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After years of denial and stonewalling, Amazon has admitted for the first time that they have a problem with counterfeit products. This primarily affects the Amazon Marketplace.
As a personal victim of getting counterfeit goods several times from Amazon (and eBay), I thought I'd help spread the word a bit farther. Apparently counterfeit board games is a big thing.
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Amazon Admits to Counterfeit Problem
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The Mind Simply Reels.
--Michael David Crawford
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday February 14 2019, @02:06PM (10 children)
What scammers who are going to pull the "sell counterfeit goods" con are looking for is a marketplace where:
1. There are tons of potential suckers. Amazon certainly qualifies.
2. There is no way for the goods to be checked before purchase. Amazon, like all online locations, hits this one out of the park.
3. There's enough sellers it's near-impossible for anyone to know your reputation. Amazon is big enough that this one certainly happens.
4. It's a pain in the butt to undo a purchase, so the sucker is going to decide not to bother and just eat the loss. I'm not sure how Amazon handles this.
5. Little-to-no consequences for breaking the rules. Amazon might remove you from its marketplace, at which point you change the name of the business, re-register, and you're right back. Or customers might give you bad reviews, but then you set up a bunch of good-review shills and you've changed that average back to something good.
The same kind of stuff happens on eBay, Craigslist, and any other place that sets itself up as an open marketplace. The solutions are:
1. Make returns cheap and easy.
2. Go after people for criminal fraud after a certain number of offenses. Don't advertise how many offenses this is, because otherwise the scammers will use the "business name change" approach after every, say, 14 scam sales to come just under the 15-scam-sale limit. Don't go after them in civil court either, because businesses like this have a pattern of having disappearing the moment anyone gets suspicious.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday February 14 2019, @02:34PM (5 children)
Ebay is better than Amazon, in that, if you're scammed, Ebay will refund your money.
First time, I purchased ten LED lightbulbs, but only recieved 8. I asked twice for the guy to send me two more bulbs, he replied in Chenglish (Chinese English) and never did admit that he understood what the problem was. Ebay refunded my money, and I kept the 8 bulbs.
Over the past holiday season, I was ripped off TWICE, nondelivery. Ebay refunded my money in both instances. There have been a couple others, I'd have to look at the details, but I always get my money back. Ebay isn't bashful about enforcing their rules.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 14 2019, @02:59PM
I bought a PC on eBay, but then the seller (with a long standing good reputation) refunded the paypal funds, I paid again, refunded again, then wanted to get paid via a different paypal account. I refused and lodged an eBay complaint. The seller closed shop and disappeared.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Thursday February 14 2019, @04:15PM (3 children)
This is also why the standard use case of "sell my used ___" of Ebay is no longer popular. With Ebay siding with the buyer typically, the seller can easily get screwed if the buyer claims the item is defective/not received/etc. If you are selling something worth a couple hundred dollars, the risk of losing the merchandise with no compensation is too high on Ebay.
I don't have a good solution to this problem; there will be scammers selling and buying from any service.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 14 2019, @04:25PM (2 children)
> I don't have a good solution to this problem; there will be scammers selling and buying from any service.
If the item is popular enough to sell locally, use Craigslist and complete the deal face-to-face.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 14 2019, @08:40PM (1 child)
I'd rather take the risk of losing money via eBay than getting murdered by meeting someone via Craigslist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 15 2019, @02:46AM
http://craigslistkillings.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
Hadn't heard about this before, but it won't affect my usage of Craigslist -- I'm not buying/selling guns or anything illegal. These two categories seemed to be the majority of what was listed. I've sold all kinds of things including a couple of cars this way, taking the obvious precautions like not being alone and doing the meetup during daylight.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by fakefuck39 on Thursday February 14 2019, @02:49PM (2 children)
I agree with most of your points, but I don't think you've actually shopped on amazon or done returns. I've been with them since day1, when I left ebay because of paypal.
1. There are lots of suckers. They go to the store as well, so I'm not sure how that makes amazon different. In fact, we have it pretty well here - go to an official apple store in eastern europe and you're likely to get fake chinese crap in an apple box.
2. There's no way to check goods for any online order. I don't see your point.
3. It's not only possible to check seller reputation, it's right there in your face when buying something. I and most people don't buy from anyone without thousands of orders and a very high satisfaction ratio.
4. I don't know what you mean by undo, but whatever you mean, you're lying. You can undo a purchase with one click if it's not shipped. You can return a purchase for free after it's shipped. UPS picks it up at your fucking house for free if you want. You don't even need to print a return label - they bring it, and a box.
5. Consequences for breaking the rules are losing your business completely, and is very important to sellers. 3rd party sellers always refund you. Half the time they don't even want the product back. If you leave a bad review, they personally email you, refund you, give you extra amazon gift cards just so you can add to the review that they fixed the issue in a good way. Good review "shills," even if you set up tens of thousands, only improve your star rating. They do not take down bad reviews, which describe the seller and give a little story. There is no way for a seller to remove that, and it's stuck with them for life. They will do literally anything to remove those.
You described ebay and craigslist. This does not apply to amazon, even with 3rd party products.
Now to actually get to the point of the article, which you completely avoided in order to post false bullshit you made up. There are counterfeit items. It's the buyer's job to check for that, and that can be annoying indeed. This however applies to anything you order online anywhere. I've gotten clearly returned-repackaged electronics from newegg and best buy. Batteries - look up the official spec and check the weight. Fake batteries have different weight. Electronics, vitamins - buy from a place that sells thousands a month and does not have reviews that they ship fake shit. Designer clothes and bags - I don't buy those, so I don't know how to check it, but I'm sure a place that sent fake shit and sells a thousand a month will have a review in there saying it's fake. When you get the fake item, which I have gotten a few times, I usually just keep it and use it, because they refund you immediately and never want it back.
I seriously don't think you've ever used amazon in your life. Hey, I got a question about the new spaceship tesla is building. The toilets - are they soft to sit on? Let me know please, and use an authoritative tone. There are people - people like you - who say things in a strong confident voice if they don't know something. This, as teenagers, makes them look cool. Those who as teenagers are a bit on the ugly side are neglected by their peers and become loners. This lack of social experience eventually makes them into adults who act like teenagers. Unlike other teenagers however, other adults just see a grown man bad at bullshitting, and laugh. Now dance for me clown - dance!
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday February 14 2019, @03:24PM (1 child)
There is one way to at least check visually: Post photos of the specific item you're getting, as it is. I've seen a site which allowed free classifieds for the genre of equipment the site discussed do this - you had to post at least one *original* photo of the device, and if you posted a stock photo they found it quickly and killed your ad. Show me 'the item' I'm getting, not 'an item' of what it is. Sure, somebody could have the item, post a photo of it and then not send it to you - the site in question had other ways of verifying you were actually you. This, too, could be done in more than one way, including posting a bond for your performance.
But all that takes labor time on the part of the listing hoster to actually verify these things. Amazon would rather just take the profit.
There's also the opposite question: You are perfectly legitimate but your competitors on the platform bomb you with bad shill reviews.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by fakefuck39 on Thursday February 14 2019, @05:39PM
What is a reason for this immense extra cost though? A photo of an item does nothing to tell you whether it's counterfeit. Putting a battery on a cocaine-precise scale does. What problem are you trying to solve with this? Right now, you don't like it, you return it and you don't pay shipping. I don't see a use case for what you propose.
If a seller gets shill reviews, the seller reports it, and they are taken down, and accounts posting them are investigated. If you have an amazon account who bought one thing and posted a hundred shill reviews - it's clear it's a shill account, and all its reviews are taken down.
I for example like to look at a seller's bad reviews that are a few months old. They do check those, as for high-star high-volume sellers there aren't many bad ones, and they get in touch w/ people to resolve them.
Of course Amazon would rather make a profit instead of doing useless things. I would also rather pay less and be able to send the item back a month after I receive it, for free, if I have any issues.
Now, if you order from new sellers, who have low volume - problem - they might not refund your. If you don't read reviews for a seller (not the product) - problem - they might not refund you. How is this different compared to walking into a random little pawn shop and buying a stereo? Do stupid shit, get stupid fake shit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 14 2019, @03:10PM
I see an opening for Walmart, as follows:
Ship to store from Walmart-online allows instant return/credit at the time of pickup, I've done this, works fine. This is an option for anyone living close to a store -- and there are a lot of Walmarts.
To make this work, Walmart needs to require that all their 3rd party sellers offer ship to store. As things stand now, I only order items that ship to store...