[hevelvarik]

This is a case for the courts. The article is completely one sided, and there’s no way to know whether or not some or much or most of the merchandise was counterfeit.

He does admit to ignoring up to 11 notices that his inventory would be destroyed if left unclaimed. He mentions conflicting dates for the notices but we’ve no way of knowing to make of that.

I don’t know what to say other that I read the piece with some interest and for all know it’s a work of fiction, but heh I clicked.

[CobrastanJorji]

For such a one-sided article, I came down rather on the other side. A dozen warnings that he needed to claim his stuff before it was destroyed. The evidence of authenticity was illegible. At least four customers complained that the merchandise was not authentic. If he had paid to have his stuff returned, he'd only be out the cost of shipping whatever hadn't been sold. And this is just what I learned from an article from HIS point of view.

[Lazare]

> At least four customers complained that the merchandise was not authentic.

According to the article, one customer said the item didn't fit, and wondered if it might be a knock-off, but they didn't outright claim it was. And the other three complained about packaging. Depending on how you score it that's ZERO customers complaining, or maybe one at most.

> The evidence of authenticity was illegible. [...] And this is just what I learned from an article from HIS point of view.

That was Amazon's claim; he claimed he sent in the correct, authentic, legible invoices, and they were rejected out of hand because Amazon refused to accept invoices dated in the year the merchandise was purchased, and instead wanted invoices dated in a different incorrect year.

> If he had paid to have his stuff returned

He claimed he tried at one point and the web portal rejected it.

Obviously, I don't know who's right here, and some of his claims are a bit confusing. And he does admit to ignoring some notices. Still, if you're evaluating his story as he presents it, taking his claims at face value, then: His evidence was not illegible, no (or at most one) customer alleged fake items, and he did make an effort to retrieve the merchandise.

[bagacrap]

"either illegible or didn't match the records of the brand owners" --- so Amazon has done some due diligence by reaching out to other parties to the sales, and found that these receipts are likely counterfeit. Besides which, I'm not sure how even valid receipts prove that the inventory is legit; how do you know the receipts refer to this particular merchandise and not some other legitimate purchase? It seems entirely plausible to me that the retailer's brick and mortar started to fail, so he cut costs by switching to counterfeit goods. It still failed, so he tried to hawk them on Amazon. Amazon caught him, but he tried to fool them with old receipts. Amazon demanded he retrieve his goods, but he let Amazon destroy them so that he could sue for some imaginary value and extract money out of them that way.

Why does a journalist feel the need to get involved here? This seems like a job for the lawyers.

[LorenPechtel]

Or Amazon's customer support can't read scans of pieces of paper that have been around for a while.

[Lazare]

> It seems entirely plausible to me

That is plausible. It's also plausible Amazon, who famously has poor customer service and often makes mistakes when their automated system glitch, has done so yet again.

You are, of course, free to assume that in a dispute one party is telling the unvarnished truth and the other is lying.

[megous]

Sounds like a good cautionary tale for others, so why not?

[user5994461]

I don't know where you read these things you talk about.

1) He said he couldn't fill a request to have his stuff sent back because the form was broken. It's very believable if you ever used the amazon seller tool.

2) He submitted the evidence of authenticity and it was rejected for being older than 365 days. It shouldn't be a problem, clothes have a longer shelf life than one year.

3) Customers complain about products being unauthentic all the time, easy way to get a refund and to vent. It's the most generic 0 star review that can come up possibly from a competitor trying to damage your business. You can't sell a thousand items without getting a few bad reviews.

[dpmitu]

My main takeaway from the article is how easy it would be to destroy your competition with a few false complaints.

[megous]

It's amazing how these megacorps manage to have their software broken in fairly scary workflows for their users.

I have recent experience with paypal where they demand I confirm some information (they provide almost 0 information what they want actually in the UI, and the link I'm supposed to follow just redirects to my account overview, where there's nothing to do, no warnings, no prompts, just the regular summary of balances.) They also send a scary email that they'll block my account if I don't proceed by certain date, and the actual date is just an empty html template placeholder.

I ask them via support for what they want. And they send automated response. I almost ignored it, like usual, because these notices usually just say thank you we accepted your requests and we'll respond soon. I came back to it though, and at the end there's a note that they will not respond to me unless I ask again.

At this point, I'm like wtf? It's completely ridiculous, seeing so much stupid details and omissions in user experience in a row.

At some point I think large orgs just stop caring about customers, and just optimize some aggregate metrics, and this is the result.

[NoOneNew]

I'm in the same boat. I'm one of the first to pitchfork against Amazon... but this feels like we're not getting enough info to have a fair opinion. But even the article makes it seem like the guy had lots of opportunities to fix this issue, but screwed it up. Now, did he bumble it because it's a bureaucratic nightmare maze? Is he lazy and doesn't do stuff on time or correctly? Was it all actually knock-offs and he's full of shit?

I can tell you this, no one from HN can solve this mystery from their chairs. So, as much as I don't like any FAANG, this isn't clear cut against Amazon.

[xiphias2]

Also having inventory of brand new original fashion items that's older than 365 days sounds strange, as fashion changes every year, and the value of goods go down over time.

[robryan]

Sounds like the inventory is fine. The issue with fake claims on Amazon is that they don’t seem to be percentage based, so whether you sell 1000 items or 100k items the 4 fake claims might still get you suspended.

They will also reject invoices based on them not being in the exact format they are expecting. So a completely legitimate invoice that is missing an address/ phone number/ has a different entity could be rejected.

The whole thing is basically dangling a carrot, there is a massive customer base on offer, but in the end unless you fit a very specific profile as an authorised seller with solid local deals you are probably wasting your time.

[Closi]

Yep, I know a company that sold over $1m in sales, and their account got banned overnight because someone asked if they sold custom products on a message on Amazon, and a company support rep replied that they could but not on Amazon and directed them to their eBay site.

They got insta-banned and delisted because Amazon does automatic scans of messages, and the Amazon AI determined that directing users away from Amazon was a severe ToS breach.

1 message out of the thousands that they send mentioned eBay, and suddenly that's automatic delisting with no way to appeal.

[yeneek]

I worked for company that helps sellers with selling on Amazon. I don't know, if the story is true, but it's totally consistent with my experience how Amazon treats sellers.

[ikeboy]

He tried to remove the inventory and wasn't allowed to.

>When he tried to submit an inventory removal order through Amazon's web portal, it wouldn't let him.

[a254613e]

That sentence is so important, yet lacking so many details.

Did he try to submit the removal order, like one day before, or way earlier? Did he try it only once? Did he communicate this to amazon? He was obviously in contact with them for a longer period, did he mention that he can't get the removal order submitted?

[ikeboy]

I mean, who do you think is more likely to be the careless one in this situation: the guy who has 1.5 million in inventory locked up and will be homeless in a few months if they can't access it, or a trillion dollar company to which all this is not even a rounding error?

My own experience is that Amazon doesn't even bother verifying that complaints were submitted by the brand before acting on them. There's multiple documented cases of people impersonating brands to get sellers kicked off Amazon.

[justusw]

Don’t forget that sellers agree to an arbitration clause, so a legal recourse in court is impossible.

[alliao]

have always wanted to know, how watertight are those clauses? surely legal recourse is some sort of right that'd trump a lot of these type of boiler plate contracts?

[ikeboy]

Courts have consistently held up Amazon's arbitration clause for sellers.

[redis_mlc]

US courts treat commercial litigation and consumer/personal differently. Commercial is "letter of the contract" (you should have talked to your lawyer before signing), whereas consumer has to be reasonable to the non-expert public in the long run, and is also subject to tons of social justice goals.

[bleepblorp]

US courts have upheld arbitration clauses in shrinkwrap consumer contracts.

[ProAm]

Since when does Amazon care if they sell counterfeit goods (if they even were)?

[totalZero]

Among other reasons, one motivator for Amazon to solve this problem is the fact that the present administration has brought Amazon's problem with counterfeiting front and center into the public debate about China. Like him or not, Peter Navarro has repeatedly talked about Amazon and counterfeit goods in media appearances over the course of the past few years.

[ProAm]

Those are all issues money will fix and Amazon has plenty of money to fix oversight nuisances.

[totalZero]

I agree with that, but it really highlights the fact that Amazon has willingly avoided solving this problem. In other words, it's not an oversight -- if it were, they would have thrown money at the problem to make it disappear already.

Amazon makes money off counterfeit products that sell on its platform.

The most profitable outcome for Amazon is for there to be a large assortment of products that are either (A) totally legitimate, (B) counterfeit/flawed but equal in quality to the genuine product, or (C) counterfeit/flawed but so inexpensive that the customer doesn't complain too much.

Clothing is the kind of product that is easy to counterfeit but draws complaints from users who discriminate between the quality/durability/appearance of the real product and the false one. A phone case, drill bit, pair of tweezers, or ball bearing is the kind of product that is easy to counterfeit but may not be noticeable.

Similarly, Benson Leung taught us that a USB-C cable is the kind of product where you can sell low-quality junk lookalikes and the average consumer will have no idea what makes it worse than a more expensive cable.