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Comment by paulcole | Hacker News Reader

> This a major problem for amazon

I hear this over and over but where's the evidence that this is true on a significant scale? Sellers have been counterfeiting and selling knock-off garbage on Amazon since the 3rd-party marketplaces launched.

3P sellers are a NECESSITY for Amazon. They source and stock the hundreds of millions of long tail items that Amazon themselves can't/won't. For Amazon the benefits of 3P sellers far outweigh the costs.

Edit: Who's downvoting this and why?

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Your initial question (is this really a problem) is completely unrelated to the rest of your post. It doesn't matter if third party sellers are important to Amazon. Nobody cares but Amazon. If 3P are important, they have to do the work to make their marketplace viable.

The problem is that they comingle authentic products from brands with fakes from 3ps. You never know which it is you are buying.

Comingling increases sales on their platform, but encourages fraud. They need to stop comingling but won't until they are shut down by regulators because it decreases their turnover.

There are large categories of things I don't buy anymore from them now (namely: expensive stuff not manufactured by Amazon themselves) that I know about co-mingling inventory. It's still in the early days of awareness about this, but if they don't change anything, I'm not likely to go back - odds are that it gets worse before it gets better.

I'd be fine with 3rd party sellers if I could simply ignore them. When I can't trust stuff "sold by Amazon" if third parties also sell it, though...

I'm not downvoting, but I'll speculate why others might.

You express skepticism that this really is a significant problem. Okay. Which you back up with arguments that the problem is: longstanding (has been a "feature" since 3P mtk launched years ago with no sign of a solution), and it's potentially vast (3P mkt stocks "hundreds of millions of items"), and probably unsolvable ("3P sellers are a NECESSITY for Amazon".)

So I'll guess that the downvoting had something to do with your thesis sentence.

Yeah I'm skeptical. It's such a huge problem that their retail revenue has only doubled in 3 years:

http://www.statista.com/graphic/1/266282/annual-net-revenue-...

If this was a serious problem wouldn't their be some noticeable effect? Possibilities:

• Anecdotal complaints aren't representative of overall customer experience

• Customers are willing to deal with the hassle of returning the occasional counterfeit item but it doesn't stop them from buying on Amazon

The thing is, just like Backpage, Amazon is disincentivized from stopping the sale of counterfeit goods-- they profit from each and every sale whether it's counterfeit or not.

Their decision to turn a blind eye to fraud could easily have contributed to such a rapid growth rate. Of course their sales doubled; you have to buy two of everything in order to get one that works. Try buying car parts or batteries and you'll see what we're all bitching about.

The noticeable effect hasn't happened yet. Eventually consumers will catch on. People avoid the Dollar Store because the products, while brand-name and cheap, are noticeably subpar in quality. Amazon will develop a similar reputation if they keep this up.

Bargain and dollar stores are the fastest growing segment of retail stores in the US:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-fastest-growing-re...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/01/16/ulta-dollar-...

You're not skeptical - you don't get it. Amazon is complicit in fraud. They sell fakes as the real stuff and that is why sales have increased.

Well this is the only reason Amazon still has competitive pricing. Their sales tax advantage is gone, and their delivery services, while impressive, can't compete with having customers simply drive the product home themselves.

So what's replacing their tax "avoidance" ? Bezos is done cheating the government, and of course now he's cheating his customers.

(sorry but I have very little respect for a man who is known to steal the businesses of his customers [1], and of course there's how he's (attempting to) use his customers as a weapon against Google [2])

[1] https://www.inc.com/stacey-macnaught/amazon-is-stealing-your...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16499124

> Anecdotal complaints aren't representative of overall customer experience

"I bought some unspecified item on Amazon and as far as I could tell, it wasn't a counterfeit" is just as much the anecdote you are hastily generalizing the other viewpoint of.

> Customers are willing to deal with the hassle of returning the occasional counterfeit item but it doesn't stop them from buying on Amazon

You keep saying that you're skeptical, but so far most of your points have been neutral or defending the existence of counterfeit products (not refuting their existence), defending Amazon selling them (not refuting Amazon sells them), but in all cases you claim to be skeptical but not really back up your skepticism with any actual skepticism or counter facts.

> I hear this over and over but where's the evidence that this is true on a significant scale?

All over this thread? All over the web?

https://www.google.com/search?q=amazon+fake+products

https://www.google.com/search?q=amazon+counterfeit

Is it affecting their business? Are people canceling Prime accounts? Are revenues down?

"Is it affecting their business" Yeah I would say it is fraudulently helping their business.

"Are people canceling Prime accounts?" Multiple people in this thread have said they had

"Are revenues down?" Is that the driving factor of whether a business practice is moral/legal ?

> "Are people canceling Prime accounts?" Multiple people in this thread have said they had

Why are these anecdotes worth so much when other all available evidence (revenues, etc.) is to the contrary.

I am still not at all following why revenue is a key indicator of whether or not something is right

The reason you are not following that is because I never said it was and nobody except for you was asking whether something was “right.”

The original discussion was about whether:

> [product counterfeiting] is a major problem for amazon

I personally agree with rdlecler1's comment. "At some point someone will die from something that is counterfeit and Bezos will be in DC like Zuckerberg is today. Why they’re not being more proactive is beyond me."

Did you mean to post this as a reply to a different comment? I don’t see how it connects with anything I’ve said.

Do you not agree that Bezos being called to the stand for selling huge numbers of counterfeit goods would be "a major problem for Amazon" ? I thought that's what we were talking about...

Well, I'm pretty sure their revenues are up but at the same time is that how you want to make your money?

It’s not my money but it’s pretty clear by Amazons behavior that they are fine with it.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them.

You can see it in this thread: people who won't buy stuff and people who have canceled their Prime account. It's the type of cancer that isn't noticed until it's too widespread to ignore.

I agree with your comment. Amazon has a problem of 1) how to police all this long-tail product, 2) how to onboard the number of sellers that needs to fulfill the demand for long-tail products.

I'm pretty sure that if someone were to sell a counterfeited copy of a best seller, his store would be shut down in a matter of hours and his account closed forever. But a small store selling stuff difficult to find? They are doing them a service, almost.

Like everything else, there are rules against counterfeiting, but the enforcement should strike a balance for the overall wellbeing of the marketplace...

HN is eager to downvote dissenting opinions. You got a vote up from me.

Edit: huh, this got downvoted too... First rule of fight club is we do not talk about fight club?

No, the issue is your comment doesn't add anything to the discussion. It's not any different from replying with "+1"

If you want to upvote someone, upvote them. If you want to reply, add something of value to the discussion.

> Edit: huh, this got downvoted too... First rule of fight club is we do not talk about fight club?

FWIW, there are multiple points in the guidelines your comment crosses.

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation... Assume good faith."