They do, and we have seen people get fake items. this is a huge problem for things like tourniquets. We tell people to go right to North American Rescue for example but so many people instinctively go to Amazon now and order things that it's a problem.
the fakes look almost like the real thing but have no quality control and break easily.
There are lots of bins in the warehouse. They contain up to around five items each. There is a theoretical possibility that two of the same thing from different sellers could end up in the same bin. At that point the picker wouldn’t know which is which.
Amazon's seller-side stickerless inventory documentation specifically says that identical items from different sellers are never put into same physical bin so that the original source can be traced.
Irrelevant to the discussion. Keep reading the link that cj provided, starting at the "Example", and you'll see that there is nothing preventing a counterfeit item being sold on behalf of a FBA seller even if the seller shipped genuine items to Amazon. All virtual tracking does is (theoretically) allow *tracing* of the counterfeit item should it be detected and reported.
In general I would say it is safer than an FBA or FBM offer, but not totally safe.
Vendor accounts are highly sought after by black-hatters because:
1. It's much harder to track down shenanigans you run on them (since as you said the only public seller info is "Amazon") 2. They generally have higher authority for editing listings, so if you want to change a competitor's images it's more likely to stick from a vendor account
I returned that and simultaneously ordered the exact same item again from the same page, still "shipped and sold by amazon", and this time the properly packaged product arrived, with a valid serial number, and it worked just fine.
It's a bit screwy, but you can filter by seller by clicking into a specific product category, and then selecting Amazon.com in the bar on the left. Then all the items should be "shipped and sold by Amazon.com".
But I've been sort of shocked to find recently that Amazon's prices, even with free shipping, are often not competitive with buying first-party, even with paying the shipping. For a lot of products these days, if there's a recognizable name brand associated with it, I just by first-party. You get it slower, but you know what you're getting, and probably end up giving more money to the seller too.
I would not have seen myself doing this ten years ago.