[mariomariomario]

This happens because Amazon allows inventory commingling. For example Amazon has their own, legitimate inventory in a West Coast warehouse, and a third party seller has the same inventory with the original UPC manufacturer bar code on it, sitting in an East Coast warehouse. Amazon considers this 1:1 inventory. Amazon will debit their inventory on the West Coast, and credit the inventory that belongs to the third party seller on the East Coast but they will send the inventory from the East Coast to the customer since it's closer to them.

Now in theory this seems like a reasonable approach to deliver products to customers faster, the catch 22 is that third party vendors have clearly taken advantage of Amazon's complete lack of quality control. Third party sellers can sign up for a Seller Central account, and send in counterfeit products with fake bar codes because Amazon doesn't check at all.

I could sit here and talk for hours about mess that is Seller Central. I've dabbled with Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA), and I would never recommend any company use AMZN for third party logistics.

[lawkwok]

This is probably old news to seasoned Seller Central users, but I was surprised how easy it was to "take over" product pages from already existing products.

Our sales figures definitely weren't high. I think it may have been related to how much stock we had for all the sizes of the product.

Soon the product images and descriptions we provided became the canonical version and overrode whatever was there before. Even previous customer reviews from other sellers would continue to be shown on was what now basically our product page.

[billpollock]

We've had a very similar experience. On more than one book our product pages were replaced with images from the counterfeit. In a certain way it was quite funny. Ultimately it was very frustrating

[klyrs]

This sounds very much like amazon is actively participating in conspiracy to mail fraud, across state lines. Have you called the FBI?

[manigandham]

There seems to be a scam where product pages are sold off to host a completely different item. They usually have lots of 5 star reviews and high search rank but the reviews are all talking about something different than what's now being sold.

I thought it was a bug at first but I've seen this too often. I don't understand how Amazon doesn't know this is happening, or why it even lets it happen in the first place. Product pages should be immutable.

[0898]

I was looking through some old Amazon orders last night. A pair of MPow bluetooth headphones I bought in 2013 now appear as an MPow fitness tracker.

It seems like sellers recycle old listings to keep their reviews.

[emerongi]

What they also do is that they sell a quality product for 1-2 years, get good reviews and then switch to inferior materials.

Luckily the review system can catch this, as long as you look at recent reviews and the seller isn't buying any new reviews.

[toxik]

I find this happening everywhere. Loss leader, great product, next season the product cost the same and is now crap.

Anecdote: in my country they sell Toppits brand cling film, and it used to be great. Now it’s absolutely useless! Doesn’t self adhere at all.

[godarni]

Not familiar with that brand of cling wrap, but they probably reformulated from PVDC to LDPE like Saran did due to toxicity concerns.

[behringer]

I found some old Saran wrap when I moved in to a new place from like the 70s and that stuff was the bomb. Anyway, I ban brands that do this, and I never buy them again. Kingston and PNY, you've lost me forever.

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/184253-ssd-shadiness-kin...

[manigandham]

I seriously doubt many people are catching it otherwise the scam wouldn't be so popular. People probably stop reading after the second or third review and don't check that entire pages are talking about a different product.

[bredren]

Haven’t taken over images but have sold into oem equipment on ebike stuff before. It’s pretty cool because you get sales you can’t from an independent listing of the same product.

When I’ve done it, it is legit the same thing and verify it, but I can easily see scale or greed causing people to do the wrong thing with this.

[ikeboy]

Product reviews are meant to be of the product, so it shouldn't matter which seller it is if you're all selling the same product.

[lkschubert8]

But without Amazon doing their own QC there is no way to say it is the same product. You should at least be able to see reviews based on the supplier and pick the supplier you will be fulfilled by. But I suspect that would ruin their whole 2-day/1-day shipping bit.

[thaumasiotes]

> I suspect that would ruin their whole 2-day/1-day shipping bit.

They are no longer offering 1-day shipping. When I signed up for prime, one of the benefits was discounted 1-day shipping on items for which the free 2-day shipping wasn't fast enough. I recently had need of that, and learned that the options are now (1) "prime shipping", with no particular service guarantee. There is no second option. I contacted customer service multiple times asking why I couldn't choose 1-day shipping and was told "because the item is out of stock. There is only one item left in stock, that means the item is out of stock".

[crooked-v]

I've seen 1-day and even same-day shipping on a variety of items, so I suspect it's determined by some arcane combination of user location and item logistics.

[chc]

They used to offer guaranteed two-day shipping and a paid upgrade to one-day shipping; now they just have "Prime Shipping" as the parent said, and what "Prime Shipping" means varies from item to item and time to time. It can mean one-day. I don't think I've ever seen same-day shipping, but I'd imagine I just don't live close enough to a fulfillment center.

[ikeboy]

They do QC: sellers that have too many complaints get kicked off.

[nostoc]

If they wait for complaints, that's not amazon doing the QC, it's the client.

[noodlesUK]

But you can’t identify which seller your product came from. That’s the whole problem here.

[shawnz]

But when you return the defective product, Amazon can see what seller it came from.

[journalctl]

Ah yes, like how if a drug company poisons enough people then the market will make them go out of business. You know, because people died.

[jhbadger]

Even for non-counterfeit books, Amazon defines "product" too broadly -- reviews for a book tend to combine both the printed and Kindle versions and you'll see people complaining about the formatting of the Kindle version on the page for the printed copy.

[TylerE]

The one thing that really frustrates me is how poorly they curate editions. This is especially bad with translated works. Like - you're on the hardcopy version of a nice, modern translation, then you click over to the e-book version and it's some random bowlderdized public domain version from 150 years ago.

[4A414B56]

This is a problem with everything being sold on amazon. I read reviews for a stamp (dates for ISO8601) and very few of the reviews are relevant to the product I was looking at. Almost none of them made sense for the product I was viewing, actually.

[moultano]

I was trying to buy a Grimm's Stories book for my kids and it was basically impossible. They had 5 different translations and selections of stories under the same entry.

[ikeboy]

That's a fair point, although people should read the reviews and can tell if it's content or formatting.

The alternative of separating Kindle reviews seems wrong. Most reviews are useful to buyers of both formats.

[bloak]

Perhaps people who write product reviews should get into the habit of starting their review with a description of what they are reviewing, who they ordered it from, and how much they paid for it. That last bit of information is definitely very relevant if you're going to comment in your review on whether the product was good value for money.

Perhaps also put the date in the review itself and state that you do not give permission for the review to be edited.

Unfortunately, I think that some sites don't allow reviews to mention prices.

Even if the T&Cs say you give up all your rights in the review you perhaps still have a right not to be misrepresented so they shouldn't edit your review if the review is still going to be attributed or attributable to you.

[wongarsu]

If the product is a "Philips Boilermaster 3000" kettle then this is true (if we ignore counterfeits).

But not all Amazon products work that way. The "t-shirt with eagle print" could be made by a number of companies with wildly varying quality, all fitting this product description. Similarly there are lots of 10m Cat 7 S/FTP lan cables.

[ikeboy]

If you buy a generic product with no brand name and no intellectual property, then all you have is the pictures. If they all look the same, they could technically be different quality but there's no reason to expect a certain level of quality without a brand name.

[PhasmaFelis]

You should expect to get the same product if you buy the same product, though, whatever the quality.

[dx034]

Reviews can still be important. If you have a lot of positive reviews and don't need a brand name, it could be worth the risk to save money. But you don't want to be the first to test out.

[mcv]

It might be the result of a clever trick by Amazon, but it makes Amazon directly responsible for selling fakes. Even without this, Amazon should be taking more responsibility to fight counterfeit products, but with this, they're making themselves directly responsible, and I don't see how they're not criminally liable now.

Instead of hoping for Amazon to make this slightly less bad, I think legal action is called for at this point.

[dragonwriter]

> I don't see how they're not criminally liable now.

Amazon's protection against state action has always been that it offers a good enough return experience that people will turn to it rather than public authorities with problems. It's not a legal shield so much as a practical one, though.

[RugnirViking]

What is a "good enough" return experience? When I've tried to use it, I have to pay money and my own time to organise and ship things back to them. I only get that money back if they decide I was right to return the item. I can only return the item in a very short window after it is purchased.

People seem to talk about amazon as if it has some unprecedented customer service and that is why it's so successful. But this is the bare minimum for pretty much any shop. Is it different in America?

[dwild]

> What is a "good enough" return experience? When I've tried to use it, I have to pay money and my own time to organise and ship things back to them. I only get that money back if they decide I was right to return the item. I can only return the item in a very short window after it is purchased.

I feel like you didn't returns something with Amazon, but a third party seller instead.

Amazon will ship you the replacement as soon as you confirm and give you a return shipping label to print and stick on the package, which you can bring to your local post office. The process is quite painless.

> I can only return the item in a very short window after it is purchased.

Their return windows is 30 days for most stuff, which is good enough.

[rasz]

In most civilized countries shipping counterfeit items knowingly is Illegal as F. Return policy ranges from useless to encouraging to break the law.

[nextos]

This is sadly so true.

I have stopped using Amazon after 15 years due to the unacceptably high rate of counterfeit, grey market or used items I got on a daily basis.

It's totally insane. I have even emailed Jeff Bezos and got into the trouble of talking to all middle managers. They don't care.

[AJ007]

I went from 90% of my online orders at amazon to maybe 35%. Some things have always sucked, liked clothes.

Thanks to software like Shopify, ordering from other e-commerce sites is pretty painless now. When you factor in finding the product, many sites are now more convenient to order from than Amazon.

[CriticalCathed]

It must be becoming more and more common. I ordered some bluetooth headphones a few weeks ago and received a counterfeit product. I was able to return the item, but by the time I had the product page no longer existed and the seller had vanished. It was a "fulfilled by amazon" situation including Prime shipping.

Months back I ordered some Miele vacuum bags and they too were counterfeit.

I had never experienced this until 2019.

[criddell]

My family gets several Amazon packages every week and I don't think we've received a single counterfeit or gray market item. We have had other problems with our orders but Amazon has always fixed the problem very quickly.

Some problems they seem unable to fix. I have a Nespresso machine and a few times now I've ordered a decaff selection and every single time they send me the caffeinated version of whatever I order. I call them and they refund the order. They've probably sent 16 sleeves of coffee for free (worth around $150) and have never sent the product I've actually ordered. It feels a little wrong to take advantage of their incompetence like this, but hey, free coffee!

[m463]

I always remember ordering small "apple" things and always getting fakes.

I mean apple cables, apple chargers, apple headphones.

This was probably > 5 years ago, I stopped ordering them after that.

I would assume there are other product categories still suffering the same problems.

[paulcole]

How could you identify a grey market item? And what/how much were you ordering that this was a daily issue?

[astura]

Grey market items may say things like "not for sale in [your country]" on the box. They may contain labeling that's not consistent with the standard labeling for your country. They might not have certain disclosures that your country requires for certain types of products. Certain features may not work. Stuff like that. They aren't always identifiable though.

[nextos]

At some point I was using Amazon for almost all shopping. Obviously daily is an oxymoron, but it'd happen several times a month.

I can identify grey market items easily. Buy an item in Amazon UK of product X and get version packed to be sold in Italy (with all labels in Italian) or Russian (with all labels in Russian), instead of the UK version. This is because some smart supplier is doing arbitrage.

[gdy]

You might want to look up the definition of 'oxymoron'

[RankingMember]

I'm thinking "exaggeration" was what he was looking for.

[Silhouette]

I've noticed that a significant number of my recent TV/film purchases from Amazon UK looked new on the packaging but had some sort of mark on at least one of the discs, suggesting that something had been handled previously. This seems to be a clear trend over the past 1-2 years that I had never previously encountered. In some cases, it's been obvious enough that I've returned the product, though I also have lingering doubts about whether others with just a small mark might have been me when opening the packet but might have been something else.

I already basically gave up buying anything important and/or fragile from Amazon and now avoid them for almost everything around holiday seasons. Far too many instances a few years ago of things like different sizes of items thrown into a box with obviously inadequate packaging, resulting in damaged electrical items, would-be Christmas presents turning up unfit to give as gifts, and so on. They're pretty good about accepting returns without quibbling much these days, but it's still a huge hassle when things go wrong so often and so avoidably.

It's a shame, because for a while Amazon was a convenient alternative to bricks and mortar stores and carried a wider range of books and TV/film/music than any physical store. I'm glad I supported the better local stores now, and that some of them are still there so I can buy from them instead today.

[beerandt]

This is why, IMHO, Walmart will eventually win this aspect of the online shopping war.

Supply chain control.

Amazon may continue to dominate AWS and even the 3rd party marketplace, but they've already ruined their brand reputation as a supplier.

Edit: Sold and shipped 3rd party marketplace may survive.

[toast0]

Unfortunately, Walmart has integrated a 3rd party marketplace onto their site too; so who knows when they will start fulfilled by Walmart and comingling. There's also persistent stories of Walmart demanding lower priced items and being ok with the lower quality, not always with different UPCs.

[beerandt]

The funny thing about Walmart 3rd party, is it always seems to be drop shipped by a competitor, and comes in a clearly branded box. I've gotten boxes from Newegg, Target, Wayfair, and even Sam's Club.

Still a better option than Amazon (for now, at least).

[dangrossman]

This is the legacy Wal-Mart took over by acquiring Jet.com in 2016. They were a brand new site with millions of products in their catalog, yet didn't actually stock a huge portion of them. When I bought a wifi router from Jet, they simply ordered it for me from the Newegg website, and paid Newegg more than I paid Jet. It arrived in the Newegg box with the Newegg invoice.

[antonvs]

> paid Newegg more than I paid Jet.

Gotta love startup funding.

[DiabloD3]

Sam's Club is Walmart, though.

I can buy Sam's Club brands and/or sizes first party through Walmart.com, and I could do so before the Jet.com-ification of the Walmart website... it just wasn't well known until recently.

[beerandt]

I know... that's part of what makes it so interesting.

There are still 3rd party sellers somehow selling Walmarts own product cheaper via Sam's Club. Or sometimes for products that aren't available on both public facing sites. (Sam's and Walmart)

Which is probably why Walmart made the effort to better integrate the brands.

[kevin_thibedeau]

I opened a Wal-Mart account for a product that was "reserved for Prime" and I couldn't buy from Amazon. It came from the same third party supplier.

[Scoundreller]

Arbitrage at its finest!

[nordsieck]

> so who knows when they will start fulfilled by Walmart and comingling.

Fulfillment is just fine (indeed - beneficial to small businesses) as long as there is no inventory co-mingling.

[newnewpdro]

It's not like shopping at Wal-Mart isn't without its own kinds of bait and switch practices.

There was a time when I went to Wal-Mart to buy a new package of cheap cotton ankle socks every month or so, incrementally replenishing my cache, over the period of about a year.

The exact same brand, make, and size of socks, what were ostensibly identical, would vary in their constituent materials at what seemed to be random. One month they'd be ~80% cotton. The next month ~80% polyester. For what appeared to be the same damn product.

I don't know if this is something the big brands do in cooperation with Wal-Mart, or if it's entirely out of Wal-Mart's control and something Hanes/FTL has started doing independently. But next time you see packages for socks, check out the contents. In Wal-Mart the contents are printed on an adhesive-backed sticker. They use a sticker because it gets switched all the time, presumably to whatever was the cheapest recipe/supplier at the time. There's basically no persistence to what the SKU actually represents.

The Wal-Mart advantage, in my opinion, is that I have the opportunity to actually scrutinize the instance I will take home of the thing I'm purchasing, before doing so.

With Amazon I can't possibly know if they'll send me the 80% cotton or 80% polyester variant of the same SKU.

I've noticed similar practices with canned fish. Depending on what day of the week it is, the same canned fish e.g. beachcliff sardines in water, will have salt or won't have salt in the ingredients list. It seems to correlate with the country of origin. Same SKU, different ingredients. You have to look really closely at the package to notice it, but you definitely notice it when eating the stuff.

[toomanybeersies]

There's quite a good book I read a while ago about store-brand supply chains called Where the Underpants Come From [1]. It's a travelogue where the author travels through Asia tracing the entire logistical chain for a pair of underpants. It's a fun read and covers a lot of this stuff.

> There's basically no persistence to what the SKU actually represents.

I disagree. The SKU represents generic ankle socks. They're a commodity.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3322867-where-underpants...

[wpietri]

What newnewpdro describes is definitely not a commoditized product. Real commodities have exacting standards. E.g., US grain standards: https://www.gipsa.usda.gov/fgis/usstandards.aspx

Or the standards on commodity exchanges, like Kansas City Hard Red Winter Wheat Futures, which come in 5,000 bushel lots and require a deliverable grade of "No. 2 at contract price with a maximum of 10 IDK per 100 grams; No. 1 at a 1 1/2-cent premium. Deliverable grades of HRW shall contain a minimum 11% protein level. However, protein levels of less than 11%, but equal to or greater than 10.5% are deliverable at a ten cent (10¢) discount to contract price. Protein levels of less than 10.5% are not deliverable." -- from https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/agricultural/files/fact-car...

Real-world commodities have exacting standards precisely to prevent this kind of nonsense.

[Spooky23]

That’s why its a discount chain.

If you want consistency in terms of quality, go upmarket. Even a JC Penney or Kohl’s will be more consistent for the socks.

[beerandt]

Yes, they certainly have their own supply chain issues, but at least they still tightly control it.

Even if product quality might vary (or even different items under the same upc), the product is never (ime) misrepresented, and I've never had any concern about getting a counterfeit.

Expecting 100% consistency.... Thats probably going to be a disappointment.

[mcguire]

Walmart has ... issues ... with their supply chain for their physical stores. Part of the problem is that they're big enough to enable Walmart-specific versions of products.

[beerandt]

As someone who hates this practice, including store-brand labels (ie Sam's Choice)...

At this point I'll happily take the Walmart-specific version over the risk of an Amazon supplied product.

[Spivak]

As someone who buys 90% Kroger-brand stuff I'm wondering what you have against store-brands?

Don't get me wrong -- I'm with you that co-branded products like "Only at Target" KitchenAid are pretty much trash but store-brand stuff doesn't really seem that different to me than any other brand on the shelf. Kroger brand pretzels are dope, their Oreo clone is garbage, c'est la vie.

[beerandt]

I think you kinda answered it yourself. For an unknown product, the store brand is a crapshoot.

The store has an incentive to stock it's own brand product beyond what the incentive for competitors is. Ie, they are going to carry a competitor either because it's a good product that sells, or the competitor has paid for shelf space (and is betting it's own money that it's product is good).

Neither of these necessarily applies to a store brand. So even if it's between store brand and unknown 3rd party competitor, I'll go 3rd party first.

That said, there are some store brand products that, having tested, I enjoy. It's just usually not worth the 25¢ to me for the gamble.

[Spivak]

Hmmm, interesting. My philosophy has pretty much always been to work my way up on price until it's acceptable. If store brand cookies turn out bad then I've only been hurt once and go back to the brand name -- but if I find a gem it means I'm saving money for a long while.

[patentatt]

Surprised nobody has mentioned Target here. It’s not quite as broad as Amazon or Walmart, but for what they carry I’m under the impression their inventory control is superior to the other two. It’s not a marketplace, and AFAIK they don’t drop-ship or commingle inventory.

[billpollock]

Unfortunately this case may be a bit different. When you order this book by pressing just the Buy button, as in shipped and sold by Amazon, you get the counterfeit.

I know because I ordered two copies last week. Both came and both were counterfeit.

[mariomariomario]

No this is classic inventory commingling, for brevity let's say that Amazon has 100 fulfillment centers (FCs). When you ship in 10,000 units, Amazon will then take those 10,000 units and spread them to the FCs closest to the top of the bell curve of the normal distribution of your orders. And the same goes for any third party sending inventory to be sold on your listing. When you use a "manufacturers barcode" ie. UPC / ISBN as the only identifier on the product, that's the only way Amazon can identify what it is unless you use an Amazon barcode.

If people didn't sell counterfeit products, we would enjoy the amazing logistics network that Amazon has built.

My recommendation is that you become Brand Registered on Amazon, you get a hell of a lot more weight to throw around on your listing, ie. kicking off sellers who are not authorized to sell your products. Go look at any Anker product, you will see that "AnkerDirect" is the only seller on any of their listings because they are Brand Registered.

You could also go the Seller Fulfilled Prime route for full quality control, which allows you to keep access to the Amazon marketplace but you are responsible for logistics end of the bill which is a tall order but there are 3PLs that can help with that sort of ask.

[perspective1]

I think you're thinking Amazon separates its own SKUs from third party SKUs. That's not the case, it's all comingled.

[beerandt]

The only way to be somewhat sure, is to find a 3rd party seller who doesn't use Fulfilled by Amazon.

Amazon has managed to completely invert the original hierarchy of seller trust.

[jcrawfordor]

Do we know that Amazon doesn't comingle their "sold by amazon" stock with FBA third-party sellers? I can't see anywhere that they say they don't on some research, and it would seem to be an obvious thing to do.

[nebulous1]

I found this: https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/12/13/how-to-p...

Which says they do commingle their "sold by Amazon" stock with their FBA stock. I'm actually pretty surprised, I had no idea this was the case.

[secabeen]

Yep. They commingle because they use the UPC code as the identifying barcode for the item. If any party wants to avoid commingling, they either need to manufacture with a different barcode, or cover over the barcode with a different, vendor specific one.

[zkms]

> When you order this book by pressing just the Buy button, as in shipped and sold by Amazon, you get the counterfeit.

i think most items that are "sold and shipped by amazon" are commingled as well.

[Thorrez]

Why is it different? That sounds like it could be exactly what mariomariomario described.

[philjohn]

Indeed - and there have been cases of dangerous goods being shipped, e.g. counterfeit chargers.

I've stopped buying things from Amazon and instead gone back to using bricks and mortar stores with online presences and do click and collect, there's just too much crap to sift through these days.

[sithadmin]

I've found that (at least when it comes to lower-end electronics) even brick and mortars appear to have supply chain problems that allow counterfeit items into stores en masse. In the USA, I've encountered things like counterfeit Microsoft mice at Microcenter, and counterfeit Audio Technica earbuds at Fry's Electronics (both confirmed as fakes by the manufacturer). I'm starting to suspect there are other cases of this that I simply haven't noticed.

[philjohn]

I wonder if this differs at all between the EU and the US?

[mc32]

Can people who know they got a knock-off return the item for a legit copy? Don’t know if the counterfeit volume is high enough to force Amazon to care...

[msbarnett]

You can return the book, but (having been through this myself) tellingly when you select a reason for the return they do not give you an option for “Counterfeit Good”.

You have to pick a vaguely related reason like “Item Not As Described” and then you can optionally leave a comment noting that it is counterfeit. There is no indication that anyone ever looks at that comment, or takes any action about it.

[matwood]

> Can people who know they got a knock-off return the item for a legit copy?

I have with a camera lens, but Amazon didn't honor the original price. I had to pay the difference for the 'real' version. In my case though, it was not a knock off or grey market, but the seller was selling the cheap version of the same lens as the more expensive version.

That was my last time buying anything camera related on Amazon since it was impossible to ever get the right thing on the first try. I only use Adorama or B&H now.

[beerandt]

Most of the time I've only been offered a refund for a counterfeit complaint.

I suspect they're aware enough of the problem to know who's likely to get a 2nd counterfeit shipped after receiving a 1st, and realized it's cheaper for them to abandon the sale than continue to possibly send counterfeits to a customer who's now more likely to notice.

[ikeboy]

Yes. Amazon cares enough to push for higher criminal penalties for counterfeiters (see https://www.aboutamazon.com/our-company/our-positions)

[dbcurtis]

But they don't care enough to actually stop co-mingling stock, which would nearly eliminate the problem.

[ikeboy]

It wouldn't help significantly. People would still get counterfeits when buying from bad sellers.

[msbarnett]

What? That would help enormously. If they stopped commingling it would be easy to quickly identify and eliminate bad sellers. Consumers would also have the option of sticking to a known-good seller like Amazon and be able to trust that they weren’t going to get some comingled bullshit copy.

That’s a pretty damn far cry from the current situation.

[rebuilder]

It's easy to identify the bad seller right now. It's Amazon.

[oarsinsync]

From the tweets by the authors, the current situation is the bad seller is amazon.com. This is apparently not a commingling problem. Amazon is sourcing illegal counterfeit products directly.

[ikeboy]

Easy for who? Amazon knows which seller sent in the inventory for every order, so they know to punish the right seller when a complaint comes in.

You are correct that customers could themselves choose better sellers, but most customers don't care and prefer cheaper over more reliable. That effect is not enough to help "enormously".

[dragonwriter]

That's not caring, it's redirecting blame.

If they were pushing for greater criminal penalties for distributing counterfeit goods, as a crime of negligence or strict liability, then I'd think they cared.

Or, if they just took tangible action to stop distributing counterfeits themselves, that would be even more convincing.

[stephencanon]

Certainly makes for a convenient excuse for Amazon.

[GetOutOfBed]

I don't see how it's an excuse. I don't care how they handle their processes internally. If they sell me counterfeit items I will report them to the police.