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Comment by BeetleB | Hacker News Reader

>Shopping on Amazon has gotten to the point where I actively try to avoid any 3rd party sellers now.

You can't really avoid it. Amazon comingles its inventory with that of 3rd party sellers who sell as FBA. So even if you choose Amazon as the seller, the actual product you receive could be the one a 3rd party seller shipped to Amazon's warehouses.

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Are you sure about that? I vaguely recollect reading somewhere that the 3rd party vendors stocks were indeed shared as undifferentiated stock to optimize logistics, but that Amazon kept its own stocks separate over QA reasons.

I am an Amazon seller, and yes if you ship inventory to them under FBA program, that inventory is co-mingled.

Do you mean, if I try to avoid fakes by buying from a seller I trust, i might get inventory from the one I was trying to avoid? This makes zero sense!

>Do you mean, if I try to avoid fakes by buying from a seller I trust, i might get inventory from the one I was trying to avoid? This makes zero sense!

For new products, that is how Amazon does it. Which will explain why many products will have inconsistent reviews about fakes. And you can ignore any review that says "Avoid seller X. He sent me a fake!" You have no way of knowing which seller's item you got.

Note that this is only for "Fulfilled by Amazon" orders. For non-FBA, the seller ships it to you directly.

And for used items, Amazon will ship you the exact one from the seller.

This is counterintuitive, appalling, and the reason I'm not going to buy any such orders again. This HN posting has enlightened me enormously. For 'customers', it's such an appalling decision, and one which if European country regulation would have been implemented would probably be deemed illegal

It was up to a year ago when I stopped selling on Amazon.

I should add a qualifier: What I say is true only for new products. For used products, they'll ship you the exact item the seller shipped to them.

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