In Amazon, I know to try to do this, but I don’t quite trust that what I bought came from who it claims to be. My mother has no concept of a “third party seller.” She just knows “it’s on Prime!”
IMHO the Amazon user experience tries to explicitly bury the 3rd party “bazaar” inside the “store,” and (some time ago) successfully managed to mingle them both into a single “marketplace.”
When I’m shopping for a 1978 printing of a book, I want the bazaar. When I’m shopping for a Chromecast, I want a “store.”
Amazon has a tool to make it very easy for any idea anyone has to be patented. If I think it some crazy idea today, I can fill in a form describing it and lawyers will see if it's a valid patentable idea, then file the needed paperwork. Half the ideas may never be thought about again. That's where this came from, almost certainly.
Just because Amazon patents an idea doesn't mean it becomes real. It just means that if they ever decide to do it, they can't be sued by someone else who patented it.
We left a bad review of the seller. I challenge you to find that - and even better - who’s to say it was that seller or another bad actor that polluted the stock?
The other day I found myself needing printer toner. Amazon has a much better price, even when they sell it themselves, than local stores. But then I see that along with the "sold and shipped by amazon", which is still quite cheap, there are dozens of even cheaper options, some of which are fulfilled by Amazon anyway. So how do I know I am buying a new, original cartridge, an honest, quality refurb, or something that might print badly, or even damage my printer? Even the sold by Amazon merchandise, which I'd hope is original, could be comingled with a refilled knock off that might be indistinguishable out of the box, but will be very different in operations.
For something like this, as a consumer, I absolutely need to know the provenance of what I am purchasing, and the chance that there is commingling means I cannot buy something like this from Amazon, as I won't even be able to tell for a while.
In an ideal world with no counterfeits, product commingling is an efficient thing to do, and if a product is commingled, there is no point in giving the 3rd-party seller top billing, the customer should feel like they're buying from Amazon.
Does it ever! I refuse to buy expensive electronics or equipment on Amazon after getting burned with a knockoff Bose headphones and SWISSGEAR luggage. You don't even get the benefit of cheap prices as those things were within reasonable range of their typical retail price (and with luggage the price fluctuation is always high). It's insane.
It's pretty clear here that the person didn't intend to import a counterfeit bag (why pay full price for it?)
Fast forward to last week I was given a budget of about $6,000 to purchase company equipment and I looked at Amazon for 2 minutes and went right to B&H. After I submitted my order to my company I looked up everything on Amazon to see what I was missing. Well everything was bundles or weird price ranges with only 1 or 2 items left for sale. After 45 minutes I realized that it was a mess and I couldn't come up with a clear answer of how much anything was going to cost unless I had a credit card (We do purchase orders) and just looking things up it was a whole $50 less. Glad I went to a single seller.
now I have not see the issue in food products, I tend to buy certain condiments and garnish type items via Amazon as they are not locally available but given time and Amazon's looking the other way with the marketplace I expect it
For the SWISSGEAR luggage, I went to a retail location and inspected the same model ... also, couldn't register the serial number.
Both knockoffs were of pretty good quality, but not at the same level as the originals.
I recently bought a Hario coffee grinder. I looked at what I thought was the official page for the item on Amazon (not a third party seller) yet 10-15% of the reviews all complained about receiving a counterfeit. That's when I gave up and bought it at Williams Sonoma.
My anecdotal case was buying a lamp for a DLP TV. The seller claimed to provide a 1 year warranty and mine burn out after 11 months. However, there was absolutely no means to contact the seller. I tried reached out to Amazon to get it, but to no avail. Finally, I resorted to leaving a negative review about the product and seller. Within a day I was sent an email saying my review violated some rules that state I’m not allowed to be critical of the seller, only the product. I was flabbergasted. So I rewrote it without any direct mention of the seller and the same thing happened. At that point, I just gave up. The seller is still there, selling non-existing one year warranties.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=aw/...
The translation is by Constance Garnett. They only mention the book in passing. If I wouldn't have been wanting to read the book since years and called Russ Roberts highly the podcast wouldn't have made me want to read the book. It was in no way the topic of the episode or even close.
No, it is, or at least it was. When online shopping got big, up until a few years ago, the prices were usually better than physical retail (but with higher latency due to shipping). It only got popular because you were getting a deal (if only dodging sales tax), and most people were conditioned to think that online shopping = good deal (compared to physical retail).
But you're right, in 2018 Amazon's for paying retail and gambling that you didn't get a counterfeit (the chance of which varys depending on the kind of product), and then waiting for it to arrive.
For me that doesn't make any sense, so I've stopped shopping there for anything I can find locally in a retail store.
People often say that media like CDs and DVDs/Blu-rays are on the way out and it's all online downloads now, but at least here in the UK I still buy probably 90% of the films I watch at home and maybe half of the TV shows on disc, because the likes of Netflix simply don't have a big range of big name titles, or don't get them until several years after they come out.
Sadly, most of the good local stores where I used to buy discs have closed down, in large part thanks to online sellers undercutting them and driving them out of the market. The likes of Silver Screen, where you could go in and browse for almost any film or TV show you liked on disc and probably pick up something new to try on an offer while you were there, have gone the way of the dinosaur. All that's left is a few of the recent blockbusters in the big stores. I'm not convinced this is progress!
We do at least still have one decent bookshop in town, which is a blessing because Amazon's handling of books is apparently so careless that I was returning a crazy number of them just because they arrived marked, ripped or otherwise not in brand new condition. I've gone back to buying the majority of my books, and anything I possibly can if it will be a gift, in bricks and mortar stores so I can see it's in good condition before I buy it, and where I can also browse for related material that I might also like to pick up while I'm there.
Tech-wise, I wouldn't trust Amazon for anything more sophisticated than a network cable or USB hub. This is a merchant that ships hard drives in over-sized boxes with a bit of tissue paper for padding, and then seems to have trouble understanding why we decline the delivery. There are plenty of specialist tech merchants who will supply more serious gear packaged properly, from reputable sources, and typically at about the same price anyway.
No, don't buy name brands from Fulfilled by Amazon sellers (including Amazon itself) on Amazon, only from known-good third-party non-FBA sellers (exception, Amazon is okay if there are no FBA sellers for a product), since Amazon commingles inventory from FBA sellers (including themselves), so you never know which seller actually sourced a good purchased from an FBA seller.
1. Items sold by Amazon. 2. Items sold by 3rd parties and fulfilled by Amazon. 3. Items sold by 3rd parties and shipped by 3rd parties.
The problem is that items in their fulfillment centers, (1) and (2) are mixed together. Just because you buy something sold by Amazon doesn’t guarantee that you won’t be sent a counterfeit item that a 3rd party sent to amazon to use for fulfillment.
Everything except for topical/consumable items and items with an expiration date can be conmingled.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/12/13/how-to-p...
Just a few days ago this was on the front page, an article by a small business owner selling their product on Amazon complaining both in the article and the comments that even when a product is in the brand registry they are woefully ineffective about dealing with counterfeits.
This not-Chromecast is a really bad example because it's not actually claiming to be a Chromecast, but I have certainly ordered products on Amazon and received knockoffs before. Inventory comingling makes it basically impossible to ensure you're getting what you order because even if you order from a reputable seller it might come from somebody else entirely.
(I could imagine you still have problems with products that just "happen" to look almost - but not quite - like the original, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. The link shows products that look exactly like a Chromecast, even though the actual Chromecast is blocked.)
But having said all that - this is such a poor example to start complaining about. Nothing in the product description sounds like a counterfeit; it's simply yet-another possibly poor-quality competitor to the chrome cast. And sure, the supplier made the really dubious decision to include a chrome-logo-shape in the actual device. But the seller isn't amazon; and the description doesn't use anything to hint at it being a chromecast - so it's unlikely people looking for a chromecast will be mislead (or indeed even manage to find this thing).
All in all: this sounds like the seller is possibly counterfeiting, but it's not a great example of amazon tolerating counterfeiting, because it's easy to imagine a reasonable middleman might never have noticed.
Less than ideal example? Possibly. But still valid.
Amazon. One of the few 800 lb tech terrors. And they're doing what to solve this problem? Tolerate is being too kind. When you're making the choices they're making you're an enabler.
All the revenue. All those resources and...that gets them a free pass? That's disturbing.
If they're going to comingle goods, then they need to put their own tracking onto the goods so that it is possible to know who provided the goods to which buyers. Either that or require that each item has a unique rfid or other identifier. This would allow tracing of counterfeit goods back to the supplier.
As it is, when you buy something that turns out to not be legit, you have no real recourse, and often the wrong supplier gets dinged.
1. Only stock counterfeit-prone items verifiably sourced from the real manufacturer, e.g. Apple, LV, Bose, etc.
2. Stop commingling inventory from multiple sources, which totally prevents any crowd-sourced detection of counterfeit sellers.
3. Increase manpower devoted counterfeit detection and enforcement. This could even include randomly pulling items from inventory and testing/inspecting them.
4. Detect obviously fake items, such as 1 TB microSD cards priced at $10. This can done through pre-listing manual reviews plus automation.
5. Give users obvious ways to signal the mothership about counterfeits, and take action on the signals.
6. etc.
In short there's all kinds of stuff a company with the resources of Amazon can do to solve this problem. The fact that they're doing nothing is telling.
Are you suggesting Jeff The Genius - who has aspirations to put a man on the moon - can't figure something out? Somehow?
The better question: Why are they doing nothing?
The answer is obvious.
My new strategy with Amazon is simple: If it's a book, sure. Otherwise no way, I can't trust anything there. I'm surprised there hasn't been a class action suit against them by now for all the counterfeit / poor quality goods / spyware.
The next day, the product was listed as no longer available.
N=1, but there does seem to be an effort.
It's reasonable to expect that they won't even allow other pharmacies on the platform.
Excerpt: "The way it works is roughly like a serialization or UPC code. The brand buys the codes from Amazon and puts a unique code on every unit it creates for sale on Marketplace. All the codes are serialized; Amazon will not accept items without codes."
If they signed products with a cryptographic key, might actually be worth something as proof of who they are.
Manufacturer has a keypair. They include a QR code that's the digital signature of the combination of your name & the product's serial number. You use their public key to verify
A solution like this would also limit alienability of property. I buy a DSLR and register it with the manufacturer. Two years later I want to resell it to someone else and discover my manufacturer either refuses to issue the new QR code to the buyer, or wants to charge a "reasonable" or "nominal" fee of 25% of the fair market value of the good to effect the transfer.
This is why a distributed-trust solution like blockchain actually might not be overkill, in spite of its buzzwordiness these days.
Or to return to your idea, instead of the person's name, transfer to an ID that's backed by another keypair. The buyer now has the authority to sign away full ownership without asking the manufacturer for cooperation. Of course, this means the manufacturer and each seller in the chain now has to have a tech-support department for people who lost their private keys or forgot the keychain password....
Nope
https://medium.com/@alitech_2017/blockchain-based-qa-the-end...
Perhaps Google hasn’t registered their products with Amazon? It could even be intentional on their part.