There have been a couple of previous hacker news discussions on the problem of counterfeit goods being sold by Amazon. The problem here is that if there are counterfeit goods being sold by a 3rd party, you might get them even if the product listing your ordered from says that it is sold and shipped by Amazon. Amazon co-mingles goods from Amazon and third party sellers unless the third party seller explicitly opts out of it (which costs more money for them and someone selling counterfeit goods has every incentive to co-mingle their goods with others). I don't think I have run into counterfeit goods, but others claim to have:

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

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13955981

I like the convenience and selection of Amazon, (and have been a customer since they started) but until they stop this comingling, I feel I have to be a little more careful what I buy from them.

I received a counterfeit item after paying more for the item that was "Sold my Amazon", thinking that way, I would get the real product. What's more frustrating is that Amazon didn't really care or do anything about it. They offered a return or an exchange but couldn't guarantee that that the exchanged item wouldn't be fake. I no longer trust them with items that are easily faked.

> Amazon didn't really care or do anything about it. They offered a return or an exchange

Sorry to sound like an Amazon fanboy, but what else could Amazon do for you?

They offered a return without even questioning you. I don’t know a lot of companies that would do that.

They could allow me to purchase only items sold by Amazon, not by third party sellers, with no inventory co-mingling.

Apple bought a bunch of chargers and found over 80% were fake iirc.

If you buy a charger/power brick on amazon, from any vendor, amazon's unethical inventory mingling and lack of care mean there's a very high chance you get a cheap chinese knockoff that wouldn't come close to passing UL.

ps -- I told amazon about a charger they had with a fake Intertek (a UL competitor) mark. Their response was to offer me a refund... and keep selling the device. Which (imo) should be illegal to sell.

They could stop selling fakes. Or at least stop co-mingling their own inventory with unverified inventory sent to them by 3rd parties, so that it's even logistically possible for them to know what they are selling.

Ok fair enough. I meant what more could it to to rectify the situation after he received the item and found out it was counterfeit.

Why they choose to mingle their inventory with 3rd party inventory is beyond me.

> They offered a return without even questioning you. I don’t know a lot of companies that would do that.

There's an automatic right to a refund within 14 days of delivery in the EU, so every company must offer that. I wonder if that means these frauds don't happen here?

http://europa.eu/youreurope/business/sell-abroad/on-line/ind...

They could offer to check the stock bin the counterfeit item was sold from; they could check suppliers to that bin.

"I wish there was an option to set it once and never see third-party seller items again."

This is my biggest issue by far as a customer of Amazon.

I have zero interest in buying anything off Amazon that isn't Amazon fulfilled with Prime shipping because virtually 100% of the reason I use Amazon is the quick, predictable shipping. While they do have various filters to show only prime-listed stuff in search results, the system is real fucky and you still end up getting into situations way too often where you are seeing items that can only really be bought through third parties (eg. the same SKU sells on Prime and via third party, so it makes it through the filter, but the prime option is sold out).

My enjoyment of using Amazon as a buyer would increase by like 100% if I could just tell it to act like anything not available through Prime just doesn't exist to me.

>My enjoyment of using Amazon as a buyer would increase by like 100% if I could just tell it to act like anything not available through Prime just doesn't exist to me.

So you check mark the little box on the left that say "Prime" and it removes all non-prime listings...

That doesn't take availability into account.

Checking "Prime" includes only those listings that are prime. It does not remove non-prime listings.

If only listings that are prime are including then by definition non-prime listings are excluded.

No because products are sold by both Amazon and 3p sellers. If you filter prime you get things that have prime offers, not things that have only prime offers. It's possible you see something that is sold by Amazon and is prime but is out of stock and in stock for 3p fulfillment.

> I never buy from third-party sellers in Amazon, but I am having such a hard time explaining to friends and family how to do the same. They keep buying from third-party sellers and keep wondering how it is not "Amazon".

3rd party sellers are usually fine.

There are things I check for:

1. A "critical" mass of 4-5 star reviews

2. Prime Shipping

3. History of selling the types of items I want to buy.

If I am going to buy from someone who is a one-off seller, I'll do so locally via Craigslist, or OfferUp.

I feel pretty comfortable if the seller's name is the manufacturer, and their inventory is full of stuff they manufacture, with a long history of positive feedback.

I get scared off by seller names that sound like alphabet soup, small numbers of sales and reviews (for a $5 item I'll chance it, though), and recent reviews suddenly changing for the negative.

And I'm really skittish about clothing, unless I know the brand. Too many times, I've gotten what was listed, technically, and it really isn't what I was thinking. T-shirts that look glorious but are really crappy iron-ons, shirts that look great but are really, really thin... that sort of thing. I don't want to go to a store, but I order brands I like and trust directly from them instead.

Especially with camera equipment there are a ton of sellers that have no reviews and great prices. I am sure they almost all are scams.

I also use only sellers that have many reviews and 90+% positive.

I buy from third-party sellers all the time for hobby equipment/parts. Yes, they mostly resell bulk container-ship-specials from East Asia. But that's fine for hobbying around - sometimes you don't want to pay a lot for a bunch of M3 screws/nuts and you don't mind a poor shear strength and heads that easily strip. You know what you're getting, and the two-day shipping is very nice when you don't want to wait for an agent to collect your RMB orders, chuck as much extra weight as they can, and drop it in the international post. Things like:

- Small screwdrivers/hex keys

- Breadboards

- Hookup/jumper wires

- Perfboards and copper-clad FR4.

- Bulk discretes like resistors/capacitors/buttons/potentiometers/LEDs. Especially buttons.

- Springs

- Bolts, nuts, spacers, etc.

- Common microchips (a bit risky, but these days at the IC level, knock-offs are often sold as their own similarly-named brand at a steep discount. You're usually fine if you pay the prevailing price and don't scrounge for a suspiciously-good price. Issues like the famous FTDI bricks are rare, so again, okay for hobby work.)

- Active elements (ceramic heating elements, piezos, peltier modules, small DC/stepper motors, pumps, etc.)

These are fairly specialty items, but there is still enough of a demand for several players to take advantage of arbitrage with shipping and bulk discounts. The quality is bland and rarely outstanding, but it is fairly consistent. While I wouldn't use most of the stuff in a critical product, I still have a lot of hobbying to do and frankly I can't afford high-quality parts/equipment for all of my projects.

If Amazon banned third-party sellers, they would not bother stocking most of these niche items. I would have to go somewhere else; ebay, or making strategically-timed Taobao orders to minimize international shipping costs and the weeks of waiting. Companies like Adafruit, Seeed, Shapeways, Tindie, Etsy, and Sparkfun would probably step in with their own centralized 'hobby marketplace' offerings that Amazon's current customers would hop to.

That said, I do agree that they should at least make a search option to filter them out.

"I do agree that they should at least make a search option to filter them out"

They have a filter "Free Shipping by Amazon" under "Eligible for Free Shipping". It should filter out most if not all items not serviced by Amazon.

I believe the feature OP was looking for was to filter out 3rd party sellers regardless of who fulfills the order.

Or just stop using Amazon altogether, until they can sort their crap out.

Would love to see some official response now that the story has hit HN.

> I never buy from third-party sellers in Amazon

Does it actually make any sense now? Wasn't it confirmed many times that Amazon just ship it to you from closest warehouse even if it's item by 3rd party seller?

AFAIK there are three kind of items:

1. Sold and shipped by Amazon

2. Sold by third-party, fulfilled by Amazon

3. Sold and shipped by third-party

I never buy (3) and generally avoid (2) when there is a possibility of counterfeit, but otherwise I agree with you (2) is fine.

I think there's a kind of 1.5 as well - Sold by Amazon, supplied by god knows who (co-mingled stock of varying authenticity - could by Amazon, could be Chinese knock off), fulfilled by Amazon.

That's actually not 1.5, that's 1 that you just described. There is no option 1 that isn't co-mingled with inventory of unknown authenticity that (unless it happens to be an item that's never had inventory sent in by a 3rd party, but you have no way of knowing that).

Depending on the item and seller "sold and shipped by third party" may actually be better - no mingled inventory, might even be direct from manufacturer.

Agree. I send some people here[1], but they still mess it up.

[1] http://www.nomarketplace.com/us/

sounds like a browser extension to me... hmm....

That's exactly what I was thinking!

Perhaps blocking all the 3rd party sellers and/or checking with fakespot.com then injecting some <div /> in the page displaying some sort of rating...