Amazon Finally Admitted To Investors That It Has a Counterfeit Problem (qz.com) 97
Amazon has for the first time acknowledged sales of counterfeits and pirated items as a risk in its annual earnings report to investors and the U.S. SEC. "Some third-party sellers have been using the reach of Amazon's marketplace as an opportunity to sell counterfeit and pirated items," reports Quartz. "The pressure on the company has been growing as brands such as Birkenstock and Mercedes Benz have lambasted it for not being able to control the problem." From the report: Under the section of "risk factors" to the business, Amazon says it "could be liable" for the activities of its sellers, and explains: "Under our seller programs, we may be unable to prevent sellers from collecting payments, fraudulently or otherwise, when buyers never receive the products they ordered or when the products received are materially different from the sellers' descriptions. We also may be unable to prevent sellers in our stores or through other stores from selling unlawful, counterfeit, pirated, or stolen goods, selling goods in an unlawful or unethical manner, violating the proprietary rights of others, or otherwise violating our policies. Under our A2Z Guarantee, we reimburse buyers for payments up to certain limits in these situations, and as our third-party seller sales grow, the cost of this program will increase and could negatively affect our operating results. In addition, to the extent any of this occurs, it could harm our business or damage our reputation and we could face civil or criminal liability for unlawful activities by our sellers."
amazon only has cared for shirt piracy (Score:2, Flamebait)
the problem is amazon is doing a piss poor job in some fields and totally ignored others.
Loads of copyright infringing games stuff on amazon. they don't care.
but try to sell your own brands shirts on amazon and it's a goddamn nightmare due to having to prove that you own the brand etc - and even then they just flat out deny 50% from selling. but you got a 555-in-1 cartridge with marios face on it? okay, just sell it, no problems.
that is, if amazon just had 1 worker to _manually_ go through the website once
Liability. (Score:2)
but try to sell your own brands shirts on amazon and it's a goddamn nightmare due to having to prove that you own the brand etc
The logic of amazon being that if you happen to be trying to sell, say knock offs of Nike or some other brand, they'll have the legal of the big brand team on their asses.
Amazon decides to be cautious. But having actual human employee who can quickly at a glance notice that your "happy bear" brand is a just a small pop and mom shop brand and is never going to cost a legal turmoil... would require paying competent actual human employee. Which is going to cost money.
Better use a poor automated system, that wi
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But the problem is that a significant amount of the software is done by companies that are now belly up.
Hence the Mario example. These are blatant and obvious.
avoid the backlash that they could have from end-users trying to sell legit cartridges 2nd hand.
There are a relatively small number of releases of these specific Mario games in question. It will be very obvious that these listings are not for those releases.
less "marketplace" more "retailer" (Score:3)
they're just going to have to bite the bullet on maintaining and selling their own inventory and be less wild west "marketplace".
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They maintained the "wild west" for the purpose of forcing retailers into exclusively lucrative "% off the top" contracts for them to make any effort combating counterfeits. Amazon is complicit in counterfeiting. I bet there are emails.
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If you register and attain a decent Karma rating, you get to disable the ads.
Re: Slashdot Ad problem taking too much screen spa (Score:2)
Taboola is absolute cancer. There's nothing worse than browsing a coding blog at work (perfectly ok behaviour , it's part of the job) and taboola whacks some borderline pornographic or medical gross-out as smack in the middle of your screen ready to get you in trouble. I've had to block certain sites (I keep a nillroute list on my pc mostly to stop me being tempted by Facebook while on the clock) just because the risks of malicious advertising. It'd be a shame if /. had to go that way after 20+ years
Bigger risk, drop in sales (Score:2)
Because of widespread counterfeiting on Amazon there are some things I am very reluctant to buy anymore from Amazon, like cables... I would either buy them from NewEgg or directly from the manufacturer (I am really hoping NewEgg does not have a similar issue here).
I would think there would be a very real risk that Amazon sales would decline if people found they could not trust Amazon to deliver the real product they thought they were ordering. Given how widespread and accurate fashion fakes are getting, wo
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Re: Bigger risk, drop in sales (Score:2)
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Re: Bigger risk, drop in sales (Score:1)
Except the fake ones covering comes unstuck a week after you get it.
Or the covering starts scuffing after one use.
Where the genuine one will still look perfect after years of use.
If your buying something that you know is a fake for fake prices, this isnâ(TM)t an issue.
If you are buying something that claims to be genuine for close to genuine prices, itâ(TM)s a massive issue
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And even then, what you received is probably not what you ordered due to comingling of seller inventory with the same ASIN. And what Amazon shipped may not have originated with the specific seller you bought from, but the seller lost the money on the sale anyway.
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No, they're very often substandard products. Even if a particular product is made during an "extra shift" in the same factory, it's not quality controlled and is made with materials from the beginning or end of a batch, which are normally discarded due to insufficient quality, or with fake components. Fake fragrances often contain hazardous chemicals. Fake machine parts are usually not made from the same grade materials and/or not to the required tolerances. Some people don't mind and buy the cheap knockoff
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Re: Bigger risk, drop in sales (Score:2)
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It is the consumers who are idiots, stop buying crap quality branded stuff. Don't be a victim of marketing and wander around the place advertising product, you look the fool and not cool at all.
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It's not easy. Even just a simple polo shirt. I hate wearing branded merchandise, but I'm limited to a few brands because all the rest have stitched or embossed logos. And I can't always get the quality I want, either.
When it comes to shoes, I actually want to wear New Balance for comfort but I won't because of their giant branding. Partly because I wear them to work and want to look semi-professional without wearing dressier shoes that are terrible for your feet.
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I'm not saying you're wrong, I have no evidence, but I'm just reminded of the counterfeit Cisco hardware. It was made in the same factory by the same workers, but they used whatever they had, not what went into the real thing. The cheap knockoff simply wasn't as good as the real thing.
I'm just thinking it's far easier for slashdotters to spot different capacitors and such than identifying poor quality leather or stitching.
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Maybe it's extra shifts, maybe some are rejects from the main shifts. But elsewhere you can find other counterfeiters copying the same style with cheaper materials and build quality and undercutting the "genuine" counterfeits on price. You have to really know what you're doing to know what you get.
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By contract they are not supposed to run off unauthorized copies (often using inferior materials) on assembly lines the company installs.
While some things can be dangerous, it's also about cheating the system.
Re:Bigger risk, drop in sales (Score:5, Informative)
It's already worse than you think. Amazon mingles inventories, so you can pay the premium to order a legit product from a legitimate seller and still get a cheap chinese knockoff.
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If you're already ordering from Amazon for Prime, you'd know how easy it is to return. You're just at the mercy of Amazon not shutting down your account for too many returns instead of shutting down the bad sellers.
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If you received fake you can return it. But how many people do that?
I got a fake and tried to engage with the brand. I managed it, but it took them so long that I could no longer return the item ... and then the contact at the brand stopped responding, so I get to keep it!
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As a tech company, they should have seen it as an attack vector a mile away.
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Again, you're seeing this as a bug instead of a deliberate part of Amazon's business strategy.
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They're good, but if you want to actually get close to the advertised price you need to order $100+ of merchandise because of their high shipping. I know that's because they don't build the shipping cost into the price and I love and respect that. I can buy a 10-pack of 7-foot ethernet cables for less than $15 and both make $9.99 per cable and undercut Wal-Mart/Best Buy/Office Depot.
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Late admission = admission of damning knowledge (Score:1)
They knew about this problem. They USED this problem to force retailers into lucrative (for Amazon) deals, or they implied fraudulent counterfeits would flood their market without protections. Literally, Amazon is the worst major US company.
They should move to China where this kind of thing is not only tolerated but promoted generally as SOP. Bribe/tithe or be fucked by the gatekeeper.
Stop comingling (Score:5, Interesting)
Simple solution, Amazon: stop comingling the damn inventory from 3rd party sellers. True, you won't be able to prevent
from selling counterfeit items, but you'll be able to trace back who sold it, and when sellers know they can be identified, they won't be as willing to risk it
Re:Stop comingling (Score:5, Interesting)
That's not a solution, that's the problem they originally started mingling inventories to solve. This entire situation is a feature, not a bug.
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Re:Stop comingling (Score:5, Interesting)
The simple solution is not adopted for a simple reason: it would hurt Amazon profits.
The reason this shows up in an investor report at all is precisely because it is so large a "problem" that doing something about it could noticeably hurt future profits. At some point, hiding knowledge of a growing problem invites lawsuits, lawsuits that are more likely to win if there is a cover up.
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One does not simply execute Bezos.exe without... permissions.
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Techincally, sellers can choose to not comingle their inventory The only problem is it means Amazon's cut of the product sale increases dramatically. It also means the Prime shipping will take longer since it'll be dispa
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Oh, you just need a Blockchain . . . (Score:1)
. . . to prevent counterfeiting . . . or, at least that's what the Blockchain folks keep telling me.
Oh, and some folks are actually doing it:
https://www.bosch-presse.de/pr... [bosch-presse.de]
It's not just 3rd party sellers (Score:1)
Amazon does fulfillment for 3rd party sellers and mixes the merchandise in the warehouses. It doesn't matter who you buy things from: You can get counterfeit goods from all sellers with Amazon fulfillment and even from Amazon itself.
Fake Benz? (Score:1)
You can buy a knock-off Benz on Amazon?
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You can buy a knock-off Benz on Amazon?
Peddling fake Benz hubcaps on Amazon is big business.
Yes, we all know that (Score:3)
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Can you even have a fake Arduino? It's open source, the whole point is that anyone can make one.
At most there might be some trademark infringement if they call it an "Arduino".
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Well the Microcontrollers on the Arduino board are typically an Atmel AVR. If there was a fake Atmel AVR, it would be a fake Arduino!
Money laundering (Score:5, Interesting)
Without openly admitting it, those admissions are also referring to money laundering of some affiliates and how Amazon profits handsomely by taking its cut off the top, no questions asked. Nope, there's nothing at all odd about a seller who prices common health & beauty aids and other common items three orders of magnitude greater than their MSRPs....
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Amazon-published eBooks, on which Amazon takes a cut of 30%, are also a common money-laundering source. Amazon has no desire to stop these babble-filled books from being sold because they are personally making so much money off of aiding and abetting these criminals.
Here's one prolific author, for example:
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=d... [amazon.com]
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Those aren't actually e-books: they're paperbacks printed by an on-demand publisher, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. Regardless, they do still seem like a scam, and one angry reviewer of several calls them that specifically.
Re: Money laundering (Score:2)
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I know, I noticed that and also the recent shutdown and transition, but they're still paperbacks on offer. The question remains whether anything actually gets printed and shipped - a run of the mill scam - or whether the orders themselves are a front and nothing gets printed or shipped - money laundering. That depends entirely on the back-end of Amazon's ordering system and linkage with its own on-demand publishing arm that we can't see. Money laundering would depend upon the "seller" being able to keep
Amazon had to admit this... (Score:3)
Investment analysts discovered that 83% of Amazon shares had been printed in China.
The bad drives out the good (Score:5, Interesting)
Amazon has bigger problems that counterfeit goods alone. By letting in every fly-by-night manufacturer and seller from China, they've created a situation where certain items simply can't be purchased on Amazon anymore.
Case in point: try buying a good replacement battery for a laptop computer, i.e. one that won't die in a few months. You'll find the same crappy junk batteries being sold under a dozen different names, all at cut-rate prices. The quality sellers have fled Amazon. You have to go to another web site to buy a decent battery (albeit at a higher price, but at least a battery you can trust).
Or try buying an RC toy car for your kids, or a water toy, or any one of hundreds of different electronic items. The only choices you have are bad, bad, and bad.
To make it worse, the fly-by-night sellers have learned how to corrupt the Amazon review system. You'll see some item with hundreds of favorable reviews, then realize that only the last dozen of them actually apply to the item for sale. The other reviews will be talking about a completely different item. Somehow the sellers have figured out how to transfer a set of reviews to a different product.
On top of that, Amazon defends the bogus sellers. I recently got a Facebook message from a Chinese seller offering to reimburse me if I bought a super soaker toy and gave the toy a favorable review. I promptly located the item and seller on Amazon and left a scathing review, which Amazon promptly rejected. Fake paid reviews are clearly perfectly acceptable to Amazon, but reporting them is not.
Trust is Amazon's greatest asset. If people stop trusting what they buy from them, Amazon is opening the doors wide open to the competition.
I did the same for my cell phone battery (Score:2)
Abandon Ship (Score:2, Interesting)
I have had my fill of counterfeit products on Amazon. Recently, I purchased a reputable brand ski helmet from a NJ retailer and received a piece of junk. It was badly assembled and improperly glued together. I promptly returned the product with a scathing review.
I have since combed local shops looking for a similar product and realize that the helmet I received was a counterfeit. Wow, Amazon sells counterfeit poorly assembled brain buckets. Rest assured some poor soul is going to perish using a similar
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Yeah some items sold are outright dangerous and even popping up in the Amazon promited goods list. Actually it is hard enough to get a good replacement LiION battery somewhere nowadays, I cannot find an devent samsung etc.. originals over here in Europe especially not for those parts which are supposed to be not user servicable, but it is literally impossible to find anything than pure junk in this area on Amazon which does not scream for flames.
Same goes for USB-C some of the cables sold there are outright
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Trust is Amazon's greatest asset. If people stop trusting what they buy from them, Amazon is opening the doors wide open to the competition.
Hey Walmart and Target, are you paying attention? Here is your chance to differentiate with genuine products and better yet to run attack ads making fun of third party Amazon sellers peddling fakes. Remember the Microsoft anti-Google ads or the Mac vs PC campaign from Apple? Yeah, you need to run something like that. Bezos might sue, but you're already at war with Amazon for survival anyway so why hold back now? Don't be the next Sears.
Re: The bad drives out the good (Score:1)
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What site are you using for laptop batteries? I need a new source.
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Check out batteriesplus.com. You'll pay 2X to 3X the price compared to no-name Amazon vendors, but the batteries are branded by established manufacturers (e.g. Duracell and Rayovac), and sold by a company that's been in business for decades, with actual storefronts in the U.S.
For Mac batteries, Macsales.com is also a good source. Again, much higher prices, but sold and warrantied by a company that's been in business for decades.
You can buy
Just remember (Score:2)