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Comment by mattpavelle | Hacker News Reader

Actually, "sold-by-Amazon.com only" doesn't help avoid knock-offs.

"For Faster Shipping, Items Are Commingled at Warehouses, Opening the Door to Knockoffs" (https://www.wsj.com/articles/on-amazon-pooled-merchandise-op...).

Basically if a third party seller says it's a "Genuine Apple iPhone Charger" (whether it is or not) and the packaging looks real enough, it gets thrown in with all the other sellers (including Amazon) who have genuine chargers.

Thus "sold by Amazon.com" means just what it says - "sold" by. Not "sourced" by...

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I've never had that happen to me, and if it does I'll send the item back. This isn't something that should keep you up at night.

Over the past 6 months I've had to return over half of the 40 items I've purchased from amazon for reasons ranging from being fake to damaged in shipping. The guy who took most of my returns at the UPS store said he's has a large increase in returns to Amazon. Could be that more people are ordering, and I know antecdotes aren't great evidence. But I do think that if Amazon keeps selling fake merchandise and inconveniencing consumers, they're going to suffer in the long term.

I'm also waiting to see if I get banned for "abusing" their return policy which legitimate customers have reported happening.

I'll second this. I checked my order history, I've got about a 40% return rate over the last 12 months. Most are things I bought that looked okay and were just junk when I got them. Some were standard "it didn't quite fit/whatever" returns, and then the ones that really get me mad are the ones that are supposed to be a brand name and holding it up next to a known genuine article they're not even a good fake.

Trendy brands of clothes or accessories don't even bother. Supposedly real brand name ICs and small electrical components, completely hopeless.

Throw in the fact that they don't notify you when your shipping times changes and it almost always seems to push out a day or two as soon as you purchase it and I've practically quit shopping on Amazon unless I can't find it anywhere else or I don't care about the quality that I'm getting.

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