I actually ordered a book from Amazon listed as "new." I got a tracking number from USPS shipped from Maryland or whatever. Book comes FedEx from India!! Yes, seller is buying fraudulent shipping to make it look like their books are shipping from the US!!! Worse, the book was in garbage condition. I mean really worn, ripped cover and all. Had to get a refund from Amazon. When I reported the seller to Amazon no action was taken that I could see, if it was up to me blatant fraud like that would be a auto-ban. I left a review warning other users of the sellers practices and the seller actually tried to convince me they weren't actually listing fraudulent tracking numbers with "we used to ship USPS but we had problems with packages getting stolen." Which makes no fucking sense at all.

Additionally, even worse (if this could get worse), I now believe that book to be a counterfeit/unauthorized printing. I didn't know that was a actually a thing until this week, but the book's quality and price-point is a huge indication. I thought the price point went down due to used books in the market and the book was just not great. I just Googled and counterfeits of this book are common and mine matches the description of the counterfeit version. :-/

I've heard horror stories about sellers who create a detailed listing for a product and a second seller comes along and changes the listing making seller 1 sell products not as described in the listing. I don't know if its true, but people claimed it happened to them.

Exactly!!! The legit stuff on Ebay won't be that cheap, but it is easy to find it, and distinguish it from the scammers and the Chinese counterfeits.

So... what arrived from Maryland? Was it just an empty box? Or is there a way to fake a tracking number without an associated package?

Amazon doesn't appear to care if the package status changes to "shipped" of not as long as USPS got paid?

Do you still experience counterfeit stuff if you do that? Hopefully not, or I'll have to revise my strategy.

I love Amazon, but the ebay side of their retail business is total shady junk

Yes, you do. There was a post just a few days ago on Hacker News about "sold and shipped by Amazon" sending out cheap counterfeits of his book.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924546

http://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/amazon-counterfeits-no-starch....

I suspect the counterfeit problem is much larger than the public can even see, most counterfeit complaints are handled by Amazon or not noticed by the consumer so they aren't made public.

As the independent sellers proliferate shoddy goods and customer service, they drive increasingly more customers to "Authentic Amazon" goods and services. The "Authentic Amazon" experience doesn't have to be flawless or even exceptionally good on an absolute basis, they only need to be substantively good-enough than the aggregate of independent sellers to ascend to the top of the customer experience pyramid. That is an extremely low bar of performance I've no doubt they will accomplish, with or without a conscious strategy in place.

Thus is the stage set for independent sellers to turn into an undifferentiated mass of independent contractors vying for "shelf space" on an "Authentic Amazon" selling channel. With enough critical mass of customers dissatisfied with independent sellers, a single toggle switch or a "channel selector" screens out all of them, and suddenly they are Uber'ized: beholden to inflexible performance metrics that raise the bar on quality, with Amazon taking a very substantial cut of the action.

In the pell-mell rush to the disintermediated e-tailing golden nirvana, people forgot one of the factors retailing arose in the first place: with discerning, effective, "good" retailers, customers outsource the curating process' cognitive load (and time) to some-trusted-one else. That filtering function has eroded significantly in more modern times, but a tattered version still exists under the guise of "curation" these days. Review systems were supposed to supplant this function, but currently they are botted to irrelevance.

There are some expensive ways to reform review systems, but like I mentioned in the beginning, enhancing the independent selling channels' trustworthiness (with effective review systems or any other factors) is not in Amazon's most profitable long-term interests. I expect Amazon to get the sellers hooked into Amazon, then farm them so Amazon doesn't do as much of the legwork of curating for quality as they do today.

Instead you're forced to buy from 3rd party sellers. Now go and look at some of those sellers. There are tons and tons of sellers who have either 0% positive feedback, or they just started and have no feedback.

I'm worried that more items are going over to this Ebay-like model of shady sellers.

At least on Ebay, I can tell right away if a seller is shipping from China. I can't see that on Amazon until I go to the checkout, and see that it'll take several weeks to arrive.

not affiliate with them, but if your going to by cheap shit from china why not go direct and get it the cheapest.

Ebay has a lot of experienced sellers with hundreds/thousands of transactions and only a few neutral/negative reviews a year.

What alternatives are there that don't have the same problem?

If you want the real thing, don't buy on Amazon.

I'm far more skeptical about Amazon now.

The problem is I never used to have these issues when buying from them. The part was correct - every time. Now when I order something I have to allow an extra week or two before I can actually use it, just in case I have to do a return. Like in the auto parts example - If I want to replace something on the car that requires disassembly, I schedule a Saturday for it. But then the part arrives and it's of poor quality because it's counterfeit, so I have to reschedule my time, and perhaps a friend's time who was going to come over and help.

If this happens once, it's an annoyance but dealt with. If it happens repeatedly (it took 3 tries to get the legit water filters because of co-mingled stock at Amazon), it's waaaay beyond annoying.

b) Separate somehow bad reviews and complaints about SELLERS from bad reviews, complaints about PRODUCTS. Again, more direct accountabilithy.

Today, when you leave a bad review or complain about crap counterfeits or bad service, shipping, etc, it just doesn't affect the actual bad actor in the way it should.

Source: very casual FBA seller

Amazon keeps different sellers inventory in different bins, which are tracked.

I agree that some sellers are avoiding it, but I know several big sellers that are all commingled.

Most of my business was merchant fulfilled, but I still sold over six figures worth FBA last year. Never had an issue from commingled.

If it's very accurate, and keeps things separated, you have to wonder why Amazon offers "Stickerless Commingling" and "Stickered Commingling". What does the sticker add if the bin system is working so well?

That may be why they stopped calling the option commingled. They still use the word, but the option is just called "manufacturer barcode". It used to be called stickerless commingled inventory.

There's no stickered commingled option. There's stickerless commingled and stickered separate inventory.

One reason amazon keeps the stickered option is because some people might want to be able to get the exact inventory they send in back. And some items don't make sense to be commingled, like used items, items with experation dates, etc.

I can't even really tell Amazon that the product is counterfeit. The closest thing is "not as described".

You can review a product (that has multiple sellers) without reviewing the seller. So, if I get a counterfeit, and place a PRODUCT review, it hurts ALL the sellers. Not just the single seller that did the wrong thing.

Your story didn't include the nuance of co-mingled inventory. What if the sale went to you, but was fulfilled by inventory from another seller...and the item actually was counterfeit. Does the actual culprit suffer?

>Even though inventory tracked using the manufacturer barcode is commingled within the network, the source of the inventory is tracked by our fulfillment systems and is taken into consideration if inventory problems arise.

Note that in areas where it exposes them to liability (movies), they won't allow stickerless. That tells you something about "tracking the source".

Edit: If the bins are such a good idea why are stickers sometimes required? Also if finding the sources is so easy why do sellers selling counterfeit goods stay in the system for so long?

I have inventory with no sticker on it in NY, you have inventory with no sticker in CA. Someone orders from me, they live in CA, amazon takes yours off the shelf and sends it to them. Amazon still knows that that sale was fulfilled from your inventory.

Same thing with multiple bins in the same warehouse. I'm told by people who've toured warehouses that bins are kept separate and everything is tracked.

It's not hard to see why items that expire, and some of the other excluded items might cause issues if commingled.

> Also if finding the sources is so easy why do sellers selling counterfeit goods stay in the system for so long?

Have any sources on that? Sellers are suspended quite often.

Sources that Amazon has gotten worse in this area over time? Sure. My own experiences, experiences of others that you can read here and elsewhere. Plenty of news stories from reputable sources (https://www.google.com/search?q=amazon+counterfeit+problems&...)

All anecdotal, of course, because only Amazon really knows the numbers, and they aren't sharing. Fair enough to say I'm guessing as to why. I don't find it unreasonable to question their practices though. It's a big enough issue that people are noticing.