I have drastically cut down on the number of amazon orders I place because of the amount of no-name imports that have flooded their catalog in the last few years. I finally decided that if I was going to be getting crap from china anyway I might as well buy it directly from the source, so I buy a lot of stuff on Aliexpress now. Sure, it sometimes takes upwards of 3 weeks to arrive, but when you're getting stuff for a tenth of the cost elsewhere, 3 weeks doesn't seem so bad a lot of times.
This. Amazon has eliminated its own usefulness for me with its permissive approach to no-name sellers (and also its permissive approach to gougers, and the poor quality of search results where gougers and no-name sellers are difficult to filter from the actual good results).
In general, the typical "retail" product results get mixed into the sketchy sellers way too much on the platform.
I've actually gone back to buying from brick-and-mortar for things where I care about quality, and aliexpress where I'm willing to experiment. Amazon mixes those two categories poorly, providing a bad experience for both use-cases.
I have ceased entirely. All product categories. For most of late 2016 I played the annoying game of "would some really counterfeit this product?", which usually ended in a stalemate.
First I stopped buying anything that goes in my body.
Then I stopped buying anything that goes on my body.
Then electronics.
Finally, sometime early this year when I caught myself pondering whether paper cat litter pellets might be dangerous if counterfeit... I just realized it was time to stop.
Until they show they care about this, I'm Amazon-free. It's nice, I'm walking more than I used to and it feels good.
I bought a charger with a fake Intertek -- a UL competitor -- mark on it. Internek at the time had a pdf on their site warning the product had not been tested by them. I discovered this by googling the product after arrival. I notified Amazon and they immediately refunded my order... but didn't remove the charger from their site. Instead, they continued to sell it.
I think the answer is to provide proof of authenticity. Perhaps something like a hash that users can use a website to verify if their purchase is indeed authentic, and actively encourage customers to file chargebacks for products that fail the verification. Hit them where it hurts. This is something that needs to be actively fought by both governments and consumers.
If you don't have Amazon Prime you save money by shipping direct from China since China subsidizes their shipping and the United States accepts the parcel and delivers it at no extra charge. If something costs $6 to ship from Amazon then it will probably cost around $2 in shipping from China. Plus no sales tax.
The worst category is buying "OEM" cell phone batteries. Battery looks the same but it is fake. It gets listed with all the regular batteries so you dont know who is legit seller.
Consider going even further if you order stuff bulk. Chinese domestic marketplace Taobao, has surely overgrown Aliexpress since its launch.
P.S. Aliexpress itself is an English language "fork" of Taobao. At some point, amount of active merchants on Aliexpress was that high, that it seemed that it is about to overgrow the original, but Taobao caught back after few years.
As a frequent Aliexpress customer, I was suprised to find that Amazon had the best price on a particular item.
I've only seen for one product category (Solar LED string lights). I assume it only happens when a US distributor has too much supply and sells at cost/below. Also, prices on AE have risen about 20% as winter season approaches, so it could be that Amazon sellers still have units from 'summer' prices.
I'm still buying from Amazon, but only items they stock, and I'm sticking close to well name brands. Nothing shipped from anywhere else, I've just been burned far too many times.
For the same reason, I avoid Chinese-produced goods if at all possible - plus, I swear they're using gasoline as a solvent when they make anything plastic. What a stink.
I'm still a loyal Amazon shopper but I've been victimized by this many times. The worst part is that some of the counterfeit items will actually cause property damage when they malfunction (chargers, batteries, etc.)
Others are so inexpensive that it's not really worth the hassle to return them.
Now I'm reluctant to order any electronics product that doesn't have at least 500 reviews, as the scammers have become good at getting 50-100 fake reviews for counterfeit items.
Amazon needs to step up and fully insure all purchases against counterfeiting. The worst part is that this kind of stuff is ammunition for the Trump supporter view that Amazon is doing harm to the American economy by promoting goods manufactured by cheap labor abroad.
This is highly reminscient of the iOS vs. Android app distribution model. If Amazon aggressively curated its platform for quality, I expect we’d be hearing a deafening and righteously indignant chorus against its existential threat to freedom and consumer choice. Also makes you wonder whether “Amazon, but with quality control” might exist as a smaller but more profitable niche, similar to Apple.
There's another issue where middlemen like Amazon are mixing counterfeit product into the flow of real products.
This discussion came up during the 2017 Solar Eclipse where Amazon was selling counterfeit viewing glasses and then recalling legitimate product from real vendors in the confusion:
This is exactly why I no longer buy electronics or other higher ticket consumer goods from Amazon. Inevitably I'll be researching the product on Amazon and it will have 5 stars reviews with a healthy smattering of 1 star reviews. If you investigate the 1 star reviews it turns out most of them are usually from people who received a counterfeit.
So you have people buying from (ostensibly) the same product page on the site, but some percentage are getting inferior counterfeit products. If there's a way around that I haven't figured it out and won't be spending any more time to figure it out. I now buy from authorized retailers and have yet to have a problem.
Unless I'm buying little plastic things that stick on my desk and hold cables. I still buy those from Amazon. I don't really care if they're counterfeit, insofar as they could even be.
Co-mingling of inventory is why i'll never buy anything vaguely counterfeitable from either. I previously had fake Sennheiser headphones sold by Amazon themselves.
It's also pretty bad for the merchants. If you sell a product via Amazon, and it gets comingled with counterfeits from another merchant you can get fined because you ended up selling someone a counterfeit.
Bought a 64gb Kingston micro SD from ebay, and appeared fine at first but after running some checks was clearly fake. Reported it to ebay and the seller. Was refunded instantly (and could keep the duff card) but the seller is still selling and ebay do not appear to have taken any action. I now realise that no-one would sell for 64gb card new for £12, so ALL the sellers there must be selling fakes - but ebay allows them to make new listings and others to sell. Sad thing is someone won't notice until they get back from their holiday and find their pictures aren't there. And by then the seller will have closed that account and opened a new one.
This has been going on for almost two decades, or as long as eBay has been around. Back in the days, once you unknowingly bought a fake SD card, you not only had to prove that you had a fake, but also ship it back to China to get a refund! Even though the cheap fake memory card problem was widely known (there were selling in thousands), eBay didn't seem to care and quickly lost me as a customer.
Last year I bought a genuine Samsung 128GB card for $25, so what you paid isn't that suspiciously low. Flash memory prices have gone up over the past year, but you probably still paid more than wholesale price for a real 64GB card.
Who is responsible when a counterfeit device results in injury or damage to personal property?
Is there much difference between Ulbricht's culpability for Silk Road and Amazon (Bezos) liability for Amazon's embrace of counterfeit products? True, the former was criminal liability, and perhaps that might be enough of a difference, but it ought not be.
Decades of product safety regulation and tort deterrence is being washed away.
I mean, Amazon is even doing the logistics for this stuff. A lot of counterfeits are "fulfilled by Amazon". You pay Amazon, Amazon delivers it, you return to it Amazon - who on earth is the 3rd party supposed to be in this transaction? There is none. How can Amazon escape liability for this crap?
Not even the great pirate Ulbricht himself would warehouse and ship the narcotics.
Perhaps there needs to be a new open standard for authenticating physical products.
Put a unique key on each item- added cost, I know- that validates against a public key for the company and product. At each sale of the product or passing of possession from a supplier to a vendor, the keys would register a transfer. Anyone in the supply chain could use the company's public APIs to say "I have this item, does that make sense? Or did someone already sell this one?".
Companies could sue anyone selling unverified goods. Border police could easily identify fakes. Customers could confirm authenticity. Sellers could prove they are or are not selling fakes.
From the article -- "This is a world where just about anything can be made almost instantaneously; a world where a product can be iterated, produced, and then sold around the world within a couple of weeks."
And yet every Kickstarter that uses Shenzen to manufacture is months if not years late in delivering.
Presumably if you could make money by taking out counterfeiters it would inspire a some subset of people to do so. Most of what I've read on this problem though seems to hinge on the fact that even if you identify the business that is at fault they just vanish and a new business pops up to take their place. And their does not seem to be a lot of incentive on the Chinese government to regulate these guys.
A lot of that is inexperience. If they spoke Mandarin and had ongoing relationships with people/places having access to everything ranging from simple milling equipment up to a superfactory in the space of a few square miles, (and next-day shipping from Taobao,) they might have less trouble.
Furthering the other replies, manufacturing is hard.
In a similar vein to the way software devs roll their eyes when a client says: "..It's just a tiny change, it won't take any time", there are so many hidden gotchyas when you're working with physical products.
If you're randomly picking a factory off Alibaba and thinking you've got it nailed, you're very, very wrong.
Furthermore, when you're making physical products, there's no undo button. Some errors cannot be corrected. Didn't plan your mold perfectly?
Oops, the 10k USD and one month that you sunk into your mold .. gone.
Don't have someone on the ground that actually cares about you and your product? You're going to get screwed, even 'unintentionally' - the factory probably won't care that this batch of plastic is grey, not black, but your customers will..
Over the years, I've worked on delivering dozens of physical products projects in China. The biggest rule to learn is ego: when to apply it, and when not to apply it. (And typically, you should very rarely apply it..)
In case kickstarter applicant is a domestic Chinese company, they rarely have any problem delivering even biggest projects.
Everything changes when the applicant in question is some kinda American Silicone Valley hoodie startup wunder kinder, with an idea that he he can make a manufacturable product from scratch during a one week hop to Shenzhen.
Related question: what online sites, if any, are better to purchase items to avoid counterfeit?
I've been thinking of using B&H instead of Amazon for
electronic stuff, assuming that their reputation means they are less likely to enable counterfeit sellers, but I don't know that for sure. I also don't know if other online sites (jet.com?) have or don't have the counterfeit issue.
There are a lot of honestly-marketed and fun products that you can buy China-direct on eBay, e.g. nuts and bolts of all types and random titanium or carbon bicycle fabrications, all with shockingly low shipping.
But I wouldn't trust them for something safety-critical, since you have no idea what engineering went into them and no recourse if they fail.
I don't know why Amazon continues to jeopardize their reputation with being a counterfeit reseller, but they're becoming worse than eBay. I guess the money must be so good that they just don't care.
Wanted: Amazon Custody Chain - assurance that the product in question was in fact purchased by Amazon directly from the manufacturer, or otherwise Amazon vouches for the authenticity of the product.
One of my laptops is running with a counterfeit charger (Amazon) and a counterfeit battery (eBay). As soon as I realized that I have never left it plugged in where I don't see it - who knows what kind of fire hazard it could be.
Also, lasers. There are plenty of illegal laser pointers on eBay and output rarely matches the claims. And you really don't want to play with these illegal lasers unless you have real wraparound lenses.
I had a knockoff laptop power supply energetically self-disconnect. That was surprising!
Laptop was plugged in, cord draped over something and under mild tension. As near as I can tell, the wires shorted on the DC side, instantly melted the plastic insulation, and suddenly I had a severed cord and two live wires sticking out of the brick.
... so no, I would never leave a counterfeit laptop charger unsupervised.
Youtube has done a decent job of filtering out copyrighted material (or even making sure certain videos are sold -- not distributed for free). I'm not sure why this can't be managed in a similar way.
The people in the article mention they had patents, etc. This would be easy to prove to corporations like Amazon and eBay.
I'm also surprised the US based companies distributing the goods aren't getting their pants sued off in court.
As a small publisher, I can also tell you our copyrighted materials regularly find their way onto YouTube (and Google SERPs) with links to torrents or other unauthorized sites. Filing a DMCA to get them taken down is a PITA, and YouTube/Google is not proactive about handling the problem.
Digital goods are different from physical ones. The first-sale doctrine means the seller doesn't need any licenses (patent or otherwise) to sell the product. They still can't counterfeit, but you have to show that the product is counterfeit, not just that the seller is "unauthorized" like in copyright.
Amazon could still refuse to list those products, of course, but it's not a legal obligation.
Interesting. The producers in China operate in a more capitalist market than in the U.S. In some ways this has created an entrepreneurial class in China of high innovation, instead of rentiers owning a market. That said, whatever your feeling on patents and IP, stealing someone's brand name crosses a real line, even in the most capitalistic ideology
I've been buying from B&H and NewEgg for electronics, and avoiding Amazon if I can. I use Amazon for cheap stuff out of convenience with "prime", and buy only from Amazon, LLC and not other sellers, although that is not always guaranteed to solve the problem, as others have mentioned (such as mixing of counterfeit with real products). When writing a review of counterfeit product, make sure to include the Seller's name in the review so that buyers are aware.
I believe it is very "if you can't win them, join them" moment for the Amazon.
If they will not engage with Chinese makers, people will simply shop on Chinese mail order sites as is particularly popular with current American college age group now (and yes, Alibaba provides a lot of hard statistics on that.)
If they will begin actively working to detriment of existing Chinese sellers, they will loose even more.
They are choosing in between "not winning much in move 1, and loosing a lot in move 2"
shouldn't there be a mechanism that allowed legitimate sellers to report and block knock-off sellers on ebay/amazon?
Amazon and eBay are American companies so they the problem here it seems to me. How are they getting away with it? Arent they technically participating in the copyright/patent violations by providing the counterfeiters a platform to sell their knock offs?
Knock offs on alibaba are another issue but then again average American is not shopping there. ... yet.
Well, Apple and Sony together effectively bribed Alibaba to prohibit trade in factory refurbished second hand electronics.
I was making money on that myself in my teenage years. Probably, I would not be a developer now if Apple did not come up with Iphone and Sony and Nokia did not tank to the bottom so quickly at around 2009.
First and second generations of iphones were easily refurbishable. They turned to optic medium and harder adhesives in third gen, and in the middle of production run for the third, they began using one that was completely impossible to undo in garage workshop conditions to finally kill refurbishment industry
There is, sort of. On Amazon, you have to do test purchases. You can then file complaints to Amazon. In many cases, this results in a suspension or some other kind of ding against their account particularly if they can't verify an authentic supply chain.
Amazon avoids getting in trouble by putting the legal responsibility entirely on sellers. They are just a 'dumb pipe' running the marketplace.
funny thing is, they actually block you from posting if you let people know it's a fake or replica. ebay and amazon do tend to side with the buyer most of the time, making it a tough problem to solve because it can be exploited on both sides.
on the other hand, this has opened up other places for people to buy and sell with authentication provided as a service ie: StockX and GOAT for sneakers.
[+] [-] pitaa|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pxtl|8 years ago|reply
In general, the typical "retail" product results get mixed into the sketchy sellers way too much on the platform.
I've actually gone back to buying from brick-and-mortar for things where I care about quality, and aliexpress where I'm willing to experiment. Amazon mixes those two categories poorly, providing a bad experience for both use-cases.
[+] [-] elefanten|8 years ago|reply
First I stopped buying anything that goes in my body.
Then I stopped buying anything that goes on my body.
Then electronics.
Finally, sometime early this year when I caught myself pondering whether paper cat litter pellets might be dangerous if counterfeit... I just realized it was time to stop.
Until they show they care about this, I'm Amazon-free. It's nice, I'm walking more than I used to and it feels good.
[+] [-] x0x0|8 years ago|reply
I bought a charger with a fake Intertek -- a UL competitor -- mark on it. Internek at the time had a pdf on their site warning the product had not been tested by them. I discovered this by googling the product after arrival. I notified Amazon and they immediately refunded my order... but didn't remove the charger from their site. Instead, they continued to sell it.
[+] [-] atomi|8 years ago|reply
I think the answer is to provide proof of authenticity. Perhaps something like a hash that users can use a website to verify if their purchase is indeed authentic, and actively encourage customers to file chargebacks for products that fail the verification. Hit them where it hurts. This is something that needs to be actively fought by both governments and consumers.
[+] [-] gscott|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anonymous5133|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baybal2|8 years ago|reply
P.S. Aliexpress itself is an English language "fork" of Taobao. At some point, amount of active merchants on Aliexpress was that high, that it seemed that it is about to overgrow the original, but Taobao caught back after few years.
[+] [-] cwkoss|8 years ago|reply
I've only seen for one product category (Solar LED string lights). I assume it only happens when a US distributor has too much supply and sells at cost/below. Also, prices on AE have risen about 20% as winter season approaches, so it could be that Amazon sellers still have units from 'summer' prices.
[+] [-] Nomentatus|8 years ago|reply
For the same reason, I avoid Chinese-produced goods if at all possible - plus, I swear they're using gasoline as a solvent when they make anything plastic. What a stink.
[+] [-] grandalf|8 years ago|reply
Others are so inexpensive that it's not really worth the hassle to return them.
Now I'm reluctant to order any electronics product that doesn't have at least 500 reviews, as the scammers have become good at getting 50-100 fake reviews for counterfeit items.
Amazon needs to step up and fully insure all purchases against counterfeiting. The worst part is that this kind of stuff is ammunition for the Trump supporter view that Amazon is doing harm to the American economy by promoting goods manufactured by cheap labor abroad.
[+] [-] agumonkey|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cranjice|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] closeparen|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joezydeco|8 years ago|reply
This discussion came up during the 2017 Solar Eclipse where Amazon was selling counterfeit viewing glasses and then recalling legitimate product from real vendors in the confusion:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15008338
[+] [-] nkrisc|8 years ago|reply
So you have people buying from (ostensibly) the same product page on the site, but some percentage are getting inferior counterfeit products. If there's a way around that I haven't figured it out and won't be spending any more time to figure it out. I now buy from authorized retailers and have yet to have a problem.
Unless I'm buying little plastic things that stick on my desk and hold cables. I still buy those from Amazon. I don't really care if they're counterfeit, insofar as they could even be.
[+] [-] sofaofthedamned|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] db48x|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ljf|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tooltalk|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wtallis|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ksk|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rrggrr|8 years ago|reply
Is there much difference between Ulbricht's culpability for Silk Road and Amazon (Bezos) liability for Amazon's embrace of counterfeit products? True, the former was criminal liability, and perhaps that might be enough of a difference, but it ought not be.
Decades of product safety regulation and tort deterrence is being washed away.
[+] [-] revelation|8 years ago|reply
Not even the great pirate Ulbricht himself would warehouse and ship the narcotics.
[+] [-] mabbo|8 years ago|reply
Put a unique key on each item- added cost, I know- that validates against a public key for the company and product. At each sale of the product or passing of possession from a supplier to a vendor, the keys would register a transfer. Anyone in the supply chain could use the company's public APIs to say "I have this item, does that make sense? Or did someone already sell this one?".
Companies could sue anyone selling unverified goods. Border police could easily identify fakes. Customers could confirm authenticity. Sellers could prove they are or are not selling fakes.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|8 years ago|reply
And yet every Kickstarter that uses Shenzen to manufacture is months if not years late in delivering.
Presumably if you could make money by taking out counterfeiters it would inspire a some subset of people to do so. Most of what I've read on this problem though seems to hinge on the fact that even if you identify the business that is at fault they just vanish and a new business pops up to take their place. And their does not seem to be a lot of incentive on the Chinese government to regulate these guys.
[+] [-] leggomylibro|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kweks|8 years ago|reply
If you're randomly picking a factory off Alibaba and thinking you've got it nailed, you're very, very wrong.
Furthermore, when you're making physical products, there's no undo button. Some errors cannot be corrected. Didn't plan your mold perfectly? Oops, the 10k USD and one month that you sunk into your mold .. gone.
Don't have someone on the ground that actually cares about you and your product? You're going to get screwed, even 'unintentionally' - the factory probably won't care that this batch of plastic is grey, not black, but your customers will..
Over the years, I've worked on delivering dozens of physical products projects in China. The biggest rule to learn is ego: when to apply it, and when not to apply it. (And typically, you should very rarely apply it..)
[+] [-] baybal2|8 years ago|reply
In case kickstarter applicant is a domestic Chinese company, they rarely have any problem delivering even biggest projects.
Everything changes when the applicant in question is some kinda American Silicone Valley hoodie startup wunder kinder, with an idea that he he can make a manufacturable product from scratch during a one week hop to Shenzhen.
Just go and look at past statistics by yourself
[+] [-] steven777400|8 years ago|reply
I've been thinking of using B&H instead of Amazon for electronic stuff, assuming that their reputation means they are less likely to enable counterfeit sellers, but I don't know that for sure. I also don't know if other online sites (jet.com?) have or don't have the counterfeit issue.
[+] [-] reiichiroh|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akgerber|8 years ago|reply
But I wouldn't trust them for something safety-critical, since you have no idea what engineering went into them and no recourse if they fail.
[+] [-] bitmapbrother|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ctdonath|8 years ago|reply
Ditto eBay.
[+] [-] elandybarr|8 years ago|reply
Also, lasers. There are plenty of illegal laser pointers on eBay and output rarely matches the claims. And you really don't want to play with these illegal lasers unless you have real wraparound lenses.
[+] [-] ethbro|8 years ago|reply
Laptop was plugged in, cord draped over something and under mild tension. As near as I can tell, the wires shorted on the DC side, instantly melted the plastic insulation, and suddenly I had a severed cord and two live wires sticking out of the brick.
... so no, I would never leave a counterfeit laptop charger unsupervised.
[+] [-] danesparza|8 years ago|reply
The people in the article mention they had patents, etc. This would be easy to prove to corporations like Amazon and eBay.
I'm also surprised the US based companies distributing the goods aren't getting their pants sued off in court.
[+] [-] ilamont|8 years ago|reply
I think it depends on what types of copyrighted material are involved. Music piracy is rampant and artists/publishers get little love from Google (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/apr/15/music-indus...).
As a small publisher, I can also tell you our copyrighted materials regularly find their way onto YouTube (and Google SERPs) with links to torrents or other unauthorized sites. Filing a DMCA to get them taken down is a PITA, and YouTube/Google is not proactive about handling the problem.
[+] [-] icebraining|8 years ago|reply
Amazon could still refuse to list those products, of course, but it's not a legal obligation.
[+] [-] cracell|8 years ago|reply
That said I think in the long term Amazon's brand could be being damaged by this more by more than they are profiting. But who knows.
They must be very aware of the problem and either working on a solution or purposely just letting it go for now.
[+] [-] SubiculumCode|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paul7986|8 years ago|reply
If not I was thinking that might be a good side project.
[+] [-] otterpro|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baybal2|8 years ago|reply
If they will not engage with Chinese makers, people will simply shop on Chinese mail order sites as is particularly popular with current American college age group now (and yes, Alibaba provides a lot of hard statistics on that.)
If they will begin actively working to detriment of existing Chinese sellers, they will loose even more.
They are choosing in between "not winning much in move 1, and loosing a lot in move 2"
[+] [-] xenihn|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] readhn|8 years ago|reply
Amazon and eBay are American companies so they the problem here it seems to me. How are they getting away with it? Arent they technically participating in the copyright/patent violations by providing the counterfeiters a platform to sell their knock offs?
Knock offs on alibaba are another issue but then again average American is not shopping there. ... yet.
[+] [-] baybal2|8 years ago|reply
I was making money on that myself in my teenage years. Probably, I would not be a developer now if Apple did not come up with Iphone and Sony and Nokia did not tank to the bottom so quickly at around 2009.
First and second generations of iphones were easily refurbishable. They turned to optic medium and harder adhesives in third gen, and in the middle of production run for the third, they began using one that was completely impossible to undo in garage workshop conditions to finally kill refurbishment industry
[+] [-] j-c-hewitt|8 years ago|reply
Amazon avoids getting in trouble by putting the legal responsibility entirely on sellers. They are just a 'dumb pipe' running the marketplace.
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nfRfqX5n|8 years ago|reply
on the other hand, this has opened up other places for people to buy and sell with authentication provided as a service ie: StockX and GOAT for sneakers.