Right. It's this commingling that makes the whole exercise futile. I can check and double check that I am buying from Amazon directly, but if fake goods are mixed in the same bin as real ones it becomes a game of roulette to see what I'll actually receive.

Yep. I note that the LifeHacker article here gives tips on avoiding fakes, but none of those tips apply to the very guy in the article!

I'm plenty willing to be a diligent buyer, it's not much different than avoiding phishing attacks, but at this point any item with Amazon as the seller may be compromised, and there's no way to tell in advance.

This is so obviously problematic and yet Amazon fails to correct it -- leaves me feeling very suspicious of their motivations and erodes the goodwill i had for them.

If someone really didn’t like amazon (Walmart) they would spend a lot of money testing products for dangerous materials and chemicals. Anyone want to bet counterfeit products and food from China has no lead or other contaminants in them? I don’t.