfeit That sounds like a legal liability for them, as in "exhibit D demonstrates the defendant knowingly kept a fraudulent listing available for purchase" /ianal
- somethoughts 2y ago
  The hypocrisy is apparent when you notice that the pretty much the only brand of products that miraculously does not have third party resellers listed (and hence escapes third party inventory commingling contamination issues) is Amazon Basics. [1] [1] Only "Amazon Resale" third party resellers are shown https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-8-Piece-Non-Stick-Kitchen-Cookware/dp/B074817DK1 https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-8-Piece-Non-Stick-Kitche...
  - jghn 2y ago
    Granted Amazon Basics products aren't much different than buying some knockoff on Aliexpress in the first place ...
    - filoleg 2y ago
      Nah, let’s not go this far. Might be true for some AmazonBasics product categories, but I have a specific example where this is just not true. Their AmazonBasics monitor arms are manufactured by Ergotron (aka one of the most reputable and best monitor arm brands out there). I have both AmazonBasics and Ergotron arms (purchased from their official website), and it is clear as day that they are nearly the exact same product. I purchased the AmazonBasics arms back in 2016, and they still serve me great to this day, surviving 2 moves between west-east coast and many more local moves. You can call this anecdata, but both AmazonBasics monitor arms and Ergotron ones have excellent reputation.
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n0us 2y ago
If you've ever read "Working Backwards" it's interesting to see how Amazon today is basically the polar opposite of everything they talk about in the book. I wonder what the author's opinion is.
FireBeyond 2y ago
Amazon's "Counterfeit Crimes Unit" basically sounds like a variation of YouTube's schemes. You and I report counterfeit stuff bought an Amazon, and they say "who cares" and maybe give you a refund (after often asking for it back, no doubt to be re-mingled). Canon or Epson or HP or someone with enough clout? Yeah, here, our "CCU" will assist so you don't go running to the courts.
wintermutestwin 2y ago
Maybe a million small claims cases would persuade amz to do something about this crap?

117 points by yedava 2y ago

Is amazon's model even profitable for these low-price high-volume parts without its binning system? I literally do not buy things off amazon that fall into these "binning problem" categories, or anything easily counterfeitable. I'll buy from amazon for things that essentially cannot be counterfeit (GPUs, hard drives, things where counterfeits would be more likely to be a brick of the same weight rather than something that worked but was crappy or dangerous), or where i'm essentially trying to get "counterfeit"-grade stuff (stuff like plastic or metal garden spikes, where i just want the cheapest possible thing that will hold my irrigating tubing in place). Everything else comes from target or the OEM's website store.

mitthrowaway2 2y ago
In my area at least, even garden spikes on Amazon generally cost at least $14.99, while I can get them at my dollar store for $3.99. I think prices on Amazon are pretty absurd for "counterfeit"-grade stuff. But they apparently expect you aren't going to do any price comparison, because that would require getting up and going to the dollar store to see if they have garden spikes. (HN entrepreneurs: I'd love a map-based consumer-products search engine where I could just type an item description into a search bar and see a map of stores in my area with prices and inventory.)
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  Because the shipping price is included cheaper items have a higher percentage of the price going to Amazon for shipping. That's why cheap things are always much cheaper in person.
  - mitthrowaway2 2y ago
    No doubt, but Amazon communicates it to the consumer as $14.99 "with free shipping". To the consumer who habitually shops on Amazon and doesn't realize their dollar store sells it for $3.99, this sends the message that "$14.99 is just how much garden stakes cost these days, so I may as well buy them from Amazon who will ship them for free". If Amazon listed them for $3.99 with $11 shipping, it's the same total expense, but it would transparently signal to the consumer that the item itself ought to be cheaply available nearby if they get up and look for it. Amazon doesn't want that thought to interrupt the 1-click checkout flow. And it apparently works; enough people seem to have internalized the idea that everything costs at least $15-$20 that they don't question it anymore. Soon your local dollar store is losing the economies of scale it used to have, cutting inventory and raising prices...
tanjtanjtanj 2y ago
> GPUs I wouldn’t be so sure, a good friend of mine ordered a GPU and it was an older and much cheaper model with the shroud replaced and flashed to call itself the newer model in windows. He would not have found out except he immediately ran a benchmark that returned an extremely low score and then investigated from there.
- marxisttemp 2y ago
  I’ve heard tell of people doing the same with CPUs at Walmart.
- devsda 2y ago
  I wonder how the conversation with Amazon customer support goes in that situation. If it says X model on the label, and OS also reports it as X it becomes tough to make a case for returns.
- ProllyInfamous 2y ago
  >GPUs Additionally, there is fear that you receive the "actual item," but it has been used detrimentally (usually: operated 24/7 too hot) for cryptomining or genAI. This actually happened to me once (VEGA64) and I was surprised when Amazon authorized a full refund after the GPU failed.
- mrsilencedogood 2y ago
  "it was an older and much cheaper model with the shroud replaced and flashed to call itself the newer model in windows" I really though that anyone going to these lengths wouldn't be bothering to do this to scam on amazon and would instead be gainfully employed??? What the hell. I guess I can't buy anything on amazon anymore. Oh well.
zrobotics 2y ago
Hard drives are definitely a suspect item, they are counterfeited. I needed some 6TB Seagate drives ~6 months ago to replace the drives in a security NVR, our local supplier was out of stock and they were available on Amazon. The drives appeared genuine, they showed up in OEM style packaging which was expected, I connected 1 of 6 to a Debian machine to check it an it reported the correct capacity. Flash forward to 2 weeks later and I get a notification the storage is full, when the capacity should have been enough for 5-6 weeks of storage. Further benchmarking showed they were actually 2TB drives that reported incorrect size. Fwiw they did match the read/write performance if the genuine drives, which doesn't mean much since that class of drives isn't terribly fast but are supposedly optimized for reliability for drives that spend ~99% of their life continuously writing and rarely reading. At least Amazon took them back as a return and did offer a refund. I had thought it was only memory sticks and SSDs that were being counterfeited, but apparently that is also happening for spinning rust drives as well.
- mrsilencedogood 2y ago
  "Further benchmarking showed they were actually 2TB drives that reported incorrect size." what. ugh. one less thing i can buy on amazon, I guess. gosh dangit.
  - xsmasher 2y ago
    You're going to love this. https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/1atu0tk/this_fake_2tb_external_hard_drive_contains_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/1atu0tk/...
advisedwang 2y ago
Printer ink feels about as low-price high-volume as my own blood.

ProllyInfamous 2y ago

Louis Rossmann just released a video on this about Toshiba hard disks [1]. I canceled my Prime account in 2018, after my last online order for memory. Now, I only purchase in-person from large vendors with direct-from-manufacturer custody [this costs more, obviously]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeUNC7z5MM0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeUNC7z5MM0

yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
> Now, I only purchase in-person from large vendors with direct-from-manufacturer custody [this costs more, obviously]. Could you say which you've had luck with?
- ProllyInfamous 2y ago
  Really depends on the item/product, but for example I only purchase uniterruptable power supplies from CostCo, because if it breaks I can get a new one immediately without shipping fees. For hard drives, I usually wait for OfficeMax sales/coupons, and then stock up. Sometimes I have to drive to Atlanta (about three hours, round trip) but there are some incredible electronic parts stores in huge cities. Regardless of what/where I purchase, I always open items inside the store (before leaving, near the customer service desk) because I have literally had "new" items contain hazmat returns (e.g. a "new" septic pump, a la feces).
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
I've had better luck buying memory on EBay from Shenzhen recyclers! I'm done with Amazon.
dudus 2y ago
Ask about price match. Often times they are happy to match the price with Amazon as long as it's shipped from Amazon.
bee_rider 2y ago
The only downside about canceling Prime is that you can only do it once. I canceled prime because they started putting ads in their video service, despite the fact that I was paying for it. That was a fun one. Now it’s like, well, what else can I do? I guess I’m boycotting Amazon, but is it really boycotting when their store is “here’s a random electronic device, maybe it is what you ordered,” I mean, why would I place an order for that in the first place? I’m also boycotting gun store that only sells footguns.

tomwheeler 2y ago

What do you mean "still" here? It seems like it's as bad as it ever was to me.

orwin 2y ago
I do think that in Europe at least, it seems to be better. A bit more fencing it seems but the quality seems to be better than during covid from what I heard.
liquidpele 2y ago
What do you mean, is a company named “TIFHSGFN” not normal??

Mistletoe 2y ago

I don’t really get the argument in this article. If a consumer can’t notice the brand name in big caps letters of LEMERO or MYTONER as the first word and throughout the text instead of Epson this seems like a PEBKAC problem.

advisedwang 2y ago
I agree. In fact I am glad there is a certain amount of low-cost knock-offs. It gives me a cheap (if unreliable) option and is a bit of a force to making brands make their products reasonably priced.
pixxel 2y ago
Congratulations! You know something that others are completely unaware of.
DianVDWalt 2y ago
[flagged]

AnotherGoodName 2y ago

Surprisingly I couldn’t reproduce a glaring and longstanding issue. You can google 2tb flash drives and see a ton advertised for <$100. These are all fake. Surprisingly Amazon doesn’t have any!

michaelt 2y ago
Come to the UK where Amazon offers 512GB flash drives for £15 [1] [1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/512GB-High-Waterproof-Compatible-Computer-External/dp/B0D9PWKTTL/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/512GB-High-Waterproof-Compatible-Co...
- AnotherGoodName 2y ago
  Ooof. I honestly don’t know how you can buy a usb thumb drive anymore. Even when you pay the right price you might still get a scam.
  - Ekaros 2y ago
    And I wonder how good some of the real ones are either... To certain capacity the prices feel laughably cheap.
  - radicality 2y ago
    For electronics, some reputable places are B&H, Digikey, Mouser

ilamont 2y ago

This why I buy Brother cartridges from Staples, and one of the reasons I cancelled Prime. Amazon can’t be trusted thanks its inability to manage 3rd party sellers and grey market inventory.

marknutter 2y ago
My wife recently bought a brother toner cartridge off Amazon and it ended up damaging our printer. We later found out it was counterfeit when the flimsy brother logo pealed off (and after a printer repair person mentioned there was something weird about the toner we had used). I'm on the verge of cancelling Prime myself.
SoftTalker 2y ago
I guess they have a "counterfeit crimes unit" now, news to me but I abandonded Amazon over 5 years ago. > “if we find them”—neatly describes the problem. Doesn't pass the smell test. Amazon has more compute than almost anyone and could easily afford to run AI or heuristics to find and shut down these stores the moment they pop up.
FireBeyond 2y ago
I refuse to buy at Staples. Last time I went to buy memory and a new HDD from them (and very common brands, and well stocked, so nothing esoteric) they wanted nearly twice the MSRP - over $200 for a $129 hard drive. And they wouldn't budge.

dehrmann 2y ago

> Amazon, which reaps ad revenue from the infringing competitors I've actually found ads on Amazon to be more detrimental to my experience than marketplace shenanigans and ALLCAPS sellers.

nothercastle 2y ago

Ordered 2 flash drives both are probably counterfeit the first 1-2gb of write are at spec and then the speed drops to 1/3 of spec. Anything you order from Amazon has to be tested for counterfeit. If you can’t verify it’s not counterfeit then assume it is. Even if Amazon is listed as the seller they are clearly swapping in someone else’s fakes. Mine has a secondary retail barcode label on them. I’m going to send them back with a note in a text file saying they are fake. See if Amazon resells them.

jerf 2y ago
"Ordered 2 flash drives both are probably counterfeit the first 1-2gb of write are at spec and then the speed drops to 1/3 of spec." If you're writing to them constantly, that doesn't prove they are counterfeit. They will thermally throttle. Naturally, specs don't talk so much about that part. I have an older one that throttles down to almost nothing, but it is still technically writing correctly. I don't use it much anymore, because it's like 16GB which is nothing now, but I used to "liquid cool" it... by holding it with my fingers while writing. I suppose you could call it blood cooling for some metal cred. It wouldn't recover full speed, my blood cooling rig didn't have enough heat transfer (it's got some pretty serious rate limits on how much heat it can handle), but it would noticeably speed back up. Now, if you can't write the entire space and read it all back with the data being retained, you've got counterfeit.
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  This has nothing to do with heat. Almost all SSD's have an SLC mode where part of the drive is operated in fast SLC mode. After the SLC cache is filled it will write to the slower TLC/QLC area. Any SSD benchmark will show this. SMR hard drives also do this.
  - jerf 2y ago
    SSDs I know about, but is that true of every USB flash drive? Or any? And it definitely sometimes has to do with heat, or I couldn't speed my drive up on-the-fly by cooling it.

bromuk 2y ago

Pretty much correct, I received a fake razer mouse that I ordered last month. Luckily it was a direct replacement for the same one I purchased > 3 years ago so could compare. Amazon provided no way to report the counterfeit and when talking to their support just wanted me to return it as fault. No doubt this will go back into the supply chain and someone unbeknownst to counterfeits will receive it.

meowster 2y ago
Take a sharpie and write "counterfeit" on it before sending it back.

massysett 2y ago

None of the examples given in this article are counterfeit. A counterfeit HP ink cartridge says it's HP, but it's not. None of these products claim to be HP. One bears no brand mark at all. One is "Ankink" brand. Same for Epson: we have "MYTONER" and "LEMERO". Amazon is a flea market trafficking in huge quantities of suspect goods. When I go on there I know to be on guard. But the article is wrong when it says that goods that do not bear an HP, Canon, or Epson brand mark - with some of them bearing clear brand marks for other companies - are "counterfeit" or even "knock-offs". This doesn't even seem to be a problem to me - if you shop at a flea market, be on guard lest you get junk. If you don't like it, try avoiding the flea market.

groby_b 2y ago
I'd like avoiding the flea market, but all the reputable vendors either only sell via flee market or have egregious policies like "fax in your request in triplicate, wait three weeks, we'll ship something, you can't return it". The problem here is a near-monopoly enabling a flea market that skirts just this site of legality. Sure, it's a lookalike, not a counterfeit, but with misleading copy to make sure people fall for it.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  It’s nowhere near a monopoly. You can go to hp.com or epson.com or staples.com if you want to avoid the flea market.
  - meepmorp 2y ago
    But I want flea market prices!
Joel_Mckay 2y ago
I looked into the fake issues while looking for Mitutoyo tools for our friends kid that started first year engineering. This is difficult as the counterfeits look almost identical. 1. went to Mitutoyo website to get list of authorized sellers 2. surprised Amazon itself is on the list 3. Purchased a number of authentic Mitutoyo calipers and micrometers from Amazon itself 4. Ran down Clough42 list of 17 signs to double check if the tool is fake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG6I2gNGVwM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG6I2gNGVwM 5. Successfully registered equipment on Mitutoyo website 6. Checked quality on reference standards Note, Starrett has a website with an estore, so is far easier to verify NIST certificate. If the work is low tolerance, than accuracy and repeatability won't matter anyway. However, when it comes to metrology or PPE the high-end products set the best possible outcome for your workmanship and safety. Mind you, I couldn't convince a golden retriever to stop obsessing over the taste of free garbage. =3

rahimnathwani 2y ago

Packaging meant to emulate a brand’s design without using its logo can be a violation of copyright laws. HP actually won a federal court case in March against a Chinese manufacturing company called Ejet, which HP accused of infringing upon its “trade dress,” the technical term for packaging design. The linked court case says nothing about copyright. And as far as I can tell, 'trade dress' protection isn't rooted in copyright law at all. IANAL.

oyashirochama 2y ago
You're thinking trademark for the USA, which is a MUCH stronger protection and rules, and quicker to prosecute too.

yazaddaruvala 2y ago

AMA, I led the eng team that built Project Zero (named in the article) and also designed or helped design most of Amazon's automated detection systems for Brands. Disclaimer: I haven't worked at Amazon for 3 years - my info is likely stale.

jlund-molfese 2y ago
If I'm ordering a particular product from Amazon, is there a way to know if commingling is done? Does Amazon commingle everything fulfilled by Amazon by default, or just high-volume items?
- yazaddaruvala 2y ago
  I don't believe commingling is customer visible. That said, as I understand it, Sellers can opt-out. FWIW, while "counterfeit", technically Amazon doesn't consider commingling to be Brand related abuse which is what I worked on. Abuse of commingling would be handled by other systems related to Seller fraud.
tmoertel 2y ago
Did that Transparency thing with the code stickers and the verification app ever make an appreciable difference?
- yazaddaruvala 2y ago
  Oh man.. buy me a G&T for the whole story :) I would say Not enough for how many engineers they had. It had all of the promise, and was frankly mismanaged. They kept promoting engineers who wanted it to become an AWS service (agnostic of Amazon) rather than solving the Amazon problems at hand. For example they built a new product identifier… Amazon did not need yet another database of products. This stuff was constantly slowing them down to less than a crawl. Last I heard all of that was canceled, and their focus brought back to Amazon Retail only problems. But tech debt and culture issues like that are really hard to unwind.

eth0up 2y ago

Project Farm did a great episode on counterfeit tool batteries [1]. If I remember correctly, both ebay and Amazon were culprits, at least in the comments. I personally find that one of Amazon's main affronts is interfering with customer reviews in order to maintain artificially higher ratings. For example, my reviews stopped processing and would never post. This happened after leaving honest critical reviews. Note that +90% of my reviews are neutral or positive. Additionally, they removed my ability to search reviews, replacing it with Rufus, a completely incompetent and worthless search bot. This, I believe, cleverly prevents prospective buyers from accessing useful customer feedback or experience unless the buyer is willing to manually parse all reviews, which ain't happening. Amazon does a lot to convolute reviews, including jumping to the wrong review after selecting a product to review from the order history. It's an extremely useful and convenient resource, but thoroughly rotten. The algorithms are flagrantly evil and a very deliberate and specific search for a high-end product, the desired product will often be displayed below several or many more cereal-box quality products worth less than their packaging. Where they win is shipping, variety and pricing. Hard to beat, but I never order anything serious on Amazon unless the seller is the actual company of the product, and even then... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kTTGGv6-syA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kTTGGv6-syA

datadrivenangel 2y ago
You could get rufus to answer questions about python code though!
- eth0up 2y ago
  I've been using Perplexity for that and have been impressed, when it works. I'm not sure if it's token caching or what, but the session inevitably turns to shit at some point and for the last two weeks I am convinced I've seen a reduction in general/overall quality. Rufus is a good example of the deleterious capabilities of AI.

neilv 2y ago

I don't have a big problem with the Amazon listings that don't claim to be genuine, other than that Amazon lets them DoS search results with tens or hundreds of listings of essentially the same product. What I hate is outright counterfeits. Especially given Amazon's commingling of product sourced by third-party "sellers". (Solely due to counterfeits, I don't buy OTC pharmaceuticals on Amazon, I mostly avoid buying flash and SSD devices on Amazon, and I've recently started buying shoes and clothing direct from the brands' DTC Web sites when possible.) I hate counterfeits so much, I worked at an anti-counterfeiting early startup. In our marketing and sales efforts -- analyzing many kinds of product categories, and approaching many companies (unfortunately, much of it during peak Covid panic) -- we actually didn't have much success getting brands willing to pay for an anti-counterfeiting solution. For reasons unclear to me, we had more success by pitching the same tech&process cost as anti-gray-market-diversion, rather than for the rampant counterfeiting of their brand that we could show. (Maybe sometimes because there were always a bunch of execs charged with global distribution, and this was on their plates.) More predictably, some brands seemed most interested in using variations on the technology for end consumer engagement. Once stakeholders brought into enterprise sales meetings started latching on, when you initially approached with anti-counterfeiting or anti-gray-market story. I can see that, but please let me end counterfeits in the process.

BenFranklin100 2y ago

Pro tip: avoid buying expensive electronics or power tools on Amazon. For instance, Amazon is not a distributor for Milwaukee power tools. Milwaukee will honor the date of manufacture stamp for the warranty, but not the date of purchase from Amazon. I bought a ‘new’ Milwaukee power tool off Amazon which had a manufacturer date of three years ago. Another “new” tool was obviously used. Milwaukee will however honor the date of purchase if bought from Home Depot, which is an official distributor. Amazon still has a huge problem with its third party vendors. We got screwed with several ‘new’ Lenovo laptops that went belly up in six months. And I don’t believe Amazon has fully sorted out their SKU problem where third party vendors launder used products with new. If you see something cheap on Amazon, there’s almost always a reason.

hellcow 2y ago
It should be illegal for companies to sell products like this without a giant warning. "Your warranty will not be valid, since we're not even supposed to sell this product." It feels like fraud. Wild that it's A-OK for Amazon to profit on this at the expense of the consumer.
- BenFranklin100 2y ago
  It’s sleazy behavior for sure, which is why I no longer buy any expensive items off Amazon.
- dingaling 2y ago
  "Unauthorized retailer" doesn't mean they shouldn't be selling the product, just that they don't adhere to the manufacturer's pricing and advertising policies. So to flip it on its head, why should the manufacturer be allowed to constrain the warranty just because a retailer doesn't toe the line on pricing?

miked85 2y ago

I really only buy stuff from Amazon that is unlikely to be counterfeit. I haven't even had great luck with that approach. Better to go through the manufacturer's site, or a more reputable site.

i_love_cookies 2y ago

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BenFranklin100 2y ago

I recently ordered a bag of candy from Amazon. It arrived inside a closed Amazon package, but was opened. I’m guessing the packing person was hungry that day. (Amazon refused to accept a return as it was foodstuff and I didn’t have the energy to spend 45 minutes on the phone/chat arguing with them.)

bluGill 2y ago

When I want something I look for a small company that sells it. Usually under a name like thing-supplies.com. they are similar prices but the small company is focused on that thing and so can tell you the differencs in what looks the same.

MattSteelblade 2y ago

My wife purchased a Stanley cup through Amazon and 5 months later its thermal regulation stopped working. She contacted Stanley about their lifetime warranty and after some back and forth with Stanley's rep, they determined that the item was counterfeit and because Amazon is not one of their authorized resellers there wasn't anything they would do. This was purchased through the "Stanley" store but was fulfilled by a third party and not Amazon directly, something my wife wasn't even aware Amazon did. The seller never responded to contact and Amazon refused to post the review complaining that it was counterfeit.

tantalor 2y ago
> refused to post the review complaining that it was counterfeit That sounds like a legal liability for them, as in "exhibit D demonstrates the defendant knowingly kept a fraudulent listing available for purchase" /ianal
somethoughts 2y ago
The hypocrisy is apparent when you notice that the pretty much the only brand of products that miraculously does not have third party resellers listed (and hence escapes third party inventory commingling contamination issues) is Amazon Basics. [1] [1] Only "Amazon Resale" third party resellers are shown https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-8-Piece-Non-Stick-Kitchen-Cookware/dp/B074817DK1 https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-8-Piece-Non-Stick-Kitche...
- jghn 2y ago
  Granted Amazon Basics products aren't much different than buying some knockoff on Aliexpress in the first place ...
  - filoleg 2y ago
    Nah, let’s not go this far. Might be true for some AmazonBasics product categories, but I have a specific example where this is just not true. Their AmazonBasics monitor arms are manufactured by Ergotron (aka one of the most reputable and best monitor arm brands out there). I have both AmazonBasics and Ergotron arms (purchased from their official website), and it is clear as day that they are nearly the exact same product. I purchased the AmazonBasics arms back in 2016, and they still serve me great to this day, surviving 2 moves between west-east coast and many more local moves. You can call this anecdata, but both AmazonBasics monitor arms and Ergotron ones have excellent reputation.

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n0us 2y ago

If you've ever read "Working Backwards" it's interesting to see how Amazon today is basically the polar opposite of everything they talk about in the book. I wonder what the author's opinion is.

FireBeyond 2y ago

Amazon's "Counterfeit Crimes Unit" basically sounds like a variation of YouTube's schemes. You and I report counterfeit stuff bought an Amazon, and they say "who cares" and maybe give you a refund (after often asking for it back, no doubt to be re-mingled). Canon or Epson or HP or someone with enough clout? Yeah, here, our "CCU" will assist so you don't go running to the courts.

wintermutestwin 2y ago

Maybe a million small claims cases would persuade amz to do something about this crap?