The article quotes the two reviews which claim the items are fake; it's pretty clear the people are just throwing out the claim of "fake" to get leverage. Amazon asked the seller for the receipts from the manufacturers to prove that they were real; he gave them, but Amazon said they didn't count because they were more than a year old. But that's when he actually bought the merchandise, so I'm not sure what Amazon expected him to do.

There's a few assumptions here. I'd say the assumptions are that

1. Amazon knows the fakes, if they exist, came specifically from this seller. I doubt this because of their comingling problems.

2. That the threshold of complaints required to initiate this type of action is a reasonable one. And furthermore that the complaints are valid. It could be a matter of a few 3rd party competitors, it could be the original wholesaler trying to throw a wrench into Amazon's systems, it could be customers who are angling for credits, free products etc. As well all of this plays with assumption #1 and comingling.

often fakes (in fashion at least) are just overquota items produced from the same sweatshop that produce the legit items, which the sweatshops sell on the side to earn that dollar more per month.

brands thus moved to control counterfeit pursuing anything that isn't coming off their sales chain end to end, even if the fake is virtually identical to the legit product.