I wonder if contacting US Government representatives to ask them to have CPB investigate Amazon warehouses as a nexus of counterfeit goods would be useful.
I bet if CPB officials raided an Amazon warehouse and went through and seized all counterfeit goods in the warehouse, Amazon would quickly find a solution to this problem.
Full disclosure I work for Amazon (on the web services side).
The author of this article clearly doesn't know much about selling on Amazon, because what he is asking for is possible. It's called the Amazon Brand Registry. You can contact the infringment team using the details here and initiate the process of getting your brand / ASIN locked so that other people can't sell it without your permission: https://www.amazon.com/report/infringement
If you have a popular product then counterfeiters are unfortunately inevitable, but you do have options to fight back and stop them.
There is also Brand Gating which is a little harder to get. Look up ASIN or Brand Gating for information. Basically you can order the counterfeit product and report it to Amazon. It can cost a couple thousand in legal fees to register your brand and get all the paperwork unless you are capable of doing it all yourself, but it is possible.
You really think the author of the post (me) doesn't communicate regularly with the Brand Registry team? Day 5 for them to do anything on this latest one.
Since you work on the web services side it's forgivable that you would think that link to reporting infringement is an effective solution / something that Amazon pays close attention to. We've sold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of product on Amazon, found a company selling a counterfeit version of our product, and submitted a complaint to that URL. That was on 4/5/2016. We have yet to receive a response. The only solution we had was to call up the infringer and tell them to stop, which they luckily did.
But, as I said, from the outside, that report link does seem like a viable "option to fight back"; in reality, it's a customer support black hole.
Why is Amazon not actively seeking out patterns of counterfeiters and suggesting this to sellers.
Just doing simple image machine learning should get 90% of scammers.
He AWS team is great about this. Looking for abnormalities. Looking for posted AWS keys. Proactively. The retail guys need to get some of the cloud guy smarts. Or ethics. Either/or will help stop this.
I don’t sell, but I can barely buy from amazon because of all the scam copies and fake reviews.
"We do not enforce ... Detail Page Ownership ... Exclusive or Selective Distribution."
As long as the counterfeit is good enough, don't bother complaining:
"Other sellers can list their items for sale against pages that you have created or added your copyrighted images to. However, we do require sellers to list only against detail pages that exactly match their items. If you believe sellers are listing against detail pages that do not exactly match their items, we ask that you report the violation directly by using the contact us form."
Why do the counterfeiters get to use your own picture of your own product? Because Amazon claims the rights from you:
"Additionally, when you add your copyrighted image to a detail page, you grant Amazon and its affiliates a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right to exercise all rights of publicity over the material."
And that brand registry? Does it mean your brand is yours? No, it's just 'increased authority' ...
"increased authority over product listings with your brand name"
Amazon's approach here is, IMO, both BS and odd-seeming from a business perspective.
Once upon a time, I could go to amazon.com and buy things from Amazon. I trusted Amazon to sell legit goods. But now if I go to amazon.com, it's bizarrely difficult to buy from Amazon, and a large fraction of the goods sold seem to be junk. And Amazon presumably made considerably more money selling things that they sourced themselves.
So why doesn't Amazon go back closer to their original model? I wouldn't mind seeing a strong built-in preference for genuine Amazon listings and a very clear indication that I'm about to order from some random-ass seller.
(Also, I'm quite surprised that there hasn't been a giant trademark infringement and/or copyright infringement lawsuit against Amazon? Amazon.com de facto sells all kinds of counterfeit goods. I wouldn't be surprised if a judge wouldn't let them hide behind the "it wasn't us -- it was a third party" defense.)
Nathan, we own a Brand that's in Brand registry, don't wholesale, and hold trademarks on the unique products. Guess what? We still get people on the brand. We're told that others can't list on it (at least as new), but it still happens. It's a nightmare.
> The author of this article clearly doesn't know much about selling on Amazon
Or alternatively, maybe they know more than you do? Especially since the core of your advice is "use the Brand Registry" which the post already mentioned and which, according to your own link doesn't even do what you claim?
I have actually worked with people to pursue this and we got nowhere. The counterfeits just came online under a fake upc and amazon wouldn’t take any more action.
We gave up and just tell customers anything with our brand on amazon is a fake.
It’s not a simple as you make it out to be. Amazon launched a new Brand Registry last year and all the companies in the previous version were dumped and told to re-apply.
Source: I’m a seller on Amazon and I actually bought one of these counterfeit headphone holders.
This is quite a ridiculous comment, which, sorry, isn’t surprising coming from an Amazon employee.
I too sell on Amazon, and I registered my brand with Amazon. I also have a design patent for the main object I’m selling.
Direct counterfeits can get blocked, although you have to send an email to each marketplace (I’m in Europe), and then Amazon stops the sales but doesn’t remove the listing.
But listing hijacking is hard/impossible to get rid of. I have a hijacker who sells a different product (different shape, material, color, and quantities) who’s been sitting on my listing for over 2 weeks, and Amazon won’t do anything about it. « Seller performance » wrtites back canned emails saying that they don’t communicate the result of their investigations... one doubts there’s much investigation going on.
Brand registry is absolutely useless.
The main problem is, Amazon thinks about its marketplace as something where multiple sellers compete on price selling the same items. It doesn’t want unique listing for unique products by unique sellers/manufacturers. It doesn’t like the idea, and it will never spend ressources to enforce it.
Please, please, please try to communicate to the people you work with how important this is. I've lost all confidence in buying electronics from Amazon. I'd rather shop at walmart and bestbuy because I'm more certain I will get what I order.
Instead of shaming the OP for ignorance, you should be contacting the OP and providing this information before it ever got to the point that this blog post was needed. The shame should be on Amazon's side.
A little over a year ago I listed some garments from my girlfriend's clothing line. Unless someone broke into our garage and stole the stock, then no one else could ever sell these products. I created the listings, did the brand registry, and we still were not able to get the Buy button on the listings. Something about not being an established seller, and that other sellers might come in and offer the same product. If that wasn't dumb enough, we also weren't allowed to buy advertising for three months. So amazon wanted us to just kick back for three months, paying the seller fee on products that no one will find and that don't have a buy button.
So, I completely agree with the headline of this article. The whole listing process was catered to listing existing products, and the policies did not make sense for sellers who completely control their product.
My experience is that the brand registry is used by manufacturers to prevent others from selling their product so that they can artificially inflate the price. Why would a company whose products aren't being sold on Amazon need to register their brand there.
I ordered an instant pot on amazon. instant pot box shows up, with mfr.s packaging.... I opened it and similar-looking - but much cheaper - chinese knockoff was in box.
if amazon's customer service wasnt so good i would have dropped them already. (I know it's not them making the mistake, but still..)
however I buy stuff there much less frequently now since i have no way to know if I'm getting counterfeits for certain types of goods.
This is a really important point that Amazon seems to completely ignore: counterfeit goods aren't just a ripoff, they're downright dangerous. A fake instant pot could burn your house down or scald you when it fails to depressurize properly; a fake phone charger could overheat and catch your bedsheets on fire; a fake smoke alarm could fail to detect smoke properly and not activate in time to save someone's life.
I can't believe there hasn't been a slew of lawsuits over this, especially in the highly litigious culture of the US. Could I just be mistaken in thinking this is such a serious problem? Or has Amazon just been lucky?
> if amazon's customer service wasnt so good i would have dropped them already.
I'd consider it good customer service if every time I had to return a counterfeit I got a 25% credit of the original price to cover my time and frustration, but that still leaves problems with undetected counterfeits - and of course it'd never happen because Amazon would have to eat the cost because commingled products mean they can't track it back to the supplier anyway. Oh, and yes I mean EVERY time - 25,50,75,100,125,etc. If I get 5 fake items, Amazon pays me 25% of the original cost. That's what it'd take to make it worth the hassle.
At this point I basically won't buy through/from Amazon unless it's something impossible to counterfeit (e.g. ThinkPads) or where I don't really care because I'm not looking for a brand or significant quality anyway.
It is absolutely Amazon making this mistake. They are responsible for their supply chain, and customers have higher expectations of them then they do of a flea market.
>if amazon's customer service wasnt so good i would have dropped them already.
And this is why Jeff Bezos is sitting on (maybe) the biggest pile of money anyone has ever had, and why counterfeiting is not a problem Amazon will ever be interested in solving. It doesn't matter. People either don't notice that they've wound up with a counterfeit, or they don't blame it on Amazon. They just return it or write it off and remain customers.
The writer advises people to "look at the seller," but Amazon's commingling of products means that doing so is often useless. I believe I've also seen mention that there's a way to prevent that by assigning your own numbers and paying Amazon more, but for something like this where there is only one legitimate supplier I'm not sure it would do any good. (edit: NathanKP posted relevant links as I was posting)
What's amazing to me is that these days I'd consider eBay a safer option for a lot of purchases - at least there I know what seller I'm dealing with.
When I learned of the commingling they do I changed my mind about using FBA to list some products. It has also changed my mind on products I purchase when I see others are selling it FBA. Though I still use Amazon a lot, I have also increased my local shopping for products I would previously have just purchased from Amazon.
You need not pay Amazon to label your products with your FNSKU to avoid commingling -- sellers can do themselves with a printer and tape. Amazon simply offers the option and charges $0.20/unit to do it.
Counterfeit products [1] and scams [2] are persistent problems on Amazon. It's very unfair to the legitimate merchants who are trying to compete without screwing over customers. They've been yelling at Amazon for YEARS to do something about this. Presumably Amazon decided that making it harder to sign up as a third-party seller would hurt their metrics more than it would help customers.
I have absolutely started to reduce my purchases on Amazon due to my lack of confidence in what I'm going to be getting. The counterfeiting issue is real and serious.
At this point, I trust that if I go to the trouble to ensure it's not "fulfilled by amazon" and I'm buying from the actual seller, I'll probably get a legit product. Otherwise, I have no way of knowing what I'm going to get.
I continue to be mystified why Amazon doesn't view this as a huge issue.
Really enjoy this post and the reactions of it. I also have been looking around on Amazon for small furniture and some other small products, but as a consumer, a great deal of research is needed to detect fakes or sub par products.
If you know what you want to buy, you are indeed best off buying directly from the product creators site and not get tempted by far cheaper alternatives amazon suggests... Birkenstock is a great example of this where it escalated https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/12/22/birkenstock-...
I think this is a pretty big deal and has been for at least a few years, yet there have been no repercussions for Amazon yet. It feels like it should be illegal to enable this kind of thing.
I have sold on Amazon for about 3 years now, over 2000+ skus FBA. The items I sell are pretty easy to counterfeit (much easier than OPs). There have been plenty of sellers come in and undercut price and subsequently destroy my products ratings because customers received fakes.
I started moving my products into the Brand Registry and all of a sudden the counterfeit sellers started disappearing...and now they don't exist anymore. So at one point a few years ago I was on this guys side and was starting to write up cease & desists but I believe Amazon is getting better at it. Haven't seen any counterfeit sellers on my listings that last for more than 30 days in a while.
I have all but stopped buying from amazon due to this problem. But I have to say, this part bothers me:
"For the record, I love Amazon as a customer, I buy way too much stuff with Prime, I'm a long shareholder, and think they are on track to become the biggest company in the world (unless they get broken up for anti-trust reasons)."
If you are actively losing money from this problem and still buy from them, you are actively sabotaging yourself!
Because of the counterfeiting on Amazon, I’m becoming price-insensitive and ordering direct from brand websites. I’d rather order once at full mark up than burn time dealing with fakes.
I've become quite disenchanted with Amazon because of this counterfeit issue along with the fake review problem. In addition, Amazon customer service -- traditionally excellent -- has only been good to acceptable recently (they've started using Chinese agents who don't really seem to understand American customer service and also sometimes struggle with English).
I really wanted to drop Prime this year, but the wife uses it for some books and movies she likes and begged me not to. However, I've started ordering my stuff directly from sellers whenever possible. Occasionally, I order from Amazon if I need something quickly, but prefer to order directly even then if the seller has a rush delivery option (attention sellers! always offer an expedited delivery option, even if you think no one will use it!)
I designed a hardware product but haven't brought it to market because even if it is successful, Chinese manufacturers will reverse engineer it and then have a cheaper clone on the market within weeks, long before I can recoup even the cost of manufacturing, let alone make a profit. And since I can't afford to pursue legal action, it seems pointless to manufacture the product, and everybody loses. I wonder how much innovation is stifled this way.
I'm a bit confused as well, because I've spent well into 6 figures on the site since the beginning days of Amazon, and I've literally never noticed a counterfeit product. So if this is a super common problem, they are some quality counterfeiters.
The things which really get my goat are the awful-quality print-on-demand facsimiles I sometimes accidentally buy when I'm looking for an old book. Seriously putting me off Amazon. Nationalise and break them up already!
I've basically stopped buying things from Amazon because it is so hard to tell where your goods are coming from. With co-mingling even if you buy from a legitimate seller it is impossible to ensure that you get a legitimate product.
I'd rather spend a few extra dollars and remove all of this hassle and buy directly, or from a more trustworthy place.
Last year I had two products I bought on Amazon arrive that were obviously previously opened. No warning at all when making the purchase. They didn't appear to be counterfeit but I still returned them. Now I avoid Amazon whenever I can.
[+] [-] RcouF1uZ4gsC|8 years ago|reply
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/cbp-interce...
I wonder if contacting US Government representatives to ask them to have CPB investigate Amazon warehouses as a nexus of counterfeit goods would be useful.
I bet if CPB officials raided an Amazon warehouse and went through and seized all counterfeit goods in the warehouse, Amazon would quickly find a solution to this problem.
[+] [-] sneak|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] NathanKP|8 years ago|reply
The author of this article clearly doesn't know much about selling on Amazon, because what he is asking for is possible. It's called the Amazon Brand Registry. You can contact the infringment team using the details here and initiate the process of getting your brand / ASIN locked so that other people can't sell it without your permission: https://www.amazon.com/report/infringement
Also check this out: https://services.amazon.com/brand-registry.html
If you have a popular product then counterfeiters are unfortunately inevitable, but you do have options to fight back and stop them.
There is also Brand Gating which is a little harder to get. Look up ASIN or Brand Gating for information. Basically you can order the counterfeit product and report it to Amazon. It can cost a couple thousand in legal fees to register your brand and get all the paperwork unless you are capable of doing it all yourself, but it is possible.
[+] [-] hop|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sabalaba|8 years ago|reply
But, as I said, from the outside, that report link does seem like a viable "option to fight back"; in reality, it's a customer support black hole.
[+] [-] prepend|8 years ago|reply
Just doing simple image machine learning should get 90% of scammers.
He AWS team is great about this. Looking for abnormalities. Looking for posted AWS keys. Proactively. The retail guys need to get some of the cloud guy smarts. Or ethics. Either/or will help stop this.
I don’t sell, but I can barely buy from amazon because of all the scam copies and fake reviews.
[+] [-] Terretta|8 years ago|reply
"We do not enforce ... Detail Page Ownership ... Exclusive or Selective Distribution."
As long as the counterfeit is good enough, don't bother complaining:
"Other sellers can list their items for sale against pages that you have created or added your copyrighted images to. However, we do require sellers to list only against detail pages that exactly match their items. If you believe sellers are listing against detail pages that do not exactly match their items, we ask that you report the violation directly by using the contact us form."
Why do the counterfeiters get to use your own picture of your own product? Because Amazon claims the rights from you:
"Additionally, when you add your copyrighted image to a detail page, you grant Amazon and its affiliates a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right to exercise all rights of publicity over the material."
And that brand registry? Does it mean your brand is yours? No, it's just 'increased authority' ...
"increased authority over product listings with your brand name"
[+] [-] amluto|8 years ago|reply
Once upon a time, I could go to amazon.com and buy things from Amazon. I trusted Amazon to sell legit goods. But now if I go to amazon.com, it's bizarrely difficult to buy from Amazon, and a large fraction of the goods sold seem to be junk. And Amazon presumably made considerably more money selling things that they sourced themselves.
So why doesn't Amazon go back closer to their original model? I wouldn't mind seeing a strong built-in preference for genuine Amazon listings and a very clear indication that I'm about to order from some random-ass seller.
(Also, I'm quite surprised that there hasn't been a giant trademark infringement and/or copyright infringement lawsuit against Amazon? Amazon.com de facto sells all kinds of counterfeit goods. I wouldn't be surprised if a judge wouldn't let them hide behind the "it wasn't us -- it was a third party" defense.)
[+] [-] throwawaylalala|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Lazare|8 years ago|reply
> The author of this article clearly doesn't know much about selling on Amazon
Or alternatively, maybe they know more than you do? Especially since the core of your advice is "use the Brand Registry" which the post already mentioned and which, according to your own link doesn't even do what you claim?
[+] [-] lostapathy|8 years ago|reply
We gave up and just tell customers anything with our brand on amazon is a fake.
[+] [-] ciscoriordan|8 years ago|reply
Source: I’m a seller on Amazon and I actually bought one of these counterfeit headphone holders.
[+] [-] bambax|8 years ago|reply
I too sell on Amazon, and I registered my brand with Amazon. I also have a design patent for the main object I’m selling.
Direct counterfeits can get blocked, although you have to send an email to each marketplace (I’m in Europe), and then Amazon stops the sales but doesn’t remove the listing.
But listing hijacking is hard/impossible to get rid of. I have a hijacker who sells a different product (different shape, material, color, and quantities) who’s been sitting on my listing for over 2 weeks, and Amazon won’t do anything about it. « Seller performance » wrtites back canned emails saying that they don’t communicate the result of their investigations... one doubts there’s much investigation going on.
Brand registry is absolutely useless.
The main problem is, Amazon thinks about its marketplace as something where multiple sellers compete on price selling the same items. It doesn’t want unique listing for unique products by unique sellers/manufacturers. It doesn’t like the idea, and it will never spend ressources to enforce it.
[+] [-] eloff|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mapgrep|8 years ago|reply
Sad to see this poor level of attention to a well written customer complaint from Amazon.
[+] [-] kcanini|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gkanai|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryantgtg|8 years ago|reply
So, I completely agree with the headline of this article. The whole listing process was catered to listing existing products, and the policies did not make sense for sellers who completely control their product.
[+] [-] strathmeyer|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dionian|8 years ago|reply
if amazon's customer service wasnt so good i would have dropped them already. (I know it's not them making the mistake, but still..)
however I buy stuff there much less frequently now since i have no way to know if I'm getting counterfeits for certain types of goods.
[+] [-] vanilla_nut|8 years ago|reply
I can't believe there hasn't been a slew of lawsuits over this, especially in the highly litigious culture of the US. Could I just be mistaken in thinking this is such a serious problem? Or has Amazon just been lucky?
[+] [-] freyir|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fencepost|8 years ago|reply
I'd consider it good customer service if every time I had to return a counterfeit I got a 25% credit of the original price to cover my time and frustration, but that still leaves problems with undetected counterfeits - and of course it'd never happen because Amazon would have to eat the cost because commingled products mean they can't track it back to the supplier anyway. Oh, and yes I mean EVERY time - 25,50,75,100,125,etc. If I get 5 fake items, Amazon pays me 25% of the original cost. That's what it'd take to make it worth the hassle.
At this point I basically won't buy through/from Amazon unless it's something impossible to counterfeit (e.g. ThinkPads) or where I don't really care because I'm not looking for a brand or significant quality anyway.
[+] [-] Spooky23|8 years ago|reply
My favorite thing about Amazon is that they screw up and ship me things that I don’t order a few times year.
[+] [-] vkou|8 years ago|reply
It is absolutely Amazon making this mistake. They are responsible for their supply chain, and customers have higher expectations of them then they do of a flea market.
[+] [-] krapp|8 years ago|reply
And this is why Jeff Bezos is sitting on (maybe) the biggest pile of money anyone has ever had, and why counterfeiting is not a problem Amazon will ever be interested in solving. It doesn't matter. People either don't notice that they've wound up with a counterfeit, or they don't blame it on Amazon. They just return it or write it off and remain customers.
...this and AWS.
[+] [-] fencepost|8 years ago|reply
What's amazing to me is that these days I'd consider eBay a safer option for a lot of purchases - at least there I know what seller I'm dealing with.
[+] [-] KWD|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CamelCaseName|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dragonwriter|8 years ago|reply
Only if the seller is Amazon or fulfilled by Amazon, since those are the only ones affected by commingling.
[+] [-] exolymph|8 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/amazon-counterfeits-no-starch...
[2] https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/amazon-fraud-scam-sellers.htm...
[+] [-] Lazare|8 years ago|reply
At this point, I trust that if I go to the trouble to ensure it's not "fulfilled by amazon" and I'm buying from the actual seller, I'll probably get a legit product. Otherwise, I have no way of knowing what I'm going to get.
I continue to be mystified why Amazon doesn't view this as a huge issue.
[+] [-] mrarjen|8 years ago|reply
If you know what you want to buy, you are indeed best off buying directly from the product creators site and not get tempted by far cheaper alternatives amazon suggests... Birkenstock is a great example of this where it escalated https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/12/22/birkenstock-...
[+] [-] z0r|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nsx147|8 years ago|reply
I started moving my products into the Brand Registry and all of a sudden the counterfeit sellers started disappearing...and now they don't exist anymore. So at one point a few years ago I was on this guys side and was starting to write up cease & desists but I believe Amazon is getting better at it. Haven't seen any counterfeit sellers on my listings that last for more than 30 days in a while.
[+] [-] kop316|8 years ago|reply
"For the record, I love Amazon as a customer, I buy way too much stuff with Prime, I'm a long shareholder, and think they are on track to become the biggest company in the world (unless they get broken up for anti-trust reasons)."
If you are actively losing money from this problem and still buy from them, you are actively sabotaging yourself!
[+] [-] akeck|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jnbiche|8 years ago|reply
I really wanted to drop Prime this year, but the wife uses it for some books and movies she likes and begged me not to. However, I've started ordering my stuff directly from sellers whenever possible. Occasionally, I order from Amazon if I need something quickly, but prefer to order directly even then if the seller has a rush delivery option (attention sellers! always offer an expedited delivery option, even if you think no one will use it!)
[+] [-] ilamont|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oldcynic|8 years ago|reply
Yet they don't seem to be bothered.
So now I look on Amazon, then see if I can buy direct or from a different retailer.
[+] [-] fpvracing|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mullingitover|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emerged|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bencollier49|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exolymph|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Khaine|8 years ago|reply
I'd rather spend a few extra dollars and remove all of this hassle and buy directly, or from a more trustworthy place.
[+] [-] stevbov|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sokoloff|8 years ago|reply
It's always "Day 1" at Amazon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTwXS2H_iJo
[+] [-] thro1237|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theonealtair|8 years ago|reply