I don't understand why anyone still buys anything at Amazon. Their Fulfilled-by-Amazon (FBA) idea was quite a game changer, but the implementation with the inventory co-mingling is something that I'd much rather stay away from as a consumer.

There's been oh-so-many reports that even if you're buying from the official store of any known brand, with FBA, then you might as well still receive a knock-off, due to the inventory co-mingling issue. Have they ever resolved this for good, or is noone really bothers to even pay any attention to this anymore?

>>I don't understand why anyone still buys anything at Amazon. Their Fulfilled-by-Amazon (FBA) idea was quite a game changer, but the implementation with the inventory co-mingling is something that I'd much rather stay away from as a consumer.

As far as I know it doesn't happen in the UK at all. I have placed 200+ orders with Amazon in last year alone and haven't had any issues except for a couple deliveries which were a day late(Amazon extended my prime by a month each time). 99% of my deliveries arrive in 1 day as promised. They have exemplary customer service as well. In a way, I don't understand why you'd buy from anyone else but amazon :P

On a counter point, I regularly order from smaller shops because they offer the same service (next day delivery for 99% of orders) for a lower price (usually about 5-20€ per item). Amazon is quite pricey for some product categories.

I wonder if this knock-off problem I keep reading about is something specific to the US. I've ordered ~200 things over the last 3 years from Amazon, and I've never received a knock-off either. I've never even heard of that happening outside of internet comments. Plus sending things back to Amazon is usually fairly trivial.

>I've never even heard of that happening outside of internet comments.

Amazon itself has admitted it has a counterfeit problem to it's investors

https://qz.com/1542839/amazon-has-finally-admitted-to-invest...

Beyond that there's been documented cases by manufacturers such as Birkenstock and Apple plus the eclipse sunglasses.

No, not US specific. I see some of sellers in my country includes stickers or keychains just to change ASIN.

One aspect is that not everything has counterfeit counterparts, e.g. there is no counter-counterfeit to, specific counterfeits, products that require exotic parts, or foods.

I’ve never seen a 4-cell(Lipo) knockoff battery for Lenovo X200 and I know the reason is because it is not easily possible to source appropriate components.

So there could be specific usage model for Amazon of a person that could completely avoid receiving unexpected items.

How would you know whether what you received was authentic?

For example, one wouldn't know their bike helmet was a knockoff unless they had fallen and hit their head.

https://www.npr.org/2018/09/16/647377213/fake-bike-helmets-c...

Just to add one more data point, I received a fake i7-8700k from Amazon UK, in addition to a couple other fake items over the years. Amazon is my last choice nowadays.

In case anyone's wondering, the fake i7 was some sort of Celeron with an i7 sticker on top - the real one is engraved/printed and has a different shape.

> I don't understand why anyone still buys anything at Amazon.

It is cheaper than almost every other computer store in the UK for the same parts, deliver next day and they don't tend to shaft you on delivery cost (if it costs anything at all).

Unless you are near one of the large online shops and need something delivered next day there is no other option than Amazon.

I use https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/ as a guide when building out a new system. A browse across some parts there seldom shows Amazon as cheapest. It's usually competitive, but in some cases it's quite a ways behind.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/Hy97YJ/msi-b450-tomahawk...

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/Y6Crxr/fractal-design-me...

etc.

It sometimes makes sense to spread the parts buy across a couple of vendors to save costs - of course too many vendors and delivery costs eat into the savings. But it's quite rare that I've ended up buying anything other than monitors and the occasional component from Amazon.

They aren't always cheaper. I often (but not always) find hardware cheaper elsewhere - and I don't have to worry do much about counterfeits/refurbs with other suppliers.

Run your next purchasing decision through Google shopping. You may be surprised.

Official brands with their own store can opt out of commingling. I've confirmed this with a friend who works on the retail side of Amazon.

As a consumer, is there a way to tell when this is the case? It would be nice to filter this way, similar to using "Prime" to filter to just "ships from Amazon warehouse".

When you select your seller on Amazon, make sure the seller is Amazon and not a third party seller "fulfilled by amazon"

That won't save you from the scourge that is comingling.

this is the opposite of what was asked

co-mingling is mostly opt-in, unless that has changed. And I doubt they are co-mingling high dollar products, nor should anyone be dumb enough to do that. You usually only co-mingle to avoid the effort of putting individual sku stickers on each item which makes sense for very low priced items.

The solution is Amazon Transparency. This is offered through their Brand Services division.

And the solution for the whole industry is the same thing with some distributed ledger or some very light centralized authority (like MAC or UPC vendor assignments) plus vendor-specific databases.

Transparency should be FREE if its the only solution. It really should become a protocol and not Amazon-specific so that other vendors can jump on board. Right now nobody wants to do this unless the majority of their sales are Amazon.

Also, Amazon charges $0.05/UNIT for this!

Source: I am a consultant for Amazon Suppliers. The problem is not as bad as OC exclaims, but its slightly annoying.

About the only thing I buy from Amazon now is books (physical used, digital new) and devices made by Amazon (a new flagship kindle every 2-2.5 years as the PPI and other hardware features get better).

Anything food/supplement related always has reviews mentioning mold, substitutions etc. Cables and electronics are often counterfeit or of questionable quality. I've seen threads here on HN about counterfeit new books. Just not worth the headache of trying to find something that you think is legit and then hoping that co-mingled products alleged to be that don't get shipped to you instead.

Trust. If something happens, I know amazon got my back. Unless they betray my trust, I will continue shopping on amazon.

Funny timing - this s theVerge's headline story: https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/28/21080720/amazon-product-l...

Sometimes waiting too long for your personal trust to be broken (after seeing them drop on others) can be a lot worse than just a broken toy.

It's a story about a hairdryer going awry four years after it was bought. This isn't something I would even bother amazon with, it's on the manufacturer. If it was within the first year I'd expect amazon to get me a new hairdryer and that's about it.

Once there are any customer-complaints on a given SKU then co-mingling is deactivated.

Later, sellers attempting to co-mingle inventory are provided a seller-specific SKU that is matched to the parent and they're required to use. This ties all issues on their orders back to their store.

This still requires lots of human intervention, which sucks.

Well, Amazon is the place you bought them from, they are liable for your warrany, not the manufacturer, so it should not be your problem, Amazon will have to take care of it.

My experiences with Amazon have been amazing; I bought two 1TB 970 pro's when they just came out (hella expensive), and one of them was faulty. After explaining my troubleshoot, they were like: ok, sounds like you know what you are doing, we'll send you a new one, be sure to return the one that's faulty in the next few days. I was blown away, amazing experience for me and certainly a reason for me to look at Amazon first when I need something else.

> NewEgg is a bit better, but don't buy refurbished drives.

Be very careful even buying new drives from party vendors on Newegg. I've gotten quite a few that were advertised as new but report over 30,000 hours of power-on time.

It turns out my experience is far from unique. Basically, very few people will check the SMART data, so the vast majority of the reviews are fine. If you do happen to catch it, Newegg will of course ultimately step in and force the vendor to fix it -- but that's about it. The first vendor that scammed me appears to still be doing brisk business on the site over a year later, with mostly 4 and 5 star reviews.

Don't buy from https://www.newegg.com/TEKDEALZ to start with.

I bought some "Amazon Renewed" WD/HGST 10TB He drives. They came from a sketchy seller that provides a "warranty," but the provided phone number and website didn't match. I think one was used but a different(?) sketchy used HDD seller in another state.

I'm pretty sure there's no real warranty, I have no idea where these drives even came from, I have no trust in "Amazon Renewed," and I have a fear the drives are actually a bit smaller, but run a hacked firmware. But I saved $120 on the pair, so rolling the dice...

I tried that once a couple months ago. The drive pretty much came with a head crash preinstalled. I plugged it in and it sounded like it's shredding bricks in there.

I assume the seller just sources defective drives from somewhere and directly resells them as refurbished, letting the buyer do the actual testing. I assume this must work because some drives might erroneously been marked defective when it was really a sofstware issue, or other hw problem, like faulty sata cable, mainboard, loose connection, and then obviously there are drives with minor issues, like just a few reallocated sectors, that the naive buyer might not be aware of.

Yeah, I don't know what Amazon Renewed is, but it's not consistent. I bought two renewed phones of the same model a couple weeks apart, and they came with similar but not the same packaging, and one came with a review card from the vendor, even though I bought shipped and sold by Amazon.

I think they're going to get in trouble for it (and Amazon Choice) because it implies they're the ones doing the work.

I forget why I stopped patronizing Central Computer, probably something to do with selection, price, and service. Newegg is an utterly hostile place to buy things these days.

Honestly, if price isn't a motivating factor CDW still exists (and if you're making large business purchases you'll definitely get better pricing).

Drives for the wrong region? What is that?

Regions like for TV and movies. IE, they sold a drive in Asia and someone sold it to us. We do a warranty check and are told that we can't get a warranty for that drive because we're in the US.

It's worth doing a warranty check with the manufacturer as soon as you receive the drive if there's any possibility at all it might not be up and up, so that you have an opportunity to return the drive if you want to.

Even if the drive is legitimate, a vendor might sell you an OEM drive which means having to go through that vendor for warranty service instead of direct with the manufacturer. That might be too much of a hassle.

Often the drives are sold at different prices in different regions. For instance, I have a few WD Reds (NAS 24/7 grade) cheaper than Blues (consumer grade). They have the words "Not for sale outside Mainland China" in big bold writing on the label. They are usually parallel or grey market goods, in my case they were brought into Hong Kong by parallel traders who probably brought infant formula or medicine back into mainland China

Gray market: The short version is that the exact model that was purchased was intended for a different region due to price segmentation at the manufacturer/brand. The item would be genuine but the manufacturer won't support the item if the customer is outside the intended region.

DVD/BluRay implement a lot of the distribution layer of segmentation in hardware and software, but the notion exists in lots of goods, such as in the marketing of high-end watches to different countries.

I assume they got a drive that wasn't meant for their region of the. When they tried to initiate an RMA with the manufacturer, it appears they wouldn't accept it.