This just isn't true. There's been plenty of lawsuits alleging that Amazon themselves sourced counterfeit product. Their supply chain for many products is not necessarily better than third party sellers.
It wasn't counterfeit (I don't think anyone is ripping off high-end TI calculators, and it also came with a license key for the computer software), but I believe it was intentionally incorrectly sold. It came in a blister pack and the paper insert inside plastic indicated it was the CAS model, but the calculator itself was the non-CAS model - in other words, aside from having the non-CAS calculator in the box, it was exactly identical to the CAS model as you would buy from a store.
Maybe TI mixed up their stuff but I doubt that; by that time I had already heard of Amazon selling counterfeit items and as you said there have apparently been lawsuits for this.
About a year later I had the exact same issue occur with another item - sold by Amazon, but fake, but got the right one after a return. Can't remember what it was though.
Everything is tracked by barcode. If it doesn't have a barcode matching what's expected, it doesn't exist anymore. Scratch a barcode the wrong way or mark it wrong, it loses it's ability to be scanned. It gets found, but what is it, inventory-wise?
The folks solving these problems, they're trained but some are better than others and it's not easy. There's 100s of millions of different ASINs. So they search by name and brand and say "looks like that's it" and voila, you have virtual inventory tracking this item as ASIN X, while it's actually ASIN Y.
No maliciousness needed. Just a complex system failing on the edge cases.
(Bias note: I work for another branch of Amazon. I do not speak for the company in any way. These are my own opinions.)
Right, and for the reasons you listed, they simple do not care. They care only about appearing to care.
As someone else linked in this thread, they announce some bullshit "investigative team" like this every 6 months or so.
The problem is just that even a tiny percentage of bad-actors still make up millions of sales at Amazon's scale.
Since they do not do the above, they obviously do not care. Retail profit margins are tiny, and they make far more on a third party sale while shouldering none of the risk. Therefore, Amazon's best strategy is to appear to care, as long as people continue to shop. And the more third party sellers people use, the better for Amazon, as they simply skim some percentage off of total sales.
*1P = first-party manufacturer, 3P = third-party (not original manufacturer) seller
Also Amazon buys from many distributors just like every other retailer. Even their own inventory for the same item could come from many different suppliers. Many of those distributors/suppliers are now sellers themselves and all that’s changed is who sets the price and who decides when to send in more inventory (and who takes on the working capital risk.)
As for sellers coming back overnignt, one of the largest complaints on the seller forums is how onorous the KYC process is for new sellers. (Bank documents, passports, business license, etc).
Also you a manufacturer can become a brand owner which prevents commingling and other sellers from listing on their items. Notice that Ankara highest volume power banks pretty much only have offers from Anker and amazon warehouse / woot (an amazon subsidiary).
Tell this to my buddy who had his card game counterfeited about 3 years ago.
He was getting a lot of complaints about counterfeit products, so he ordered a few and got a few duds.
He ended up having to recall all of his inventory from Amazon, and he found out that a fairly sizable percentage was counterfeit (~20%... can't remember the exact number). According to him, Amazon was literally "tossing all of the same item into a random bin and [didn't] know whose [was] whose".
The solution he ended up going with was paying Amazon extra to separate his items from other potential sellers of his own product. IIRC, he also set up (paid for?) the right to be the sole distributor for new items. I can't remember if he took those actions concurrently or sequentially, but he decided it was cheaper to do both rather than deal with counterfeits.
I think the main difference is who shoulders greater risk/impact of a counterfeit. Under normal models, the store (Amazon) is hit harder (returns, supply chain management). Under Amazon's model, the customer and potentially manufacturer bears a heavier burden.
As a customer, why should I care about the brand owner feature? Additionally, Amazon does not clearly mark products as such. These things just look like any other FBA product.
As a product creator, why should I have to register myself with Amazon? Should I have to police Amazon listings (which seems likely based on the brand ownership service feature list)? Or can I just work with my trusted distributors like the standard model?
I don't have an answer to these questions especially on the sell side. However, this all seems more like Amazon's way of shifting risk and cost to external parties.
Commingling is the sole reason I canceled Amazon prime and don’t shop there.
I am spending my money to receive a certain product, and in order to do that I have to trust the vendor. If I can’t trust the vendor, why should I buy from them?
I don't envy Amazon's position right now. They should have thought about this issue before opening 3rd party sellers but now they're dealing with the consequence in a huge scale
It's not a hard problem to fix. It's an unprofitable problem to fix. See the tiny profit margins at the above listed actual retail companies. The juicy profit margins lie in being a platform and taking a cut of all sales.
Politicians are tough on crime unless it's corporate crime I guess.
Simply ending inventory co-mingling would likely handle a substantial portion of counterfeits since Amazon is sourcing their stock through standard channels.
Amazon knows this. There's probably cost models somewhere in HQ. But ending this would mean: slower delivery times, and Amazon would have to carry the inventory on their books. I'd gladly wait an extra day or two if I know the item I get is legit (just like pre FBA/3rd party days). Instead, Amazon is burning goodwill and cash on efforts like this one.
If anything, Covid-19 has forced other retailers to up their online game. Its accelerated my spending shift away from Amazon as I'm tired of fraud. Fraudulent items can injure, poison, or even kill people. Thanks, but no thanks. I'll wait another day for that delivery.