There are a couple of problems with his story.
First, Amazon denied it was due to comingling:
"I’m just calling to inform you that there were no other sellers of that item that were in the co-mingling program"
Second, he apparently didn't show up to the lawsuit and had a judgement by default. Never a good sign.
Third, he was moving hundreds of thousands of items, but couldn't afford a lawyer?
Fourth, he cites as evidence that his items were comingled the fact that his returns came from a different warehouse than he sent them to. As someone who regularly sends items to FBA warehouses, this is bullshit. Amazon sends your own inventory between their warehouses, and you can track this in reports. Often I send to warehouse A, and it immediately goes to my reserved inventory, and then it goes to another warehouse a few days later. Anyone who doesn't know this didn't invest enough time to learn about Amazon policies, and you should doubt their story.
Surely Amazon must have some clue the damage this is doing to their brand?
Seems time has come to buy from retailers that don't have highly suspect marketplaces intermingled on their sites.
A particularly humorous situation has evolved from this with matchbox toy cars. With matchbox cars, any 1 car box is entirely indistinguishable electronically from another 1 car box, as all 1 car boxes share the same UPC (as well as 2 car boxes and so on). Collectors now refer to buying from amazon as 6 bullet roulette, because it is now virtually impossible to actually get what you think you bought.
That seems to me to be missing the point rather badly (by Amazon, not by you). Counterfeits are designed to be indistinguishable, at least to casual inspection. Forging a UPC code is trivial.
Think ipod earbuds for instance, imagining they all actually Official ones, you wouldn't care which seller the one you ordered came from, as long as the product reference is the good one.
Let's say there was a SellerB with a real iPad for sale, located closer to the buyer. Could Amazon swap ownership in that case? Would SellerB be liable for fraud and damaged reputation if his real iPad was switched with a fake?
On the face of it, I cannot see how it would present a problem, except for the obvious one of scale. It would be interesting to learn the precise details of how Amazon implements its tracking policy.
It's gotten so bad with certain groups of items I don't even try. Sunglasses, handbags, all the usual stuff you'd expect.
My anecdote: I like gold colored Ray-Ban aviators with a brown or dark polarized lens. The two stores near me didn't have them in stock, I couldn't find my old pair and I was leaving for a week long motorcycle ride in two days. I ordered them up and immediately knew they were fake. They were too light, the nose pads weren't right, all the usual tells. I returned them 3 different times until I just cancelled.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B000EYP57K/ref=dp_ol...
Buy from Amazon - the second choice. Pretty sure that is the default purchase option on the main page as well.
If you order from Seller A on "Fulfilled by Amazon", then Amazon will ship you from the nearest warehouse that has the same product, even if it's technically stock of Seller B.
And Seller B might have handed a crate of counterfeits to Amazon. Angering both the customer and Seller A who has no way to actually enforce the quality of what they sell on Amazon.
Pros to comingling:
1. Makes customers happier to get their item sooner
2. You don't need to label your items, which either saves you time or saves you the 20 cents per item fee Amazon charges
3. Your items get processed quicker. If your items are in between warehouses, they can still be "shipped" to the customer.
Cons:
1. Counterfeit possibility. This varies by item. Amazon claims to track which seller inventory was sold from.
2. Bad returns, may hurt your account or require time to deal with.
Basically sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it doesn't. I use a prep center which labels for me, and when I send in items myself I have Amazon label them.
Just because you buy someing from Seller A, even if Seller A is Amazon LLC, you may not be getting stock from Seller A
If I am A retailer selling SuperWidget 55, and I ship Amazon 100 Genuine SuperWidget's to store in their warehouse for amazon to ship to my customers (aka Amazon Fulfillment Service) . Then another competitor ship 100 Fake SuperWidgets to amazons warehouse. All Amazon records is they have 200 SuperWidgets.
When a Customer orders a SuperWidget, they will get what ever SuperWidget is closest to their location, and a random one from that location, it may not be my SuperWidget but one of the 100 fake ones, even though the customer selected to order from me.
So then the next question is why would a retailer use Amazon Fulfillment, well if you want to get any Prime buyers you must, as if you do not use Amazon Fulfillment your orders are not "Prime Eligible" which eliminates a huge number of consumers.
You implied that sellers are required to use it.
Edit: it's a different user that replied to me, my mistake.
Also, Amazon tracks which order came from whose inventory, so if it's reported as fake they can punish the right seller. Any system of that size is going to have some slip through, but Amazon does a lot to vet sellers for specific products, categories, and so on. Just recently certain iPads were restricted, and I couldn't get approved with retail receipts, they wanted invoices from authorized distributors, for example.
As a buyer you can't do much about comingling, but that shouldn't be relevant except for products with an abnormally high counterfeit rate. And you will get your money back with very little hassle when buying FBA (they refund you immediately and then require you to return it), and it helps hurt the bad seller. The fact is the vast majority of purchases on Amazon are legitimate. I agree Amazon needs to do something about their image, but it doesn't seem to be hurting their sales. And who else are you going to go to? eBay is even worse, and retailers are more expensive most if the time.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
>Although products sent to Amazon as commingled inventory may be virtually pooled with those of other sellers, we track which seller shipped the units to our fulfillment centers from the time they enter our warehouse until they are shipped to the customer. This allows us to know who sourced the item that the customer received.
The other possibility is that they weren't fake, just the result of Ray-Ban moving production to China. You could return them 300 times and you'd still get the same cost-reduced crap.
Additionally I wasn't ordering ones that were too cheap to be real, this was full retail price- if they were significantly cheaper I would've expected fakes.
[1]: http://www.ray-ban.com/usa/sunglasses/RB8307%20MALE%20011-av...
If getting a genuine brand name item (e.g. an Apple charger) is important, I will buy it at a local retailer. And even then I'm not always sure, but I assume that places like Target have enough control in their procurement to not end up selling fakes.