Not really though, cause then as a small retailer, you still have no way to compete. Nobody is going to buy "real" Hugo Boss from some random fishy small website.

So Amazon is both a blessing and a curse to small retailers I feel.

I don’t see why a random fishy website should be able to compete. Either it provides value or it doesn’t. If I want Hugo Boss, I’m going to the Hugo Boss or maybe Nordstroms website, since I know both of those will result in a minimal chance of me getting counterfeit and highest chance of getting the highest quality.

What does comingling have to do with it? Apparently Amazon was able to destroy this seller’s merchandise specifically, so it doesn’t sound like there was a problem identifying it among commingled inventory. I’m getting the impression from the comments here that a lot of people just have an axe to grind about commingling even if there’s no clear connection to the issue at hand (people do seem to bring it up on all sorts of unrelated stories about Amazon).

Comingling means the buyer can't vet the seller so it's entirely on Amazon to ensure the goods aren't counterfeit.

As you say, Amazon was able to identify the merchant specifically but wasn't able to determine whether the goods are genuine. If the goods weren't comingled, this would be less Amazon's problem and the goods wouldn't be in Amazon's warehouse so at least the seller would still have his inventory if Amazon blocks his products.

Actually Amazon knows precisely what items was shipped and if it came directly from the merchant or if they used some other merchants for the delivery (aka comingled). So when a buyer complains about an item, they know if it is the merchant's item or some other merchant's item.

Comingled doesn't mean that they just bunch them all up in some bin and then can't tell which is which and where they were from. It means that if some warehouse closer to the buyer has a similar item, they'll ship that one, because shipping will be cheaper and faster coming from the closest fulfilment center.

I don't think that's what the parent is talking about. Because customers don't get to choose who they buy from if a product is co-mingled, customers have no way of avoiding counterfeit items by deciding to only buy from very reputable sellers. This makes detecting counterfeits Amazon's responsibility

Oh I see, yes that's true. Though the seller is allowed to opt out of comingled, but ya, I always wanted as a buyer to be able to choose.

You can use Amazon for fulfillment without participating in commingled inventory. In that case, Amazon would still have possession of your inventory, and if you didn’t cooperate when they tried to return it to you, it might end up getting destroyed.

If Amazon didn’t offer fulfillment as a service, and just bought product from suppliers to sell, this same issue can arise - the supplier can deliver items which seem possibly fraudulent. Then Amazon will fight with the supplier about returning those items and depending on what kind of contracts are in place, could end up destroying them (this seems to be essentially what happened here).