That's not the point. Retailers use a known supplier for their products. Amazon uses any one and anyone else (3rd party) can sell on amazon.

Common products that are normally sold at a high mark-up at retailers, are usually always counterfeit if bought from amazon. Case in point are the expensive electric tooth brush replacement heads by Oral-B.

You will pay $5-$8 per head from a physical retailer. Yet on amazon, there are tons of them being sold for much less. If you do buy one from amazon, the product will not be the same as from a physical store even though the packaging is identical. Its a cheap counterfeit.

Another time, I bought a hand cranked can opener. It was supposed to be a heavy duty "Made in America" can opener. Yet once I got it, the construction was nothing at all like the product images showed (was held together by cheap pop rivets instead of solid rivets) even though all the brand markings (including a big print "made in America") were there. It broke quickly. Looking on ebay I discovered an identical item only instead of it have a printed "made in America", it said "China"...

"usually always" ?! Where does that go on this chart? https://flowingdata.com/2018/07/06/how-people-interpret-prob...

I'm surprised retailers don't explicitly take advantage of this by advertising: "Don't be rooked by comingled inferior knockoffs. Get the genuine quality at BrandX stores!"

Is this a US problem that's better in Europe, or is it a worldwide problem with Amazon? I've not heard much about it except via HN.

Huh? There are genuine Oral B and Phillips heads on Amazon.

The point is not that there are only counterfeits, but that your chance of getting one is much higher due to mixed supply

The Chinese have gotten much better with the Oral B toothbrush head counterfeits.

I bought some on eBay, advertised as genuine but not. The packaging was near perfect. The only thing that gave them away was the different mouth-feel and two misplaced mold release marks.

Genuine Braun dual-action brushheads have two divits on top of the brushhead. The copies have the two divits on the side.

I sent a note to the seller warning him that some counterfeits might have gotten into his supply. Seller refunded me.

If you get counterfeits from Amazon I am sure the 3rd party seller will refund you.

Have you bought them?

I’ve bought both the brand name and cheaper knockoff Oral-B electric toothbrush heads. Haven’t been able to distinguish them yet in terms of quality and performance. YMMV.

Banana republic uses multiple suppliers and apparently 32 inches mean different things in different countries. By upwards of half a foot. I bought 3 pairs, three different countries, three different lengths. There is no guarantee from a normal retailer either.

The fashion industry is completely crazy that way. It's not just banana republic. Years ago I worked on a ordering system for a fashion retailer and it was mind-blowing. Orders would be filled on a best-effort basis. You order 1k black M and 1k blue L and you receive 1.5k L white and 500 XXL red for example. So we'd have not only to store the order but also what was received. On top of that the designer might change vendors between orders and now you have different SKUs for what's supposed to be the same product.

Because they’re shipping stuff supplied by random “merchants,” Amazon has no idea whether the products they sell you are authentic or fake.

For a major example of this, Apple sued sellers over knockoff (and potentially hazardous) USB chargers being sold as official Apple chargers. “Shipped and sold by Amazon” and as far as customers can tell, it’s the real thing.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/20/13343682/fake-apple-char...

Best Buy’s supply chain doesn’t have this problem.

This is common across all sorts of products. A shoe company (I forget which) stopped selling on Amazon because they couldn’t do anything about being mixed in with all the fakes, and fountain pens bought there (Lamy Safari in particular) have good odds of being Chinese knockoffs of questionable quality.

I ordered new electric toothbrush heads from Amazon about a year ago and ended up receiving a very obvious knockoff product. It might be my fault for not reading the listing carefully but this definitely would not have happened in a brick and mortar where I can pick up the product and see that it isn't some off-brand mimic.

Amazon has incredibly poor quality control depending on what you're buying.

On the other hand, if you buy something retail, you can A. see it yourself first and B. have a physical store you can return it to.

Brick and mortar retailers use a supply chain that is much more resistant to adulteration with counterfeit products than Amazon's is.