from Hacker News

Amazon Still Has a Counterfeit Problem

by yedava on 8/28/24, 2:46 PM with 126 comments

• by MattSteelblade on 8/28/24, 6:29 PM

  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.

• by massysett on 8/28/24, 5:26 PM

  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.

• by neilv on 8/28/24, 5:50 PM

  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.

• by ProllyInfamous on 8/28/24, 4:26 PM

  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

• by eth0up on 8/28/24, 5:40 PM

  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

• by BenFranklin100 on 8/28/24, 6:00 PM

  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.

• by ilamont on 8/28/24, 4:56 PM

  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.

• by yazaddaruvala on 8/28/24, 5:37 PM

  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.

• by mrsilencedogood on 8/28/24, 4:26 PM

  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.

• by tomwheeler on 8/28/24, 4:27 PM

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

• by rahimnathwani on 8/28/24, 5:37 PM

    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.

• by AnotherGoodName on 8/28/24, 4:41 PM

  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!

• by BenFranklin100 on 8/28/24, 6:13 PM

  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.)

• by n0us on 8/28/24, 7:00 PM

  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.

• by bromuk on 8/28/24, 5:20 PM

  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.

• by miked85 on 8/28/24, 6:06 PM

  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.

• by dehrmann on 8/28/24, 5:06 PM

  > 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.

• by nothercastle on 8/28/24, 5:11 PM

  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.

• by FireBeyond on 8/28/24, 7:12 PM

  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.

• by bluGill on 8/28/24, 6:23 PM

  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.

• by wintermutestwin on 8/29/24, 4:46 PM

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

• by Mistletoe on 8/28/24, 4:29 PM

  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.