It's really bad with things like SD cards. I've gotten ones that are half their stated capacity, and ones that are supposed to be V90 class (90MB/sec write) that barely make 10MB/sec.

Imagine going on a trip nearly 1000 miles away and finding out after the fact that you got a crappy fake SD card from Amazon that made 90% of your photos unrecoverable.

Happened to me. Once.

Can't everyone just pay attention to the seller if they're worried about fake goods? Just make sure you're buying an SD card fulfilled by Amazon sold by Samsung if you're worried, not from 3rd party seller.

If it's fulfilled by Amazon, it may be commingled with inventory from other sellers, depending on the seller's settings that purchasers can't see.

But when you're buying an item it always shows who the seller is, just don't purchase the item if it doesn't show the actual brand of company vs. some random seller name. I've never purchased a scam item from Amazon and I've had an account since 1999.

I'm not sure if you understand what commingled inventory means.

When inventory is commingled, Amazon puts all of the sellers' products (for a given product ID aka ASIN) into one urn. When a user makes a purchase of that item from any of those sellers, Amazon retrieves an item from the urn and ships it to the purchaser.

As a purchaser of items sold by multiple sellers with fulfillment by Amazon, it's not possible to know if each seller has their own urn, or if it's a single urn for multiple sellers. The distribution of the urn by source is also unknown.

I won't purchase easily counterfeited objects from Amazon, unless there is only one seller listed, and if that seller is either Amazon or an account that seems like the manufacturer. A random Samsung sd card[1], though; who knows . Something like this Anker usb car charger [2] looks reasonable (I'm not specifically endorsing Anker, usb chargers are just a product in a crowded, junky space, and Anker is a brand that's trying to present itself as selling good products.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B06XX29S9Q/

[2] https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00VH84L5E/

The problem is that Fulfilled by Amazon items have co-mingled inventory, so items bought from amzn_bob_1985 may actually be coming from stickers_on_alibaba_crap99's comingled inventory. If you do receive fake goods, there's no guarantee that it's actually the fault of the specific seller you purchased from.

Amazon mixes their own inventory with the third-party sellers. Even if says "Sold and shipped by Amazon" on the checkout page they will ship whatever item they find most convenient. It could be sourced by them or added to their warehouse without any verification by a random seller. There is no indication during the checkout whose item you get (likely they don't even know it themselves at that stage).

How is it that somebody here will always manage to blame the victim, no matter how obviously absurd that is?

Amazon was originally the seller for everything they offered. In an important sense, they still are: we still shop on their site, still give them money, and still mostly receive the goods from them.

Amazon could have chosen differently, but didn't, because they were looking to dominate e-commerce. they set it up like this, and could undo it in a moment if they wanted. If you're looking to blame somebody, blame the person with the most power over the situation, not the person with the least.

How are they supposed to prevent counterfit goods, besides banning all third party sales, or inspecting millions of items? There isn't a reasonable fix except issuing refunds when it happens and banning accounts, or not having 3rd party sales at all, which isn't reasonable.

Exactly this. If Amazon can't police their marketplace then bad luck, you thought you had become more competitive by solving real world problems with tech, but actually you had just found novel ways to ignore the law. "I can't comply with the law because that would break my novel business idea", is exactly the thing that I keep hearing from tech companies, and it is the same level of nonsense as complaining that trading-standards (or whatever you guys have in the US) shut down for market stall for selling knock-off goods.

If the goods are on your site, then you are responsible for them being there. Sure it costs a lot, like it costs a lot to run an auction house. Boo hoo

So they hire tens of thousands of inspectors? Specialists at spotting fake SD cards? Specialists at spotting fake perfume? Specialsts at spotting fake Nike's? Do they disassemble each product as it comes in and inspect it? How much do they break it down?

None of this is realistic. We're commenting on an article that says Amazon has half of the e-commerce biz right now. The small but vocal contingent on HN might seem to make it that counterfeit goods are rampant everywhere but it's not the case.

It is perfectly realistic that that stay out of businesses they can't competently run.

For most of history people selling things had an understanding of what they were selling. If Amazon can't meet that standard for some products, or for third-party sellers as whole, they can just stop.

Alternatively, they could set up a separate site. Something like "Caveat Emptor" or "Bezos's Dubious Flea Market". Something that doesn't trade on the Amazon brand and create confusion between responsible vendors and fly-by-night operations.

That you can't or won't think of a way to do something without harming megacorp short-term profits doesn't make it "unrealistic" to address a recently create problem. I leave it to you to figure out what it does mean.

They should make a strong UI distinction between "we got this from the manufacturer or one of their authorized resellers" and "this is some random guy in China selling on our version of eBay".

>So they hire...

It is not my problem to solve, it is Amazon's. If they can't solve it then they need to go back to selling their own stock. If this makes them less money than facilitating a crime, then so be it.

What do you need it for?

If money if not an issue, buy Swissbit S-45 cards from Mouser.

There you go. But if you go to Jansport, I bet you'll have to pay shipping and the cheap option will be 5-10 business days. That's the norm. We've forgotten, mostly thanks to Amazon.

For a brand like Jansport, this is a false dichotomy:

https://www.walmart.com/search/?query=jansport%20backpack&ca...

Wal-Mart has the same problem, although perhaps not to the same extent.

Does Wal-Mart commingle inventory with 3rd party sellers? That’s the root of the problem in Amazon’s case.

I think the implication is that you can just go drive to walmart, or to some other brick and mortar location.

Yeah I would be much more certain that b&m products were "genuine" than I would be for walmart.com products, which I thought was the topic. I kind of wonder how we've gotten to this point, if we're talking about genuine Wal-Mart products...

I'm not saying this out of snobbery... I'm in Wal-Mart about once a week.

I've encountered a trend of B&M and big retailers carrying counterfeit hair & body care products over the last two years.