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.
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]
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.
Mind you I buy a lot of both Amazon Basics as well as Aliexpress generic products. I'm not saying something is garbage for being in this category, sometimes there are quality products, as you note.
In other words being generic and being garbage aren't a perfect circle in a Venn diagram.
> 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
>they determined that the item was counterfeit and because Amazon is not one of their authorized resellers
Amazon is an authorized retailer of Stanley 1913 products.
They determined that the item was counterfeit because you did not purchase it from Amazon.com you purchased it via Amazon.com from a third-party.
My Amazon account was created in 1998 and since 2008-ish I have barely entered any physical stores due to me being in an extremely rapid delivery area where I once got a microwave delivered three hours after ordering it.
Since then, the number of times I have purchased something on Amazon that has been fulfilled by a third party without my knowledge can be counted on zero fingers. The seller is prominently displayed directly below the "Add to cart/Buy now" buttons on both the website and mobile app and is listed again during the checkout process.
Please help me understand because I hear about this happening often and have a genuine, non-snarky belief that Amazon might be showing me a different version of their storefront because I also hardly ever see any of the cheap Chinese trash everyone complains about.
Obviously, if I search for "novelty rainbow colored wig" I'll get all of the hootoovooodoo brands but for normal things? Nope.
And I have never been curved to a third-party unless I specifically hit "compare all options" and scroll through the list down past all of the other amazon (returns/refurbs/scratch-and-dent) listings and EXPLICITLY choose a reseller.
To be clear, this wasn't an example of Amazon explicitly not having it in stock and she went to third parties looking for it or her shopping for better prices. In both of those workflows it is very obvious you are buying from a third party. Instead, she went to the product page, went to the color she was looking for and just hit add to cart. I will note that it does show a different seller, but you can't argue it is prominent; it's the smallest font on the entire page. Here is a link to an Amazon page with the product[1]. If you click on the different colors on that page, you'll see that most of them are shipped and sold by Amazon; this product was shipped by Amazon, but not sold by them. Here is a screenshot of the product page[2]. You'll see that "Pure luxury" is the actual seller, even though it is shipped by Amazon. As mentioned before, while it is directly below the Add to Cart and Buy Now buttons, it is the smallest font. I hope this explains how even though you are on the official store page, you can purchase from a third-party without realizing it. Amazon has been doing this more and more recently, but this was the first time it ever bit us.
> that has been fulfilled by a third party without my knowledge can be counted on zero fingers.
Since they commingle products at the warehouse level and handle *actual* fulfillment at the SKU level and not the vendor level - how do you know this?
At the warehouse there's a bin of widgets that are all supposedly the same. Regardless of who the vendor is purported to be when you buy it, if it's coming from that warehouse it's coming from that bin of widgets.
>Since they commingle products at the warehouse level and handle actual fulfillment at the SKU level and not the vendor level - how do you know this?
Because Amazon does not commingle first and third-party inventory and I do not buy, since it is so easy to avoid, from third parties (or drop shippers) unless it is an extremely niche item like a 0.1" to 0.025" 10-pin header adapter.
Unless, of course, they are lying. Do you have evidence they are lying?
Do you have any proof they are not commingling? Have they outright said it at any point? Because there's more than enough anecdotes out there (and in previous threads about it on HN) that show that 1st party products are not treated any differently.
Amazon has to list the value of their inventory in financial reports.
If they were commingling every single report would be a lie.
Also, they explicitly state that:
>Generally, we recognize gross revenue from items we sell from our inventory as product sales and recognize our net share of revenue of items sold by third-party sellers as service sales.
If they were commingling, those figures would be a lie.
The reason that would be lie is that Amazon has defended itself from product liability lawsuits for harms caused by defective products sold by third parties by repeatedly claiming in court that they do not take title to the goods in their possession that are supplied by third parties.
When you take title to something it is yours.
If it is yours, you need to include its value in an inventory valuation.
If inventory that you have title to and inventory you do not have title to is commingled there is no way to track which of the two have been sold, who holds title to what remains in inventory, and what that is worth.
Their inventory valuation would be a lie, their product sales figures would be a lie, and their service sales figures would be a lie. The amount of insurance they carry would be wrong, and that would open them up to legal vulnerabilities if anyone can demonstrate that the toaster they bought from a third-party seller which exploded was actually a toaster Amazon had title to and was shipped to them due to being commingled.
The only thing an investor has to do to sue the shit out of amazon is establish that their numbers are wrong, and are wrong on purpose, and they have been harmed by their numbers being wrong.
They can commingle but simply keep track of how much of the inventory is theirs and how much is not. I think you have a limited understand of how their system works.
I got an Amazon product the other day, likely counterfeit, Amazon listed as seller and has 3rd party sticky barcodes on the packaging. How is that possible without commingling.
Ok cool, so they haven't actually said it anywhere. You're just assuming because of your interpretation of wording in their reports, and then taking it to the slippery slope extreme.
> If inventory that you have title to and inventory you do not have title to is commingled there is no way to track which of the two have been sold, who holds title to what remains and inventory, and what that is worth.
How is this not a problem for the 3rd parties with commingled inventory? Amazon clearly has a way to know which of the many 3rd party sellers they commingled sold the product in order to pay them, and know how many products are in stock across their commingled inventory.
Considering the product is supposedly the same, the cost would be the same, and they would only need to do the exact same tracking they do with 3rd party sellers whenever they themselves sell an item from the commingled pile.
By design, it is assured that the number of products you put into the system are the number you will eventually sell, even if it's not the exact same physical product. And that is totally fine if the products are identical and cost the same. That is the whole point of the commingling system; that the products are meant to be completely interchangeable. There's no accounting magic to be done, you're just tracking the number you sold vs the number you put in.
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.
This is only partially true. There very much *is* a counterfeit problem on Amazon as well. I've had a number of products that are clearly labeled as Brand X and clearly were *not* Brand X. And that's just the ones where I noticed (usually after they failed spectacularly).
It is also true that there's a flood of cheap knockoffs that don't claim to be Brand X. That's fine, although I usually go to Aliexpress when that's when I want and wind up paying a lot less.
Yeah, I don't mind the knock-off products (but I would like to see the possibility of filtering them) but I do mind the things that pretend to be genuine.
Bought a belt for the vacuum recently--thought I was buying the real thing. Really, now? Wrong markings, wrong size. Returned it, tried another listing and got what seems to be the real thing. My review was rejected because it supposedly didn't address the qualities of the product. Yet one remains for another product where I said it was excellent except for not being the size described.
The first time I ran into this was years ago. There was a make/model of headphones that I loved. They became increasingly hard to find but Amazon always had them. Over time I noticed they were wearing out faster and faster, so I kept buying replacements.I looked into it one day only to find the manufacturer had stopped making the product 2 years prior, and go figure reviews nose dived shortly afterwards and many had descriptions of how to spot the fakes. Guess what I'd been buying?
There have been some other products where this worked in my favor. I knew for a fact that something I bought over and over again (things you have multiple of and are expected to wear out over time). Manufacturer stopped making them, Amazon claims to still be selling them 10 years later, there's not a noticeable drop-off in quality so what the heck, I'll keep buying them.
I had another Amazon experience recently where the product wasn’t a knock-off but I absolutely felt scammed and returned it.
I ordered an All-Clad frying pan, was at the same price as other online retailers. Only when it arrived I realized it was unfortunately, “Shipped by Amazon, sold by XYZ”.
The pan was in a suspicious brown box, with zero product/marketing images, and inside was the pan in transparent plastic bag.
On first look it did feel ok/genuine/unused, but I didn’t have anything from AllClad to compare.
I did notice some minor imperfections though, such as the riveted handle not being fully flush with the pan and a minor scratch in another place.
The brown box did have a number imprinted on it though. Upon searching online, I found it was a product code from some legitimate store that sells factory-seconds for around 1/3rd the price. These are original items, except they didn’t pass quality inspection and hence sold for less.
This scammer seller was buying seconds and selling them as new at original price. I looked at the seller info which had the name and the business registration info. I ended up finding that it’s some dude peddling courses on how to successful in FBA, found their IG profile. What he did with me reselling a factory second as new is pure fraud, I wish the worst to scum like that.
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:
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
I assure you my valuation assessment is as follows:
(fixed cost + maintenance cost)/(frequency of use) = actual cost
If the frequency of use is high, the retail cost between high-end and mid-ranged brands is negligible. i.e. not worth the hassle to mess around with QA on something unknown.
I always bought the kids Starrett or Mitutoyo stuff with the NIST certs. As wasting 1 hour of their time costs more than the high-end equipment.
It is kind of a tradition, but I'm sure there are more appropriate options for folks in different situations. =3
My point was, the legitimate source Amazon is a registered reseller with the equipment manufacturer, and may include the valid traceable laboratory certificate with the item for a slightly higher fee.
Another problem with clones for example, is they often copy old tech... defects and all... so in this example one probably won't get the current inductive style absolute position verniers that work more reliably around dirt/liquids.
Just a thought, but note often 3rd party sellers are literally sourcing items from dumpsters. There was a news story about the disgusting food people resell on the platform, and it is not technically counterfeit. =3
HP would claim that the simple statement "compatible with HP xyz printer" makes it counterfeit, an improper use of HP trademarks in the statement. HP wants a world where anyone searching for "Ink for HP printer" will only ever see HP-licensed products.
>> The user does nothing to suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark holder.
HP would say that "compatible with HP printers" goes well beyond nominative.
Per HP documentation, HP printers are only compatible with HP-licensed ink. So anyone saying "compatible with HP" is incorrectly stating they are licensed by HP.
Try selling a cupholder, or a cup, that is "compatible with Ferrari" and you should expect lawyers. (Ferrari famously hates aftermarket parts.)
HP and Ferrari are not the oracles of what can be compatible with their products or not. Compatibility is a physical trait, not something you can license or gatekeep.
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.
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.
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].
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.
The ads thing is unreal. "Customer obsession". I pay the extra 2.99 and still see pre-roll ads, but those apparently, according to customer service, don't count as ads. Oh, and part of the platform is under "freevee," which is an ad-based service, so "obviously" the fee for removing ads doesn't apply to that one. Prime started out great. I still like that I can pay money in exchange for watching something, but ham-fisting of ads fills me with contempt for the entire thing.
It's almost like you have to become an unboxing content creator for every single order you ever make regardless of where it was purchased. I purchased something from Home Depot that was clearly a return based on the type of tape used to reseal the box and even more obvious once opened to discover the missing contents. Luckily for me, there's a human available on their phone line, and they very quickly helped me to a very satisfactory resolution. So at least that happened.
>I purchased something from Home Depot that was clearly a return
Had this exact thing happen... with a septic pump [gross!].
----
About one year ago, after terrible customer service from a major UPS vendor, I decided that I was now only ever purchasing backup batteries from CostCo: their "lifetime satisfaction warranty" means I don't have to deal with OEM return processes (IMHO) designed to prevent claims submissions (e.g. return shipping fees; questions designed to invalidate your warranty).
What freaks me out is that clearly many large manufacturers design boxes so that it is easy to resell returned products as new. Lots of mobile phones are packaged with weak seals that do not damage the cardboard once taken out. Google does this and it looks intentional to me. Apple, which I don't like for other reasons, seems to be an exception.
I am very uncomfortable buying electronics and hygiene products from many places because of this problem. For example, years ago, on what became my final Amazon purchase, I received used underwear (yuck!). Knowing that Amazon tends to sell returned products as new, I had explicitly bought a brand that is sealed, shrink wrapped, and promises to dispose returned items, but that wasn't enough.
Recently, I was reading a newspaper article where they described how a criminal gang bought Google Pixel and high-end Samsung phones from reputable online and department stores. They opened them, installed malware, returned the product, and you can guess what happened next. Lots of stolen bank credentials. People tend to buy stuff, test drive it for a few days and return it as new abusing pro-customer regulations. Many shops are unwilling to take a loss and resell these things as new. Very dishonest, should be better regulated.
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).
Funny, one of the preroll ads on the video was one of those Chinese (I presume - the robot voiceover was in my native tongue though) scam ads for a product, with a big QR code with viewer discount.
It works well. They are competitive in pricing, and have a good lookup system to make sure you get the correct type of RAM( and SDD).
Free shipping USA and Canada.
(Been using that for over a decide.)
Not the absolute best prices, but in general local computer shops should get it directly from distributors that have reasonably good supply chain direct to manufacturer.
They've got a lot better. Years ago they'd have their own specific SKUs...
"Sorry, this Western Digital 7200rpm 2TB drive is a WD72002048-AMZN, and we sell the WD72002048-BBY, so we can't price match."
They got busted for having different prices if they detected you were hitting the website from a store (Wifi or terminal)... "I know you thought it was $109 when you looked online, but you must be mistaken, here, let's pull up the website, yup, $159".
There was a brief loophole for a while when Amazon allowed ad-hoc Marketplace items from users - find what you wanted on Best Buy's site, create a listing to sell it on Amazon for $x cheaper, and then show them that as the price match. Then they moved to "must be fulfilled by Amazon to be eligible".
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...
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.
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.
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.
"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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
That's fascinating! I bought something recently, I think it was an Anker USB-C cable, and saw that little T logo on the packaging and wondered whether Transparency was still a thing. I tried the app on the logo/code, and the code seemed to check out. This, frankly, surprised me since I hadn't heard anything about Transparency in years.
Thanks for some of the backstory. I always thought they had an interesting idea but the trick would be fast, focused execution to reach critical mass with both suppliers and end users before it fizzled out.
Yes I do. In general, the convenience is too nice.
If you're specifically worried about health issues:
- The Pharmacy features are pretty locked down (but nothing is perfect). I wouldn't buy pills from a rando 3p seller, or even "Sold by Amazon" tho.
- For other health related products (like creams, kitchen stuff, clothes or other things that are on me), I just check that the Brand is the listed seller and no other sellers exist on the product.
- For non-health related products (shower curtains, garden hose, etc) I don't really care if it is "not perfect" in terms of quality, etc.
Meanwhile, if you're buying products where the Brand=ZFDSC or any other character salad - you should expect whatever you get. I still have purchased them (e.g. a sticker that makes my windows look like stained glass - I don't care that its cheap garbage from China - it looks good and unlikely to be bad enough to kill me at that distance), but certainly would not buy those Brands' expecting lasting quality.
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.
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.)
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.
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...
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
