[Judgmentality]

> Amazon (for all their warts) is much more adept at keeping customer experience in their crosshairs.

Except when it comes to selling counterfeit merchandise. This is more than just a nitpick, they are cannibalizing their core business. What I don't know, and I assume they do know, is how bad is the problem. Is it impacting 1% of customers who ultimately leave their platform (which could easily be offset by other factors), or are we at the tip of the iceberg and they're going to continually lose marketshare with time?

[1stcity3rdcoast]

There’s been a lot of heated discussion about this on HN previously, but it would be interesting to know 1) how big of a problem it is, and 2) what people are buying that seem to have this problem.

My household buys on average 10-20 items from amazon each week for many years (combined personal, my business, my wife’s business) and have yet to receive a counterfeit item. Am I doing something different?

[jdietrich]

Amazon's last 10-K report specifically listed counterfeiting as a risk factor for investors. Quote:

"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."

https://ir.aboutamazon.com/node/32656/html

Anecdotally, it's trivially easy to find obviously counterfeit products on Amazon. For example, the eighth result when I search for "yeezy" is this listing for an obviously fake pair of Adidas Yeezy Boost 350 v2 shoes. In many product categories, Amazon looks more like a seedy flea market than a multinational retailer. I have no idea what proportion of supposedly legitimate listings are for counterfeit products, but I have personally received counterfeit SD cards and USB chargers.

https://www.amazon.com/HEIMA-TRADE-Lightweight-Breathable-Ru...

https://www.flightclub.com/yeezy-boost-350-v2-white-cblack-r...

[1stcity3rdcoast]

I agree with their assessment that the A2Z Guarantee is a financial risk as the potential for counterfeits increases with scale. Amazon returns are shockingly easy and I am always given the benefit of the doubt. Makes sense that they would call that out as a risk factor.

That listing for the "yeezys" you linked, though, is a great example of something I would never even consider... I don't have a specific heuristic for how I select products, but this listing violates a lot:

-Prime availability

-Multiple sellers with extensive trading history

-At least 10 ratings and preferably at least 100

-Rating above 4* and maybe 3.5* if there are limited options

-Description that is written in legible English and reflects the copy on the item as found in a store

-And only after multiple searches using different search terms to identify the "right" keywords that bring the most relevant products

This has and will be a problem on any platform, whether it's eBay or Alibaba or on Canal Street in NYC [1]. If it seems shady, it probably is.

[1] https://www.unpublishedarticles.com/handbags/

[jmcgough]

Hair products are heavily counterfeited on Amazon - I only buy them direct from companies now. High end shampoo/conditioner/treatments can cost $50 a bottle for large sizes. They're just colored plastic bottles with text and some gel inside. Trivially easy to copy the bottle, costs essentially nothing to produce, and only obvious that it's fake to the consumer that receives it, not others involved in the supply chain.

[CodeWriter23]

Do the listings say "Sold and shipped by Amazon"? If so, Amazon has procured it. If it says "Fulfilled by Amazon", anybody in the world sent the product with a matching UPC label to the fulfillment center and Amazon shipped it.

[angus-prune]

I thought I'd heard that they were commingling their own stock too, so even sold and shipped by amazon is no guarantee.

[angstrom]

It's possible your sample is not representative of the larger sample.

My understanding on this matter is Amazon is going the way of giving the brand owners more control of the brand as one part of the solution. Ultimately they know their product(s) the best and are likely most aware of matters no heuristic is going to catch. Maybe it can be used to train an automated counterfeit identifier since this solution only scales for large brands that have resources already dedicated to the problem. You still get stuck with a McDowell's vs McDonald's problem of brand erosion from very similar knockoffs that tread the legal grey line.

[cloakandswagger]

The problem seems to exclusively affect HN commenters, who have the remarkable misfortune of having every single item they buy off Amazon turn out to be counterfeit. It's a total scourge on the community of HN but miraculously doesn't seem to affect anyone else.

Occasionally I'll see a broken-English listing from a third-party seller advertising a $800 camera for $200, but when that happens I just...don't purchase the obvious counterfeit product.

[nordsieck]

> The problem seems to exclusively affect HN commenters, who have the remarkable misfortune of having every single item they buy off Amazon turn out to be counterfeit. It's a total scourge on the community of HN but miraculously doesn't seem to affect anyone else.

I'm sure that much of the anecdata on HN unfairly paints Amazon in an poor light in regards to counterfeit goods. At the same time, I suspect that many, many people have bought counterfeit goods on Amazon and don't realize it.

[rjf72]

One side issue you'll run into when discussing things like this is a major response bias. People who have neutral or good experiences are far less to chime in saying as much. By contrast you'll have a very large percentage of anybody who ever had a negative experience say something.

Like I suspect the vast majority of people, I've ordered plenty of items from Amazon and also never run into a single counterfeit.

---

As a tangent, you could also apply this same bias to driving the things like the division in social media. People surround themselves with people of the same affection and biases which, in turn, ends up being seen from their perspective as 'normal' which, in turn, drives radicalism since their distorted perspective creates a false reality.

[Accacin]

So I've been using Amazon for years, and only had a bad experience once. I always used to use Anker products, especially their screen protectors that were cheap and worked well enough.

I ordered the exact same listing maybe 4 or 5 times (at the top it would say 'You ordered this item on XX.XX.XXXX) and the sixth time I ordered it, what turned up wasn't Anker at all, and wasnt' even pretending to be. The pack was completely different and this was from a store listed as 'Anker'.

Of course, Amazon refunded and sent the correct item but it does happen.

[ghaff]

I suspect there’s something to what you say. People buying on price are more likely to hit counterfeits. It’s also statistics. With a large enough population, some people are going to get unlucky purely by chance.

[whack]

But how else can I be a disruptive hacker if I don't buy $800 cameras for $200?

[neilv]

I've been wondering for a while why Amazon has been letting (my impression of) trust in the listings on its retail site be eroded so much.

My best naive wild guess (as a techie, not an MBA) is that a solution is Amazon private brands. Amazon could exercise control over the supply chain, could keep other sellers from piggybacking on a listing, could keep the reviews generally positive (in various ways, including aggressive investigation of suspected fake negative reviews), and could even have customer service treat private brands more favorably than many others. Plus preferential listing and smarter targeting.

Meanwhile, most other brands would still have to be on Amazon, but suffer the current awful environment of counterfeits, reuse of listings for different products, fake reviews on their and competitor's listings, etc.

[tkxxx7]

This is basically already happening. There is a long list of Amazon-owned brands - not just AmazonBasics anymore

[neilv]

The wild speculation part is that a plan for building trust in Amazon-owned brands could explain an appearance of foot-dragging in fixing trust problems hurting other brands.

[CodeWriter23]

> Except when it comes to selling counterfeit merchandise.

Bought Gold Toes on Amazon. Squeezed my feet causing numbness. My wife reported the same with her much smaller feet. Manufacturing defects too. Nice, higher end semi-gloss cards and packaging, looked legit. Sold in packs of 6 pairs.

Bought Gold Toes at Macy's. Comfortable fit, no numbness. No manufacturing defects. Not letting my wife touch them. Sold in packs of 8 pairs. BTW $3 per-pair price actually less than Amazon even though not on sale at Macy's.

[bitpow]

They just launched project zero, so at least they seem to be addressing the issue.

https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/amazon-project-zer...

[azinman2]

“We’ve been testing these automated protections with a number of brands, and on average, our automated protections proactively stop 100 times more suspected counterfeit products as compared to what we reactively remove based on reports from brands.”

What’s scary is the implicit quantity of counterfit products quoted here.

[illumin8]

Seems really cool. Serialization is the answer: manufacturer sends exact serial numbers electronically before shipping merchandise. Serial numbers are scanned with barcode readers on entry to fulfillment center and as they are picked/packed for delivery. There should be zero chance of co-mingling if done properly.

[binarysolo]

Amazon does do this - it's called Amazon Transparency. https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency

[hobofan]

Given the incredible disregard for correct usage of GTINs by Amazon on Amazon.com I've seen in the past, I'm very surprised that this exists.

[callalex]

Wow that is an extremely unfortunate name, it almost seems like they’re maliciously trying to ride the positive and successful associations of the existing Project Zero.

[jhall1468]

I'm going to guess that many, like myself, have no idea what the existing Project Zero is, and I would venture a guess the people that named this were in the same boat.

I'd even surmise that it's not a particularly unique or interesting name.

[stone-monkey]

Obviously they must know it's a problem, but it seems to be a constant arms race fighting with the counterfeiters, especially with their current business model.

It seems pretty clear Amazon is moving away from being a direct retailer of items and instead fulfilling orders for other stores. Moreover, they're leaving it in the hands of these storefronts to differentiate themselves by having them pay extra to separate their stock from other warehouse goods.

Lastly, it seems as if the end goal is for the retail store to become a platform for a new wave of direct to consumer manufacturers, which you see in the form of Anker, that trending Orolay jacket, etc.

[sutterbomb]

Their in house brands are a large and growing part of the marketplace, so it's not quite right to claim they're moving away from being a direct retailer. Perhaps "retailer of other brands" is where they're moving away from but even that I'm not positive there's been any meaningful change of late.

[JoeAltmaier]

Even their house brands are sometimes outsourced - its been reported here that counterfeits occur even among them.

[tanilama]

I don't encounter many counterfeit problem as people here seem to be frequently hit. I use Amazon quite frequently, more than one order each week.

Disclaimer: Ex-Amazon employee.

[saalweachter]

The line in the sand for me was when I purchased new socks and, fresh from the sealed plastic wrapper, they just didn't have that glorious new-sock feel. Washings later I can still tell the difference between the counterfeits I got online and the real ones I got in a store, and it is always a little let down when they come up in the sock rotation.

[mypalmike]

I've bought the same Hanes underwear from different stores at different times and gotten very different sizes and material quality. Sometimes what seems like a counterfeit could be just manufacturer material/parts sourcing and factory variation.

[banku_brougham]

They measure counterfeit complaint rates with a PPM metric.