undefined | Better HN

0 pointseloff7y ago0 comments

The problem is worse than that. They mix the inventory from all sellers, including themselves, for the same product. So all it takes is one counterfeit seller to poison the whole well.

0 comments

11 comments · 4 top-level

toomuchtodo7y ago· 3 in thread

I’m surprised there hasn’t been a coordinated effort against Amazon by an attacker using this strategy (poisoning the well at scale). That’d fix their comingling problem straight away.

perl4ever7y ago

Posting vast numbers of stories about counterfeits on the internet seems like an easier way to "poison the well", I would assume.

callalex7y ago

That sounds like a quick way to end up in prison for a long time.

toomuchtodo7y ago

Amazon flagrantly sells counterfeits due to comingling. Repercussions? Zero. As long as you're outside of US jurisdiction, the chances of you being prosecuted are close enough to zero to round down.

bunderbunder7y ago· 2 in thread

Well, not the whole well. You can avoid "fulfilled by Amazon" products.

But that puts a damper on the whole "Prime" thing, so at that point you might as well just shop somewhere else entirely.

giulianob7y ago

Isn't "fulfilled by Amazon" more trustworthy since they are shipping the product to you rather than a 3rd party? Or does Amazon fulfill counterfeits too?

Klathmon7y ago

The way it works (as far as I have heard) is that when it's "fulfilled by Amazon", the vendors will ship Amazon their products.

Amazon won't really do much in the way of vetting them, and then just throws them all into the same bin (i believe they go by the SKU and not much else). When you order from any of the vendors that sell that exact item, they just pick one at random and ship it to you.

All it takes is one bad actor to ship a bunch of counterfeit stuff to amazon for fulfillment and then it's possible to get counterfeits from ANY seller that Amazon fulfills.

1 more reply

rasz7y ago· 2 in thread

Fixing this is trivial, tell comingling sellers to QRcode all the merchandise, scan when adding inventory, penalize/kick out sellers playing label games (wrong/ missing QR codes), penalize/kick out sellers with counterfeit product/brick filled box returns.

vonmoltke7y ago

You have an odd definition of "trivial". Some sort of per-vendor coding could work, but it is not trivial by any means.

inetknght7y ago

This doesn't go far enough. Fraud is a major crime with very low accountability.

dboreham7y ago

Interesting how a schema design errror has led to this real life problem (failure to have a "source vendor") field in the inventory table.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse