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Amazon is ending all inventory commingling as of March 31, 2026
- butlike 9mo agoWhat happened? Bezos ordered something and got a counterfeit?
- wongarsu 9mo agoThat's great news. From April onwards buying from a reliable vendor with fulfillment by Amazon will mean you get the parts from that vendor, not some random parts from a random provider that claim to have the same SKU. Seems like Amazon finally agrees that the counterfeiting issues from commingling are worse than the logistics advantages
- xattt 9mo ago> Seems like Amazon finally agrees that the counterfeiting issues from commingling are worse than the logistics advantages. The cynical perspective is that they are facing a serious financial penalty either from the manufacturers themselves, or a large buyer that got burned by co-mingled products, or both.
- indymike 9mo agoI suspect this one is death by 1000 cuts as Amazon has distribution facilities everywhere and will be subject to state and even local laws concerning warranty, product safety, and trademark. You can't contract your way out of it, and defective and counterfeit product can even carry criminal liability depending on jurisdiction. Good move Amazon.
- rhplus 9mo ago> either from the manufacturers themselves, or a large buyer that got burned by co-mingled products While high value resale brands like Apple and GPU manufacturers would be the obvious choice here, I’d be tickled if it was LEGO Group that finally forced their hand, given how many stories there are of people receiving faked parts, missing mini figs and straight up bags of pasta.
- ninkendo 9mo agoThat wouldn’t be cynical at all! It would mean that the system works, albeit slowly. The best we can hope for is a world where Amazon faces real financial pressure to prevent counterfeits. Thus far I haven’t seen much evidence this was happening, but this is a welcome sign.
- groundzeros2015 9mo agoOf course. Businesses only change when you complain and vote with your money. That’s not cynical, that’s the system working. And if you keep bringing your money, you are signaling it’s a little annoying but not it’s ultimately ok.
- turnsout 9mo ago"Commingling" is such a great euphemism for fraudulent counterfeiting. I can't count the number of times I've ordered a book from Amazon (1st party, Amazon as the seller) and received an obvious counterfeit, with fuzzy text and a poorly printed cover. On one occasion, the scanning/OCR process had missed most of one chapter, so there were just section headers, page numbers and blank pages. Unfortunately publishers and manufacturers don't have a lot of leverage with Amazon. If there's pressure coming from somewhere, it must be coming from a regulatory body.
- moduspol 9mo agoOr alternatively: they have reduced the expectations of "two day shipping" so much that they no longer need to try that hard (by commingling inventory) to actually meet them.
- Noaidi 9mo agoGreat news? It’s great news that nobody really knew that we were buying items but not receiving them from the person that we bought them from? It’s a logistical advantage to defraud customers? Because this is what Amazon was doing all along, defrauding customers. I never knew that I was receiving an item from someone who I didn’t purchase it from how is that even legal?
- wongarsu 9mo agoAmazon's assumption was that every box of "Apple AirPods 4" is the same, so it doesn't matter if you got the one sold directly from Apple or from some random reseller. They would just put them in the same bin, after all they are all the same product. Great for logistics because it doesn't matter if the closest fulfillment center has AirPods sold by Apple or "Office Partner Inc", they just ship you whatever is closest. Obviously this fails spectacularly if a seller ever lies about their product, but who would ever do such a thing
- lazide 9mo agoIt also fails when someone receives the product, and then returns it (bonus points if it was ‘not what I ordered/fraud’) with the contents replaced with something bogus, if Amazon puts it back in stock. I know they do sometimes put it back in stock, because the item I received back (as the ‘we’ll ship you a replacement) was literally the same thing I shipped back to them. :s
- devsda 9mo agoWon't it also be an issue for products that have a best/use before date ? A batch from one seller may have earlier date than from another seller.
- prewett 9mo agoIt's been discussed a number of times on HN. The Wall Street Journal even had an article about counterfeits on Amazon a few years ago. There's one at [1] (paywall, naturally). I'm not sure if it is fraud, but it definitely aided and abetting counterfeiters, and I think it is a travesty that Amazon has not been fined for it. I also actively avoid buying from Amazon partly because of this (and this decision will make no difference; I have no interest in patronizing a company that does this, unless I see some repentance), although there really isn't anyone else for a lot of items. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-has-ceded-control-of-its-site-the-result-thousands-of-banned-unsafe-or-mislabeled-products-11566564990 https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-has-ceded-control-of-its...
- itopaloglu83 9mo agoI bought an LG monitor, by part number, three times and always received the similar looking but half the price counterpart. We only realized the issue after using it for a few days and needing to use an advance feature. So, it’s not just one sellers product mingled with another, but also sellers combining similar looking products together as well.
- numpad0 9mo agoAmazon apparently credit full declared cost for the seller who delivered items to be comingled, and all responsibilities for the item are offloaded to whoever seller that would appear on customer invoices. This means malicious sellers can deliver literal counterfeits to warehouses and externalize the consequences, down to angry 1-star reviews and disposal of returned counterfeit examples, to somebody else.
- embedding-shape 9mo ago> Worked with a guy that used this to his advantage. He sold CD's and DVD's through FBA. He would get them "new enough" looking via buffing them out (often making them unplayable), shrinkwrapping them, and then hope whomever got them wasn't him that got the commission for that sale https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46679106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46679106
- brohee 9mo agoIt's pretty optimistic. They certainly cannot "uncommingle" existing stock, so you may be able to buy new product with better source assurance, but for existing products...
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- dev_l1x_be 9mo agoThis is amazing!! I get what I paid for. Gonna miss the massive amount of garbage that I got instead of the product I wanted to have. What time to be alive.
- fn-mote 9mo ago> From April onwards Very curious how they are going to clean up their commingled inventory in 2.5 months. Or do they already know and it will take them that long to implement … whatever?
- Ajedi32 9mo agoGood point. The screenshot says the new requirements are for inventory shipped to Amazon by sellers on or after March 31. So they're not cleaning up existing inventory, just changing the requirements for new stock. It'll probably take some time after that for older commingled inventory to all get sold off.
- mkreis 9mo agoFinally. I remember buing "genuine" Samsung HDMI adapter and receiving counterfeit products all the time (technically inferior with bad shielding and failing quickly) Might have been a good idea on paper, but reality proved otherwise. Actually I'm surprised it took them so long.
- mschuster91 9mo agoHDMI adapters are a dime a dozen. Pick some random crap and save yourself the money, as long as they reasonably work they'll "disappear" faster than a crate of beer...
- bluescrn 9mo agoYou don't want to risk damaging an expensive phone/laptop/TV by plugging in the absolute cheapest unbranded cables/adaptors etc if there's a trustworthy brand available. And with some electrical stuff, such as power strips and chargers, there might be safety issues/fire hazards too.
- LegitShady 9mo agoThis is a big deal. There are lots of goods I wont even think about buying from amazon because counterfeit goods are common and unpunished and untraceable by amazon.
- Lucasjohntee 9mo ago[flagged]
- djoldman 9mo agoDoes this mean they won't have the option to buy from "Other sellers on Amazon"?
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- zamadatix 9mo agoThis is about how inventory is pulled once a purchase from a seller has already been made. "Other sellers on Amazon" doesn't care how the item gets pulled, it just cares there are multiple sellers for the same product (which doesn't require the sellers inventories be commingled to do).
- mikkupikku 9mo agoWhy now, and not 15 years ago when their reputation started tanking for this reason? And when are they going to ban the re-use of listings for unrelated products?
- shevy-java 9mo agoTheir reputation actually dropped for many more reasons. Prime was one reason - I always hated it and I felt that when Prime came out, the general service elsewhere declined. I could not accept to be a second class citizen now. Either I'd have to also use Prime - or stop using Amazon. I opted for the latter. But there were also more complaints that people made online, which was different before Prime. The opinion of others does influence me a little bit; I try to not let it influence me, but truthfully when there are many negative comments, one becomes suspicious too. Perhaps one reason Google disabled downvotes on videos, as this was a quality control step by some users, which helped a bit; I would not waste my time on horrible videos. And for the most part, users voting was working ok-ish.
- mikkupikku 9mo agoWell sure. I mean their reputation for being able to deliver the thing I thought I was buying, rather than some counterfeit crap.
- kop316 9mo agoAgreed. Doing something about this should have been well over a decade ago, not now. Considering how long it took, this isn't going to bring me back from ordering from Amazon.
- shevy-java 9mo agoI don't like the market power of Amazon.
- petcat 9mo agoNobody stops you from buying products directly from the company's website. You don't have to buy everything from Amazon. I browse on Amazon, and then go to the company's website directly for the purchase. USPS, UPS, and FedEx will still deliver it just the same.
- mark-r 9mo agoBut not same-day. But even that's a bit iffy - I made a purchase from Amazon recently where they promised same-day delivery, on a Sunday no less! But it didn't actually arrive until Wednesday.
- groundzeros2015 9mo agoYou’re saying that you still use Amazon because it offers a superior delivery service? Then aren’t you glad that option exists when you need it?
- themaninthedark 9mo agoBut it sounds like their superior delivery service is a lie too. Promise next day or 2 day service but delivery in 3-4 days.
- groundzeros2015 9mo agoDespite that, this user is telling us that’s why they don’t want to order on a another site.
- mark-r 9mo agoIt wasn't even next day, it was same day! But yes, it was a complete lie.
- gordonhart 9mo agoThis has been my one wish from Amazon as a consumer for years. I wonder what’s finally driving the decision? In the end the increased trust will be good for business, but one has to imagine there’ll be teething pains from the policy change.
- squeedles 9mo agoHappy to see this. Maybe I'll consider buying toner cartridges again. Every time I've tried in the past, what has shown up has been unusable, sketchy junk. I now go to a neighborhood Staples where I can put actual eyes on the box.
- Hnrobert42 9mo agoOfficial press release: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions/t/106d0747-e5c6-44d8-86f3-7669f11238fe https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions/t...
- tallanvor 9mo agoThank you! I can't understand posting Twitter links when there's an actual source of information!
- Hnrobert42 9mo agoIs your username a Wheel of Time reference?
- specialist 9mo agoTIL To keep the price of Kenyan coffee low, the British set up markets and ratings. All the beans are commingled. Plus added bureaucracy. So no farmer would be directly incentivized to excel. Just a race to the bottom. Insidious. It perfectly described what Bezos did. -- Sorry, I can't quickly find the article explaining the unique history of Kenyan coffee. Will add later if I do. -- This org's page hits all the same points: Kenya Coffee, Quality Decline & the Systemic Truth Behind the Cup https://kenyacoffeeschool.golearn.co.ke/kenya-coffee-quality-decline-the-systemic-truth-behind-the-cup/ https://kenyacoffeeschool.golearn.co.ke/kenya-coffee-quality... The article I read was written by a (western) coffee buyer explaining why he can't buy beans directly from Kenyan farmers. Whereas buyers can directly in every other country. -- u/jrjeksjd8d found it. Woot!
- Angostura 9mo agoIf there were ratings, presumably the incentive would be to have your beans rated as higher quality. Thus doesn’t feel particularly evil to me - though it treats beans as fungible. Something similar is done with milk sales from individual farms in England.
- jrjeksjd8d 9mo agoThis is the original source, linked on HN a couple months ago: https://christopherferan.com/2021/12/25/kenya-and-the-decline-of-the-worlds-greatest-coffee/ https://christopherferan.com/2021/12/25/kenya-and-the-declin... It seems like the collective washing and grading system was effective at producing high quality coffee (but not paying farmers a living wage) until the system got so extractive and climate change got so bad that farmers cut costs and started producing worse strains. In other markets buyers would go direct to the farmers for single-origin beans to encourage higher quality but in Kenya this was prohibited.
- DoughnutHole 9mo agoNot particular unique - this is a common practice in a lot of agricultural industries. e.g. there are wine co-ops in France where many vineyards commingle their grapes to produce a commercial volume of wine under a particular label. What these systems rely on is a governing body that punishes producers that don’t meet the body’s standards and ruin the party for everyone else. Amazon is the governing body here and has previously shown no interest in protecting legitimate producers from counterfeiters.
- zerosizedweasle 9mo agoToo late, I stopped buying from Amazon because of this. Now my shopping habits have changed.
- qmr 9mo agoStuffed to the gills now with random 5 letter "brands" (SUNEG, TRSTF, KALINE) selling the same Chinesium products.
- wlesieutre 9mo agoPrior to that it was stuffed with devices labeled only as "Apple iPhone Charger" so I'll take the million jibberish brands
- happymellon 9mo agoI wonder how they are planning on de-mingling existing products that don't have the required Amazon barcodes that should or vice versa.
- polski-g 9mo agoProbably just sell off their existing stock.
- mark-r 9mo agoMaybe that's why it will take 2 months, they need to clear out the old inventory so they don't have a de-mingling problem.
- happymellon 9mo agoYou think it will only take 2 months to rotate through everything that is currently filled with fakes? Although actually upon reflection, it doesn't say that they won't send out co-mingled products, this isn't a notice to customers that they won't send out fakes after that date. Just that they won't co-mingle anymore.
- Jolter 9mo agoThat’s why they announce this on the sellers’ news page. To stop it on the input side.
- neilv 9mo ago> This change is important for safely buying genuine products, such as 3M respirators. Personally funny example to me, because, at our anti-counterfeiting tech startup, 3M respirators was the prospective customer I championed. (Right before Covid hit, we'd launched our first MVP factory deployment, and there was soon news of counterfeit N95 masks. Which is just evil.)
- intexpress 9mo agoAt least 10 years too late
- Noaidi 9mo agoAnd it should’ve been a criminal offense. Or fraud at least. But for some reason, we all accepted this?
- nkrisc 9mo agoI never accepted it, I stopped buying from Amazon because of this specific issue long ago. Unfortunately I am not an Attorney General, so I can't bring criminal charges.
- Noaidi 9mo agoWe shouldn’t need to have smart consumers, we should have laws that protect the dumb consumers like me. You may not be Attorney General, but you do have a computer access and the Internet, where you could have shared this more publicly.
- nkrisc 9mo agoThis information has been widely available for around a decade, if not longer, and is nothing new. It's been shared all over the internet by myself and countless people for years and years and years. I've even seen it show up on local news stations over the years.
- sovietmudkipz 9mo agoWhy wait so long? Do it now… This is the same company who creates internal systems that encourage wringing out every drop of effort no matter how many piss bottles litter their work environment. When a faceless program uses gamification and comparison estimations to keep their employed serfs always working, constantly fed a sense of being behind. The stress of it all without the minimal of a “good job!” You’re telling me THAT style of company isn’t capable of achieving this goal for another 2 months? If the company is going to use reprehensible practices at least use it to achieve good quicker. To me this feels like releasing a press announcement to generate good PR and waiting until everyone forgets before not actually doing the thing… That’s my cynical take.
- mrweasel 9mo agoThat fact that they ever did this is kinda crazy. Did they not imagine that someone would try to sell counterfeit products? Commingling means that a seller could be hit by a refund and bad review for a product that was never theirs.
- nucleative 9mo agoA common complaint coming from many Amazon sellers.
- g947o 9mo agoSounds like sellers should sue Amazon for this. I wonder why I never heard of such a lawsuit
- embedding-shape 9mo agoBecause your livelihood depends on Amazon not kicking you off of the platform, and suing them will 100% lead to the situation where they kick you out of the platform.
- bell-cot 9mo agoI'd assume that Amazon's Sellers Contract includes a fair bit of "heads we win, tails you lose" language.
- Jolter 9mo agoBecause if they take Amazon to court, they no longer have a business. Amazon effectively is a large part of American retail, which they cannot afford to not be on.
- stevehawk 9mo agothey dont care. it never stopped sales in a meaningful way and only punished the sellers. same way visa/mastercard dont care about identity fraud.. it's the seller's problem.
- doctorpangloss 9mo agoYou go to the grocery store, and if it’s not Costco, your produce is co-mingled. Is that crazy?
- Noaidi 9mo agoThe very fact that Amazon was letting people receive items from someone who they did not purchase the item from is incredible and frightening and maddening news to me. Is this really what we want capitalism to look like?
- groundzeros2015 9mo agoCapitalism is also correcting the problem though?
- BugsJustFindMe 9mo ago20 years of known fraud and then a "ok ok, but we decided that it was necessary to maximize our profits" is not a respectable timeline.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- mark-r 9mo agoIt's about time! They never should have allowed 3rd-party sellers on the platform until this was in place. I've been saying for years, Sandisk makes the best Flash cards but never buy them from Amazon, just for this reason. Too many counterfeits out there.
- lizknope 9mo agoI started buying my flash cards direct from the Sandisk web store. They are more expensive but at least they are genuine products.
- myself248 9mo ago> They never should have allowed 3rd-party sellers on the platform until this was in place. Exactly. From the modern perspective, it's a function purpose-built to abet counterfeiters. However, look at their origins as a used book seller. When my sister went off to college, I got most of her books off Amazon for a third the price of the university bookstore, and they were all from third-party sellers promising they had a particular edition and printing of a given book. All the same ISBN regardless of where they came from. It made sense in that context, to consider all sources of a given item to be the same item. However, at that time (2005), all the books shipped from their individual sellers, there was no opportunity for stock commingling. If one had turned up counterfeit, blame would've been trivial. So I don't think "3rd-party sellers" is necessarily the cutoff point. I don't think they should've allowed multiple suppliers for the same ASIN to all have their stock *in Amazon warehouses* until individual supplier tracking was in place.
- Loughla 9mo agoJust on a related note for anyone in college in this thread. Forgo the book fees or technology fees or whatever bullshit they wrap up in your tuition and go to dealoz.com. Buy the books you want to keep and rent the ones you don't. Save yourself. Source; a career in higher education where I've seen most publishers entice faculty to use proprietary platforms so students have to pay hundreds for ebooks.
- bombcar 9mo ago
- gcanyon 9mo agoI wonder what effect this will have on cost and delivery time. Will Amazon start telling us, “This is available sooner from seller XYZ”?
- al_borland 9mo agoIt’s about time. I’ve been going out of my way to not buy from Amazon, especially on items that are often counterfeit, or where a counterfeit item would cause real issues. Just a couple days ago I was planning to buy some supplements, which Amazon had. I went to the actual website of the company and bought from them, because the idea of getting a knock off was a bit scary. To my dismay, I received an Amazon shipping notice after making the purchase outside of Amazon. This brought back my skepticism. I’m still waiting for the package to arrive and will end up inspecting it closely. A few months ago I bought some headphones from Amazon, because the official site was out of stock on the color I wanted. I ended up going on YouTube and finding a video on how to spot authentic pairs vs counterfeit ones to make sure I got the real thing. This all stemmed from when I bought a water bottle, and the reviews mentioned this commingling issue and how to spot authentic real one vs a fake. I double checked that I was buying from the company’s listing and not one of the other sellers on the item. I received a counterfeit one. Thankfully this review tipped me off. I lost a significant amount of trust in Amazon that day. A random bottle isn’t something I even thought I needed to worry about counterfeit version for. Amazon has a long way to go to rebuild trust with me. This is a step in the right direction. The fact that it took this long is pretty sad. Amazon is the only mainstream store where I’ve ever had to question if I was buying legitimate goods or not.
- antonymoose 9mo agoAnother counterfeit issue they have that will not be solved by this is the “REPLACEMENT PART FOR OEM FOOBAR-123” listings. I’ve had quite a few repairs over the last few years for household appliances and pool pumps and such. It’s very common to find a listing for a heating element for a Samsung dryer or a Heyward filter diverter being listed with a misleading title and often further listing the manufacturer as, say, Samsung itself. I got screwed after buying a dryer heating element for $80 recommended via a reputable YouTube DIY channel. Silly me neglected to check the comments and lo and behold 50%+ are complaints that this heating element dies after 6-8 weeks, just past the 30 day refund window…
- nmcfarl 9mo agoThis is not always a bad thing. The example I always use of why it’s good that Amazon has knock off parts, is a Jacuzzi heating element. Amazon has them for $30, but has none of the legitimate item which are only sold through a dealer network and dealers charge the OEM price of $285 bucks plus shipping. It’s not quite the same part – cause dealers only sell a larger unit that includes the heater - you can’t buy the actual part number except via a knockoff. Add to this that the Jacuzzi part - for my model at least - has a reputation of just dying at two years plus one day, while the Chinese parts frequently last 3-5 years. In the end, you save yourself quite a lot of money, and time by replacing less frequently, by buying the knock off. And where I live, you couldn’t get the knock off otherwise. The important thing of course is to know that you’re getting a knock off, and have made that choice in intentionally. Your story does suck - and there can be lots of reasons both good and bad to make a knock off.
- Havoc 9mo agoAbout time they fix that mess
- Fiveplus 9mo agoThe text in that attached screenshot is the key giveaway, "Now that most sellers maintain inventory levels that keep products close to customers..." This looks like a signal that Amazon's fulfillment network has reached a saturation point where the 'distributed cache' model of commingling is no longer necessary for speed. Ten years ago, commingling was a necessary optimization. If seller A (county A) and seller B (county B) both sold the same widget, Amazon treated them as a single distributed liquidity pool to guarantee 2-day prime shipping nationwide without forcing every small seller to split their stock across 10 warehouses. Now that Amazon has moved to a highly regionalized fulfillment model (where they aggressively penalize sellers who don't have stock distributed across regions), the computational and reputational overhead of commingling outweighs the diminishing returns on shipping speed. For all intents and purposes, they have traded the operational complexity of physical sorting for the software complexity of forcing sellers to manage regional inventory better.
- Bombthecat 9mo agoHere in Germany, Prime delivery increased from one day to two days. Makes it also easier.
- ethbr1 9mo ago> They have effectively traded the operational complexity of physical sorting for the software complexity of forcing sellers to manage regional inventory better. Also total warehouse capacity and warehouse-warehouse freight capacity. +X% inventory duplication (to achieve regional inventory) at Amazon-scale, along a long tail distribution of products, must be non-negligible.
- SPICLK2 9mo agoOr a signal that Amazon has reached the required level of incumbency that it doesn't need to worry about speed any more.
- embedding-shape 9mo agoOr also signal that they've learnt about exactly how many of us stopped using Amazon because we got tired of receiving counterfeit products because of the commingling...
- tzs 9mo agoI wonder if the meteoric rise in people using LLMs for advice had anything to do with this? I was recently using ChatGPT and Perplexity to try to figure out some hardware glitches. I've found LLMs are way better than me at finding relevant threads for this kind of problem on Reddit, company support forums, forums of tech sites like Tom's Hardware, and similar. The most common cause of the glitch I was seeing was a marginal Thunderbolt cable. A Best Buy 15 minutes from me had a 1m Apple Thunderbolt 5 cable. Amazon had the same cable for the same price with overnight Prime delivery. If I'm spending $70 for an Apple cable I want it to actually be an Apple cable, so I asked ChatGPT if an Apple cable sold by Amazon was sure to be a genuine Apple cable. It told me that it likely would be, but if I wanted to be sure buy it from Best Buy. I bought from Best Buy.
- speedster217 9mo agoI've made that decision before without the help of LLMs so I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. It feels vaguely insulting to our intelligence.
- tzs 9mo agoI've made that decision before without LLMs too. If I had been Googling to find possibly relevant material instead of using LLMs to find possibly relevant material, I probably would have bought from Amazon. With Googling the "figure out what is going wrong" part of solving the problem is more decoupled from the "figure out where to buy this thing" part. The first part involves Googling, looking at a bunch of results, finding a lot are not relevant, trying to refine the search, and repeating probably many times. After that time consuming process when I have finally decided that I needed a new cable I'd probably just go to Amazon without thinking about it. I always have a little doubt when buying from Amazon because of commingling, but usually not enough to look deeper into it unless the product is something with a high risk of it. With the LLM instead of Google I upfront described to it a lot of details of my equipment, how I was using it, what symptoms I was seeing, what diagnostic steps I'd taken and the results of those, and why I believe certain things that could cause such problems would not be applicable in my case. It then finds all the stuff I would have found by Googling, but because it also has way more information from what I told it at the start it can eliminate a whole bunch of the irrelevant results, so I'm starting out way ahead of where I would be after a first Google. A little back and forth and I know what I need to buy. At that point I'm still at the LLM screen. Since it is right there tossing in a final question about buying from Amazon vs Best Buy is trivial. I'm not a frequent LLM user. I have yet to pay for any LLM. (I did have a year of free Perplexity Pro that Xfinity gave to its customers a little over a year ago, but when that expired I did not subscribe. (There's a funny story there--when it expired and they tried to convince me to subscribe, I asked Perplexity if a subscription would be worth it. It told me that considering my usage patterns the free plan was perfectly fine for me and I should stick with that). A lot of people now are using LLMs instead of or before traditional Google-style searches when they want information. Not just techies or early adopters. The are or are quickly becoming mainstream. If they are recommending not buying from Amazon that might be something Amazon would want to address.
- itopaloglu83 9mo agoMilitary had a similar problem, so they created the stock number and manufacturer codes. Pretty much every part in stock is known by its manufacturer and part number combination.
- Symbiote 9mo agoThat's overdue, but I shall continue to make my purchases from European alternatives — Amazon donated millions of dollars to Trump, so share some responsibility for his actions around Greenland, tariffs and so on.
- matsemann 9mo agoGopro subreddit daily has people posting issues with their camera complaining about the SD card. In all instances they've bought a "genuine" card on Amazon from the official seller, but probably received a fake one due to commingling. The brand hit from this must be massive, with the amount of people now avoiding Amazon. But perhaps it won't matter with their size, most people won't have any other options anyways. For me, it was counterfeit dental stuff that made me quit buying from Amazon. A faulty SD card is annoying, stuff I put in my body is no-go.
- mouth 9mo agoI have been burned multiple times receiving counterfeit SD cards and USB thumb drives from Amazon. I now only buy those locally at a reputable electronics store. This change by Amazon won’t bring me back, but it’s the right decision nonetheless.
- mrbluecoat 9mo ago> you could order from a good seller but get counterfeit products sent in by a shady one, and Amazon wouldn't even tell you Why does the word 'monopoly' come to mind?
- ck2 9mo agofor those that have X k-lined just change it to "xcancel" for mirror * https://xcancel.com/ghhughes/status/2012824754319753456 https://xcancel.com/ghhughes/status/2012824754319753456
- trentnix 9mo agoNow that they’ve effectively destroyed their competition through predatory pricing and services, the ensh*ttification can accelerate.
- logankeenan 9mo agoThis holiday season, I wouldn’t buy high priced high quality items from Amazon due to concerns about counterfeit. I probably still won’t even after they’ve made this change. DTC from quality producers now have decent websites, free shipping, and good customer service. If I’m going to buy a premium expensive product, why risk it.
- julianozen 9mo agoA friend that used to be high up at Amazon fulfillment told me inventory commingling was the reason he was unwilling to buy anything from Amazon to put in or on his body. Huge indictment for the brand and clearly a bad long-term strategy in the age of fake internet everything. This will hopefully be a huge improvement for the reduction of fraud on the platform. Hopefully, they give the ability to only buy from verified vendors. This is why only buy CPGs on Walmart.
- bryanbuckley 9mo agoHopefully this will really end commingling. I received a pair of bicycle tires as a gift (they bought on Amazon instead of locally) and even though everything looked identical, one tire was somewhat stiffer and weighed 100g more. I wouldn't have really known (at least) one was counterfeit if both had been or i only got one.. really messed up for certain products. Hopefully the flea and tick or worm medicine for my pets is authentic (tractor supply or similar is too far)..
- jauntywundrkind 9mo agoI've rarely experienced issues, Amazon has always been happy to correct any issues, and I strongly suspect prices are going to jump significantly. I can't find any other notes of skepticism and I'm heavily doubting as I write these words, but it's surprising to me how much scorn and disdain people have for commingling. It's wild to me that everyone's happy product makers have full price control now.
- dzink 9mo agoFrom the article it says the change is implemented by telling brands they don’t need an amazon barcode if they have a product barcode, while resellers need an amazon barcode. What happens if resellers decide to just not add the amazon barcode and appear as brands?
- NetMageSCW 9mo agoIn an ideal world, the reseller’s shipment would be rejected.
- yakattak 9mo agoThis is great. I do wonder if eventually we’ll see brand names return. I basically only order things that I don’t care about quality with now. It feels like Temu.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- dcchambers 9mo agoThis is one of those things that's an amazing idea in a perfect world with no fraud or bad actors.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- kingsleyopara 9mo agoAny word if this applies internationally? Looking forward to seeing commingling phased out in the UK as well
- etempleton 9mo agoI have had a few issues with what I suspect were counterfeit clothes, either that or the brands I bought had lesser quality versions they sold on Amazon. Amazon is quickly losing its value to me. Between price gouging, lower quality service, and the question of counterfeit goods, it just isn’t as good of a value prop.
- well_actulily 9mo agoTheir practice of comingling SKUs eroded so much trust I had over the years.
- BobbyTables2 9mo agoGreat, now I’ll have to find another source for used items as sold as new. Thanks a lot! (/s)
- daft_pink 9mo agoI can’t believe they didn’t end this sooner
- godber 9mo agoHoly smokes that explains so much. Amazon’s review/feedback mechanism is completely worthless with commingled inventory. No wonder it seemed ineffective.
- maerF0x0 9mo agoNext up they need to deal with fake reviews, or 5* reviews bought with coupons or other compensation.
- Mindwipe 9mo agoWow, there'll be entire categories of product that it will be worth buying from Amazon again.
- dinkblam 9mo ago> meaning you could order from a good seller but get counterfeit products sent in by a shady one why allow shady sellers in the first place?
- eudamoniac 9mo agoI try to avoid Amazon, but I still don't know where to buy basic commodity items otherwise. Where would I buy a plunger, a decent set of coasters, a good pair of scissors, a soap holder? Target? Their products manage to be thrice the price and just as garbage as temu. Costco is the only retailer I trust anymore, but they don't sell everything.
- pRusya 9mo agoDefinitely good for customers. A bit more stressful for CPT chasers and PPQA. Missing PAD time and delayed shipment is a daily issue because of 0 inventory. I wonder how they gonna change workflows for stow and pick dpts.
- progforlyfe 9mo agoIt's ridiculous that they ever did this in the first place! Just assume that things sent to you from a random seller / middleman were good products in a fully automated system.
- browningstreet 9mo agoI've never really had issues of counterfeit products, but I often buy 2-3 of a thing (I hate thinking about re-ordering) and frequently, when I buy 2 of a given item, they come in separate deliveries on separate days. I wish there was a way to request that they come from the same distribution center, on the same day, in the same delivery. I live in a slightly out of band area, so getting things from Amazon that are hard to buy elsewhere is great, but the "order 5 items and get 4 separate shipments" thing isn't ideal.
- xboxnolifes 9mo ago> I wish there was a way to request that they come from the same distribution center, on the same day, in the same delivery. For me, there usually is. The one package option on the checkout page.
- browningstreet 9mo agoI've chosen that, and it still breaks the order into multiple shipments, because they still want to deliver some stuff first. I'm totally happy to wait for the things to come a bit slowly in one delivery, but they have no nuclear option to insist on this.
- comrade1234 9mo agoI cancelled my Amazon account years ago after receiving counterfeit items several times. I've since learned to live free from Amazon and it's quite nice. I won't be opening another account.
- SoftTalker 9mo agoSame. Have not bought anything on Amazon in years.
- tiffanyh 9mo agoIf inventory was commingled, and you might not even get the item from the seller you picked, what was the point of the 5-star rating system? Was it meant to rate the product, not the seller? If so, that’s probably not how most people understand it.
- turnsout 9mo agoYes, in Amazon's world, the star rating is for the product. Which is especially confusing on product pages with vastly different variants.
- zamadatix 9mo agoI always took the product rating as rating the particular item (regardless of where it was manufactured) and the seller rating as rating interactions regarding the sales/support/return process. I'm not sure what good having both ratings be the seller rating would be, or why one would look at the ratings of a single product to judge a seller's rep and vice versa. The main problem I have with the way Amazon product ratings are structured is the grouping of products under a single rating. Particularly with electronics, e.g. the 32" variant of a monitor might as well be a completely different product from another manufacturer when compared to a 27" variant from the same product family - yet there can be a dozen variants under a single rating.
- resters 9mo agoJust as Youtube finally "cracked down" on piracy after riding it to massive market share, Amazon has done the same with counterfeit goods. Does this business model have a name?
- pengaru 9mo agosmells a lot like a "fake it 'til you make it" variant
- SilverElfin 9mo agoWhy now? Is it that commingling somehow boosted Amazon’s business but now they’re sort of a monopoly for online shopping so they can afford to not take these shortcuts that hurt consumers?
- tgsovlerkhgsel 9mo agoChange My Mind: At this point, Amazon is AliExpress with faster shipping and higher prices. The product is going to be coming from a Chinese manufacturer anyways, the minimal level of quality control that used to be implied by buying from companies with an European presence is gone. My experience on AliExpress is that there are few outright scams and more of a "buyer beware to the extreme" (e.g. fine print saying that a 20mm item has 5mm tolerance -> you're getting 15mm, part not saying original BRANDNAME -> you're getting a "compatible" part). They seem to have a "Brand+/Certified Original" program - any idea how trustworthy that is? Probably more than Amazon with commingling, but in absolute terms?
- IshKebab 9mo agoAnd a much easier returns process.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 9mo agoDisagree. The returns process for AliExpress couldn't be simpler: Open trash can, insert product, buy a different one (still having spent less than you would have on Amazon). Surprisingly, the number of products that needed such a return was extremely low.
- bhouston 9mo agoThank you! I've gotten definitely returned inventor when I thought I was buying new from a vendor. The equipment was defective. Also buying anything returned from Amazon is a crap shot because there is so much return fraud going on.
- duxup 9mo agoWill this mean delivery timelines will be a lot more variable and "who you are buying this from" will matter / be a lot more visible?
- bshanks 9mo agoNote that inventory already in Amazon fulfillment centers as of March 31, 2026 is still commingled "Also what happens after March 31st with the leftover commingled inventory that’s already there? No action is required for stickerless inventory currently in-transit to or stored in our fulfillment centers. These products will continue to sell under their original SKUs. However for a reseller, after March 31, 2026, all new inventory must use Amazon barcodes. Please review the FBA Barcode Choice and Labeling FAQ for additional information." -- https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions/t/106d0747-e5c6-44d8-86f3-7669f11238fe?postId=4ffd6f4e-5d3e-4381-85b5-db26f7de7791 https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions/t...
- urup2l8 9mo agoThe other issue I have is when you go to a local store they don’t stock items, they say “we can order it”. I needed a gasket for my Kamado Joe grill. I went to my local dealer. They didn’t have one and proceeded to order one for me - the salesman was looking on the Amazon site! Why would I buy it from them? I haven’t been back since.
- Revolution1120 9mo ago[dead]
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