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Comment by ykevinator | Hacker News Reader

Is counterfeiting really bad?

Is it bad when you carefully try to make sure you are ordering a good quality product and instead get something shit quality? I think it’s wasteful and bad for the environment. It’s also a waste of time spent trying to choose the right thing and a waste of time and thought spent returning it (if one even bothers).

It is also bad for the company whose product is being counterfeited because their brand is associated with the poor quality knock off.

This is also the reason I hate print on demand and think the seller should have to specify how a book was printed.

Maybe you think counterfeits are equal in quality to the genuine articles. In that case I think the argument is different. But I don’t believe that is the case.

The issue - as I see it - can be divided in two.

I mean, if you are really willing to buy an original product, a minimal check can be the price asked for it.

Any good today is made of materials+manufacturing+marketing, it has some costs and a corresponding selling price with a given markup.

Once said that a number of branded items can have a selling price that seem completely disconnected from the relative costs, there are limits.

If you can find an item on the manufacturer site at US$ 100, do you really believe that you can find the SAME item on Amazon for US$ 10?

If you find it at say US$ 80 or 75 or even US$ 50[1] and it comes out as being counterfeited, you may have some valid expectations ruined by Amazon, but if you ordered it for 19.95, free shipping, did you really believe it was "original"?

[1] it is one of my per peeves, if you look at the price of many electronic goods, let's say printers or TV on the official site of the manufacturer they are often double their "street price", either online or at the nearest large shop chain. I often wonder how many printers Brother (say) sells from their site.

20 years ago, I was looking for a SCSI card, direct from the manufacturer and knew it should be like $250-$300. However, no price was listed. I figured if I added it to my cart and went to checkout, theyd have to tell the price. It showed as $0. Proceeded to checkout, paid $7. Thought for sure theyd cancel the order, but nope, it shipped and arrived in about a week. That card was awesome.

I don't understand the relevance, you exploited a bug in the vendor's paying or ordering/delivering system, what has this to do with counterfeiting?

This isn't just about electronics though, or about big ticket items being sold at ridiculously low prices that seem too good to be true. It happens all the time with products a normal person would never assume to be the target of counterfeiters. As I stated in another post, I've personally had it happen with cotton pillow cases and light bulbs. If the fake costs $0.10 to make in China and the real version costs $5 to make in Ohio then there's still a lot of money to be made substituting cheap Chinese junk for a name brand product that should only cost $10 to begin with. Because of how Amazon bundles listings for "the same product" this is extremely easy to get away with.

When you get lower quality than you paid for, yes. Many would debate the IP end of it, but in terms of deception of the end buyer, I would say it is unequivocally deceptive and bad. Especially if you trust your life to the quality of an item, and it fails.

Definitely. There's lot of fake climbing gear on Amazon, and unrated equipment posing as 'safe climbing gear'. And even if it's fulfilled by Amazon, Amazon conmingles products from multiple vendors into buckets, which could lead to you getting a fake carabiner or belay device.

It's literally life or death purchases, and climbing forums have to warn people to avoid Amazon because the risks are so high.

Is deceit for profit okay? No? There is your answer. It's not any more complicated.

I mean, they're making money, so it must be right, right? /s

Only on Hacker News is this a question people have.

I think if you want a knock-off and are aware you're getting a knock-off (i.e. a Brada purse) then there are some interesting morals involved and I'm personally cool with it - I think brand name markup in the modern world is insane and generally not justified. Then again I never go out of my way to have the flashy labels, I've never owned a Hershel bag and probably never will.

My concern is more on the fraud side. When you buy something usually you can follow up with the seller if the product is defective or damaged, when people fraudulently report themselves then that follow up is impossible. Additionally, legitimately imported goods should adhere to certain domestic safety regulations, the enforcement of this is complicated, imperfect and not always effective, but enforcing safety standards on smuggled items is a fool's errand so if there are unsafe materials that are significantly cheaper then you're more likely to find them in counterfeits.

So, without even touching the question of brand name entitlement and the defense of intellectual property... I think there are some significant reasons that counterfeiting is, indeed, really bad.

I just posted recently about a local company in my area that lost millions of dollars due to someone stealing and knocking off their bird feeders... Even such an odd little product to steal, makes a huge difference to some companies and can easily cost people jobs.

The fact that you even asked that is pretty sad, though...

I bought a pack of socks off of Amazon. Despite appearing new, and visually similar to the socks I wanted, in a similar plastic bag with appropriate markings, they lacked the "new sock feel" I associate with a new pair of socks.

Of all the things for the counterfeiter to fail to replicate--

Yes. Of course. At a bare minimum, the people who created/published the real thing are not getting any reimbursement. On top of that, I've never seen a counterfeit item that is as good as the real item.

from the article: "The value of global trade in pirated and counterfeit goods is half a trillion dollars per year, according to an estimate cited in the Trump memo. "

That and burning your house down with fake or bad wiring from faulty electronics. Or a bestselling novel with the last 100 pages missing. Or a flash drive with only 1% of its labelled capacity.

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