Over half were suspected fakes
February 25, 2020 9:18 PM   Subscribe

 
I checked the Scambusters link to see if it makes the usual mistake. And it does.

Check the listing to see if you’re buying directly from the big store or a third party. Note that “fulfilled by” indicates a third-party vendor. It’s not the same as “sold by.”

This advice is incorrect in Amazon's case because Amazon practices "inventory commingling." Inventory received directly from Amazon's suppliers and that received from third-party sellers using the "Fulfilled by Amazon" service are combined, and there's no way as a shopper to choose which source you prefer. This has been reported on for years, nothing has changed, and most Amazon shoppers have no idea. The only way to ensure that Amazon won't ship you counterfeit goods is to not shop at Amazon.
posted by skymt at 9:48 PM on February 25, 2020 [88 favorites]


I'd love to discuss how common counterfeit products are on Amazon, but this article misses the mark by discussing eBay, AliExpress, and Wish at the same time as Amazon and Walmart.

There's a vast difference there. If I ordered a Nike or Apple product from Amazon, I'd be surprised and concerned if it was fake. If I ordered the same from Wish, I would ASSUME it was going to be fake, considering there's no legitimate channel from American name-brands to Wish or AliExpress. And eBay is a whole world of its own, of course.
posted by mmoncur at 10:40 PM on February 25, 2020 [20 favorites]


I'm not sure if anything from wish is not fake.
posted by boilermonster at 10:49 PM on February 25, 2020 [11 favorites]


I'd be curious to see how Walmart stacked up against Amazon, but not enough to watch a 20-minute video (where they may or may not tell you).
posted by Umami Dearest at 12:14 AM on February 26, 2020 [6 favorites]


Walmart is pretty bad and has the same problem as Amazon: one of the Youtubers I watch ordered a box of 3M masks from Walmart and was sent a box of fakes instead.

The race to the bottom is terrifying: I notice it most with books and clothes.

Online sales as a standard delivery model has turned clothing into unwearable shit, with most pieces being wildly incorrectly sized and made of cheap transparent polyester, no matter what the tag claims the fibre is. The worst offenders are Shein and Wish and other China-based sites, but even Asos and Simons are now largely producing garments that feel like crap and fall apart after one wear. I have to buy clothing in a store, or online from places that actually have stores.

Books are more frustrating. I buy academic editions and criticism often, and I usually do so through a publisher's own webpage, but there are times that I need to order something from Amazon. And my students routinely buy from Amazon, almost by default. Several times I've had a print on demand counterfeit sent in place of the Oxford UP or Routledge edition that I ordered and paid for; these are a badly printed and formatted text, usually downloaded from Project Gutenberg, bound in a counterfeit Oxford cover. Obviously it's not the edition I've paid for, so I return them and report the seller. But it's really difficult to explain to students the importance of getting a modern edition with good notes and glosses, only to have them buy garbage instead, usually without knowing it.
posted by jrochest at 12:28 AM on February 26, 2020 [26 favorites]


It's basically impossible to reliably buy a genuine SD Card from Amazon UK.
posted by Eleven at 3:37 AM on February 26, 2020 [5 favorites]


Thanks for this post, blue shadows. I saw the story on boing2, but they didn't bother to link to the source, and their blurb was typically sketchy. When I went to marketplace.com, I could see no indication of this story. So, thanks.


...Amazon practices "inventory commingling."
. . .
The only way to ensure that Amazon won't ship you counterfeit goods is to not shop at Amazon.


Yes. They are not the trustworthy retailer they claim to be.


...this article misses the mark by discussing eBay, AliExpress, and Wish at the same time as Amazon and Walmart.

There's a vast difference there.


See above. I think your confidence in Amazon is misplaced. The libertarian presumption that consumers have full knowledge of the products they buy is less true all the time. (I'm not saying anyone here subscribes to that presumption.)
posted by Kirth Gerson at 3:45 AM on February 26, 2020 [1 favorite]


Thanks for this. I'm gradually noticing just how bad this situation is. My experience has been of searching on Amazon for something common, and the search returning pages and pages of products from unknown manufacturers with nonsensical names, many of which have bi-modal review curves. Examples of some recent products I've decided to walk into local stores for instead include entry-level gaming headsets, and basic electrical outlet extensions (many cheap apparently respectable branded versions, that smell of burnt plastic etc. according to the reviews).

Also using a bricks-and-mortar store means (a) that products on the shelf have been through some kind of selection process, (b) you can return stuff. But I do live in a city, which makes this much easier.
posted by carter at 4:37 AM on February 26, 2020 [2 favorites]


Sometimes, though, you're more-or-less pushed into knowingly purchasing a knock-off or counterfeit, simply because the item you need is priced ridiculously high. I'm thinking more in the area of replacement parts, such as refrigerator water filters and the like. The OEM part is stupidly expensive, and that legit-looking third-party piece is half the price.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:42 AM on February 26, 2020 [4 favorites]


Also worth noting: They may not actually be fake. Many identifiable brands have multiple lines with the same label for multiple markets. In Europe it is well known that food products sold in identical boxes in Western Europe are a magnitude better in quality than the same product sold in Eastern Europe. A company like Gucci can maximize profits by produced one product for their boutiques and selling another out of cheaper materials to their on line customers and to their resellers. They have the same name and item label but they are not the same product.
posted by Jane the Brown at 4:50 AM on February 26, 2020 [8 favorites]


But that filter may be covered in heavy metals. Not defending the price of OEM filters but the risk that fakes pose can be much worse. It is like we could use a well funded, well run civil service that was overseen by a legislative body that thought government could be useful.
posted by Ignorantsavage at 4:51 AM on February 26, 2020 [22 favorites]


My experience with counterfeit products on Amazon has been actively harmful. Three years ago, I ordered a set of premium Energizer batteries on Amazon, and they were the best batteries I’ve ever had: lots of power output, and they lasted for years, and the supplier’s bulk price was much lower than the price in the stores. A few months ago, I repeated the order, clicking the link from my original purchase to ensure I got the exact same product. What I got instead was indistinguishable from the real brand, down to the labels and clamshell packaging, but every single one of them had anemic output and lasted less than two weeks. Moreover, two of them leaked - destroying a $40 clock, and a $90 thermostat that took a $250 technician call to replace.

Needless to say, I’m never buying batteries on Amazon again until they get their suppliers under control. Let this be a PSA for you too - saving a few bucks can turn into a pretty expensive ordeal.
posted by purple_frogs at 4:54 AM on February 26, 2020 [19 favorites]


The OEM part is stupidly expensive, and that legit-looking third-party piece is half the price.

I was just looking at a plastic mic clip for cello - from DPA, it was over $40 for a piece of flexible plastic. From a sketchy-ish seller on Amazon, it was $16. If there were a legit source for $25 I would jump at it, instead it's the usual decision fatigue and wondering if I could 3d print it.
posted by aspersioncast at 4:55 AM on February 26, 2020 [4 favorites]


Could someone explain why so many crappy products also have high levels of lead and other metals? Is it inferior materials being used, poor industrial processes, etc?
posted by Foci for Analysis at 5:10 AM on February 26, 2020 [1 favorite]


I have some confidence in Costco as a retailer that takes responsibility for what they sell. I may be naive in that.

WRT filters, I've found Watts Premier a reliable source. Not the cheapest, but reasonable.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 5:13 AM on February 26, 2020 [7 favorites]


But that filter may be covered in heavy metals.

Right, it's not a cheap/discounted price for a product of known quality - you're actually buying a cheaper and maybe poorer quality (or even unsafe) product. Of course it's a judgment call as to what you might want to go with. For instance, knock of toner cartridges are something I don't mind purchasing. I'm not so sure about water filters though.
posted by carter at 5:16 AM on February 26, 2020 [4 favorites]


It's basically impossible to reliably buy a genuine SD Card from Amazon UK.

Same for the US, for a couple of years now. In 2016 I was working at a security company, trying to source 128gb micro SD cards for onboard camera storage. We went a couple rounds of buying a bunch, finding out they were fake, and returning them before giving up on buying them online and instead buying them from a brick and mortar. I'm sure it's worse now.
posted by god hates math at 5:19 AM on February 26, 2020 [7 favorites]


Sorry, in my previous comment, that should be: "you're actually maybe buying a cheaper and maybe poorer quality (or even unsafe) product."

There's no way to tell so it depends on how much you want to take that gamble.
posted by carter at 5:21 AM on February 26, 2020


Also - there was a recent Wirecutter article on this, that looks specifically at Amazon fakes. For instance, I would be worried about buying cheaper but fake oven gloves. You really want the sliicon on the gloves to be food-quality silicon and not some other compound that could melt, burn you, and release toxic fumes.
posted by carter at 5:28 AM on February 26, 2020 [5 favorites]


I have to buy my electric toothbrush heads direct from the manufacturer now, because I'm not putting dubious knockoffs of unknown quality or composition in my mouth and I don't really trust anywhere else that stocks the larger packs.

There is very little I'm prepared to buy off Amazon now. Large cardboard cat scratchers. Some second hand kids books I couldn't find elsewhere. The brand name coloured pencils I like are slightly cheaper and don't seem to be faked so far (too specific and small a market maybe?) but next time I might as well go direct.

Once you rule out all cosmetics, electronics, clothes, popular name brands of anything, anything that involves food... you're not left with much.
posted by stillnocturnal at 5:38 AM on February 26, 2020 [4 favorites]


Could someone explain why so many crappy products also have high levels of lead and other metals? Is it inferior materials being used, poor industrial processes, etc?

I'm assuming that they are made in unregulated sweatshops in other countries, where there is also no regulation or quality control over the upstream supply chain.
posted by carter at 5:47 AM on February 26, 2020 [3 favorites]


So none of the Chinese sites can be trusted? I was checking out some fleece jackets from one seller, and I couldn't believe how nice they looked compared to price.
posted by Beholder at 6:06 AM on February 26, 2020


I usually use the Chinese sites to buy stuff from big Chinese brands that are known in industry. So like if I'm looking for a product from Meanwell I'll buy it on Aliexpress but I wouldn't buy a Siemens product from there.
posted by some loser at 6:12 AM on February 26, 2020 [3 favorites]


In the last year or so I had two orders from Amazon that were obvious fakes. One was a package of socks, with all the right labeling and branding of the real ones. But not only was the sizing wrong, the material just sort of fell apart on a single wear. It was like they hadn't tried at all other than to make the packaging and colors correct. It was easy to get a refund from Amazon, but it was obviously not something they were concerned about or were going to take steps to fix.

The majority of orders I've gotten from Amazon were either real items, or the fakes were of a sufficiently high quality that I couldn't tell the difference, which made the two orders that were obviously fake stand out so much more.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:15 AM on February 26, 2020 [1 favorite]


I couldn't believe how nice they looked compared to price.

Personally, I trust some online sites less and less. I think we have some kind of cognitive bias towards assuming that higher prices are a rip off, and that the lower prices are the 'real price.' But my own thought processes for a nice-looking but cheap fleece online would cover things like stitching quality, zipper quality, ability or lack thereof to return it once it falls apart, etc. It's possible I might also be worried about the composition of the fleece yarn being an unregulated material and off-gassing some noxious crap while I am wearing it.
posted by carter at 6:16 AM on February 26, 2020 [3 favorites]


Oh my goodness. For some reason I've never consciously given this problem any thought, but it's clearly been weighing on me... Like, now I realize I've been gaslit all along. And it's been stressful. There's some part of my brain and body that's suddenly so relaxed after reading this. I didn't imagine the poor fabric, the bad fit, the horrible taste, the terrible construction, or even the differences in shape and coloring compared to the photos! I'm not crazy!
posted by MiraK at 6:26 AM on February 26, 2020 [10 favorites]


Several times I've had a print on demand counterfeit sent in place of the Oxford UP or Routledge edition that I ordered and paid for; these are a badly printed and formatted text, usually downloaded from Project Gutenberg, bound in a counterfeit Oxford cover.

If these are monographs, then they may well be legitimate POD from Oxford; while the upside of POD for academic presses is that you don't need to maintain a warehouse of slow-moving stock, the downside is that the end result is often pretty terrible-looking (I've got several POD books that I've received straight from Oxford, and the print and bindings are awful). Editions of literary texts are another matter, because Amazon lumps in stuff from scrapers like, say, Kessinger with actual secondhand Oxford World's Classics or Penguins. And there's no way for the customer to tell. (POD texts from the British Library and Gale are legitimate--if you don't have access to the Corvey Collection, buying the books individually from Gale is, while expensive, a lifesaver--and, while not luxurious, decently produced.)
posted by thomas j wise at 6:51 AM on February 26, 2020 [2 favorites]


I went to the ScamBusters link on my phone, and it was full of ads that seemed like just what the link was talking about. I was wondering if they were there as a test- 'you're not listening...', but was afraid to click on any of them.
Tried the link on my laptop and they weren't there.
Is there an ad-blocker for the iPhone?
posted by MtDewd at 6:51 AM on February 26, 2020


I absolutely don't trust cheap clothing sites (/AliExpress/Wish) these days. There is too big of a chance that the website photos do not match what you will get.

I regularly get ads from no-name web shops advertising sweaters that I recognise as handknit. They take photos from designers and pass them off as something that's for sale for pennies. God knows what you will actually receive.

A friend of mine ordered what looked like a beautiful colourwork sweater - when it arrived, it was thin stretchy polyester printed with a comical imitation of the photo.

Here's a Youtuber reviewing the knockoff version of her hand-sewn dress and another reviewing a knockoff of her bangs (!).
posted by Glier's Goetta at 7:15 AM on February 26, 2020 [7 favorites]


So none of the Chinese sites can be trusted?

Supply chains in China are opaque and prone to corruption. This is to the point that Chinese parents of young children who have the means will go (or send someone) to Australia to pick up infant formula that hasn't been inside the Chinese supply chain. You can see evidence of this there: pharmacies (and sometimes other shops that normally sell unrelated things) with large tins of infant formula in their windows and signs in Mandarin; presumably the buyers are sufficiently price-tolerant to allow for steep margins.
posted by acb at 7:28 AM on February 26, 2020


A friend of mine ordered what looked like a beautiful colourwork sweater - when it arrived, it was thin stretchy polyester printed with a comical imitation of the photo.

Anyone who advertises clothing on Instagram typically does this. What they sell is not items to be worn, but props to be photographed in. That cool shirt with the stylised graphic mashing up several hot memes is going to look and feel like garbage in real life, but might photograph well. This is because Instagram is widely acknowledged to be for vain fools.
posted by acb at 7:30 AM on February 26, 2020 [1 favorite]


This is a problem that is 100% solvable by a well funded consumer protection agency that is given teeth by appropriate legislation. This is exactly what government is for.
posted by latkes at 7:43 AM on February 26, 2020 [45 favorites]


I've consulted for the pharmaceutical industry, and worked on a project that was designed to help counter counterfeit medicine by helping to verify that the manufactured product is genuine (and yest, the cost of this system is of course baked into the price of brand name pharmaceuticals).

The training materials showed the lengths counterfeiters will go to make product that looks genuine. Among the exhibits was a production line in the open air that had high-quality packaging and labeling equipment, even if they were packaging and labeling what could well have been dirty tap water. It makes a twisted kind of sense -- if you invest in equipment that makes your packaging look legitimate, you still have a cost advantage over drug companies that do the same and also adhere to manufacturing and testing standards, and you can undercut the real drug companies on price, because you aren't bothering to manufacture decent product.
posted by Gelatin at 7:48 AM on February 26, 2020 [8 favorites]


There's been some discussion of counterfeit Board Games on BGG. There are some great side-by-side examples of real vs. fake...and man, I'm not sure if I would realize if some of those fakes weren't the real thing. Obvious stuff like misspellings aside, how would I pick up on the slight changes in graphics if I didn't have another copy to compare? Sometimes the counterfeits are super good - I read a comment in which the buyer of a counterfeit game actually preferred the slightly off artwork to the original. But for most of the folks out there, they're buying a game that may look and play right but the creator and manufacturer isn't getting a dime.

Anyway, I'm a staunch supporter of my local game store so I'm hopeful that they'd pick up on any oddities in their stock. And even if the game turns out to be a fake, at least my local store is getting SOME of the proceeds rather than Amazon.
posted by Gray Duck at 7:50 AM on February 26, 2020 [9 favorites]


Note that this article is about Canada - our online supply chain is still slightly quaint compared to the US. We do have strong consumer protection laws, but very timid consumers. Also, things sold online here might typically have a 20-100% price markup compared to Amazon US.
posted by scruss at 7:50 AM on February 26, 2020 [1 favorite]


It's not even just fulfillment- I went on Amazon looking for a replacement for the Samsung fast-charging wall wart I lost and every single search result, including those which listed the product as made by Samsung, was either distinguishable as a fake by the page copy or by the reviews.

At what point does it start to hurt Amazon's business when you don't have any way of knowing what you're going to get when you order from them?
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:19 AM on February 26, 2020 [7 favorites]


I had a weird experience with this last year - I bought some Keen Presidio shoes in the same size as my previous pair on Amazon, and they were...different--the soles were shaped differently (to the point that they didn't fit) and also more cheaply made in some strange ways. Assuming they were fakes, I returned them and ordered some directly from the Keen website, and those were exactly the same. I think of Keen as a decent brand. So at this point with some items I feel like it's hard to know if something is fake or I'm just noticing a decline in quality.
posted by needs more cowbell at 8:20 AM on February 26, 2020 [15 favorites]


I know this sounds horribly naive, but it constantly perplexes me why Amazon seemingly decided to trash its more-or-less reliable reputation for selling real goods at reasonably good prices, in favor of basically being a reseller of some of the lowest-quality crap available. It's like they pulled this huge, enterprise-scale bait-and-switch.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:27 AM on February 26, 2020 [24 favorites]


Here's a Youtuber reviewing the knockoff version of her hand-sewn dress

Is that... it IS.

That Bernadette Banner video was going around some of the medievalist community sites I'm part of, and the general feeling was:

1) you can get better stuff at a better cost from people in the US if you're looking for recreationist clothing; and
2) she does really good work; and
3) that's just pretty embarrassing an attempt at re-creation even for a Chinese Knockoff Clothing Site We Do Not Actually Name.
posted by mephron at 8:30 AM on February 26, 2020 [2 favorites]


Facebook is full of ads for Chinese scam sites that steal photos and make dozens of near-identical sites. Crafty friends of mine have seen their own photos of their original creations pop up these ads. I've seen a one-of-a-kind upcycled skirt that I own in these ads. If you report an ad, Facebook will send a message saying that it was removed for violating Ad Policies, but what people have found is that, really, the ad is just hidden from you and other people can see it.
posted by LindsayIrene at 8:40 AM on February 26, 2020 [6 favorites]


> There's been some discussion of counterfeit Board Games on BGG. There are some great side-by-side examples of real vs. fake...and man, I'm not sure if I would realize if some of those fakes weren't the real thing.

Holy crap, my copy of Codenames is counterfeit? And I bought it at my local game store.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:02 AM on February 26, 2020 [1 favorite]


I know this sounds horribly naive, but it constantly perplexes me why Amazon seemingly decided to trash its more-or-less reliable reputation for selling real goods at reasonably good prices, in favor of basically being a reseller of some of the lowest-quality crap available. It's like they pulled this huge, enterprise-scale bait-and-switch.

It’s never enough for a company under capitalism to just be making money. There must always be growth, quarter after quarter, which just ensures a race to the bottom over the long run.
posted by joedan at 9:04 AM on February 26, 2020 [22 favorites]


Correction: I got Codenames from Amazon, it's the other versions I got at the local game store. Harumph!
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:06 AM on February 26, 2020 [2 favorites]


And also, there's the issue of widescale fake reviews, recruiting fake reviewers through facebook sites that promise free product, and so on - see this article for example (may have been covered previously on Metafilter I think ...).

So not only are the products fake, but they may also have thousands of fake reviews asserting they are genuine.
posted by carter at 9:23 AM on February 26, 2020 [2 favorites]


It's not even just fulfillment- I went on Amazon looking for a replacement for the Samsung fast-charging wall wart I lost and every single search result, including those which listed the product as made by Samsung, was either distinguishable as a fake by the page copy or by the reviews.

I had the same issue looking for Nutribullet accessories. The HOURS I spent trying to figure out if what I was purchasing - when the product page said "by Nutribullet" and linked to the actual Nutribullet Amazon store as the seller - was actually legit... I ended up buying from the NB website directly for like 3x the cost, plus shipping. I'm fine doing that but it's truly getting to the point where it's not even worth checking Amazon (moral arguments aside).
posted by misskaz at 9:48 AM on February 26, 2020


I've pretty well given up buying much other than books on Amazon. Too sketchy. Especially if the product is something that is risky if not up to spec, like anything that plugs into the wall. I try to do more bricks-and-mortar store shopping now, but that is getting hard as a lot of specialty stores have been killed off by the internet, and those that remain have a much smaller selection of goods.
posted by fimbulvetr at 10:02 AM on February 26, 2020 [2 favorites]


Obvious stuff like misspellings aside, how would I pick up on the slight changes in graphics if I didn't have another copy to compare?

When it comes to printed materials you often can’t — many large manufacturers source printed product and/or packaging from China. Some counterfeits are printed off the same plates/cylinders as the genuine article and are essentially identical to the genuine article. Not a big deal with something like a board game, but you could easily have a bag of pet food where the bag itself is legit but the contents are melamine and sawdust.
posted by nathan_teske at 10:11 AM on February 26, 2020


I recently bought a full body 2 piece swimsuit (pants and a shirt with longs sleeves and high neck) from what I thought was a North American company. It was supposed to be for my mom, and I ordered size 3X. What I received was a crap polyester thing that had Chinese tags and actually fit a size 10 -12. I was pissed, but I never got around to returning it. I decided to keep it for myself. It was $50. I bet I could find it on AliExpress for about $15.
posted by kitcat at 10:15 AM on February 26, 2020


I've taken to buying electronics from brick and mortar Best Buys or Staples, precisely because it's so hard to tell if you're getting the real or correct product from Amazon. Also, Best Buy will price match with Amazon (and other online retailers), though I believe the product match has to be exact. Well worth the marginal inconvenience of going to an actual Best Buy, imo, to have the peace of mind that you're getting the real deal item.
posted by yasaman at 10:21 AM on February 26, 2020


My son was once in a hotel in Taiwan where some of the decor was fake bookshelves -- the covers of real books pasted over ridged plastic blocks. The books were western. One of them, in fact, was by me. And the really weird thing was that the cover they had used was one which had never gone on sale: we had discussed it and then decided to use something else. But the -- presumably -- Chinese subcontractor had somehow got their spare copies into the fake book cover supply chain.
posted by alloneword at 10:23 AM on February 26, 2020 [62 favorites]


I've definitely moved a lot of my online buying to independent companies, just because it's so tiring trying to figure out what is reliable on Amazon. Even if a listing originally had a real item and real reviews, you'll often find that it's gotten taken over and now is a scam. I mostly use it for intangible goods and stuff I really need right away these days.
posted by tavella at 11:11 AM on February 26, 2020 [1 favorite]


Having a baby in San Francisco opened my eyes to the problem of online fraud. Few of the major retailers here carry much in the way of baby supplies and it's very hard to sort out which of the online retailers are trustworthy. Our risk tolerance for fraudulent baby formula or diapers is zero.
posted by tuffet at 11:12 AM on February 26, 2020 [2 favorites]


Amazon is forever lobbying / lawsuiting to try and prevent responsibility for unsafe goods sold and shipped via its platform(s). This is not secret. They do not want to be responsible. They do not want you to be able to sue them if you are harmed by poisoned makeup, or radioactive bracelets, or toxic kids' jewelry, exploding batteries, electrocuting phone chargers, etc. etc. etc.

If you are buying from Amazon you are supporting a company who is actively trying to kill you. Some people might say that 'dead customers' and 'trashed brand reputation' are things to avoid but for Jeff Bezos it's the endgame.

Of what, I wonder..
posted by cape at 11:29 AM on February 26, 2020 [4 favorites]


Re: adblocker for iphone - I've had good luck with wipr.

There was a sort of default assumption that Amazon would be a lower cost than many other sites or direct from manufacturer, but that's rarely true for anything I'm looking at anymore. The only value is the quick shipping in most cases, and you end up paying for that indirectly anyways.

How blatant the scams are is what surprises me. Some time back, I ordered a name-brand t-shirt from there, not paying a ton of attention to the delivery time. Several weeks later, I received a cheap poly t-shirt obviously designed for someone about four sizes smaller that was in crappy plastic packaging - not even the same color... HILARIOUSLY bad. I tried to ask for a refund on it, and they wanted to do a partial and keep an exorbitant amount due to "return shipping".... so I made an A-Z claim.

Here's the real kicker. If you have an A-Z guarantee claim approved, OR if the seller just avoids the claim by issuing a refund or similar, you will get your money back (as I did), but you cannot leave a review on the seller for that item. If you left one prior, then it gets pulled. Which sort of defeats the point of having the ability to rate any seller negatively. At least that was how it worked last time I dealt with it... I'm assuming that hasn't changed. There's no reliable method to mark a seller as obviously fraudulent that cannot be gamed in one way or another.

So what's extra screwed up about this is that it's really easy for someone to sell a bunch of obviously counterfeit goods, just hoping that enough people won't make actual claims and just accept that it's too much loss to return it or similar, and come out way ahead - then vanish and do the same thing as another entity.

What's also really obnoxious about this is that it's actually really difficult for a small but good seller to stand out on Amazon. I used to sell stuff on Amazon all the time, but it became really difficult - if the slightest thing went wrong, even if I did everything I could in good faith to resolve it, including full refunds, it was a knock against you. If you don't mark a message as "no response needed" when there is in fact no response needed, it's a knock against you. There are all these things that are used as marks against you that are easy to game if you are using nefarious methods, that can be hard to keep up with if you are honest, unless you are huge and have a ton of volume, or well trained people staffing things every day. I went out of my way to go above and beyond and ate the cost of several things, and ended up no longer able to sell on there.
posted by MysticMCJ at 11:33 AM on February 26, 2020 [6 favorites]


If I ordered a Nike or Apple product from Amazon, I'd be surprised and concerned if it was fake.

I got a fake Patagonia jacket from them last year. I had a real one to compare it to. Same outer material, same label, totally different cut and insulation. Confirmed fake by a sales rep but they were really interested in how some of the fabric seemed identical
posted by fshgrl at 12:03 PM on February 26, 2020 [2 favorites]


Paging William Gibson, white courtesy telephone please.
posted by sneebler at 12:11 PM on February 26, 2020 [8 favorites]


It is impossible to find lasting clothes for my size that aren't around $70-$100 per piece. There were 3 stores in my area that carry a size 24, but one was just closed. Some of the "fashion" stores like Rainbow used to have pieces that were mediocre enough to spend $20-$30 on. Sweaters that would last 2 seasons or so, etc. Now that sites like Shein and others are offering clothes at lower prices (albeit for lower quality), those brick-and-mortar stores are making worse and worse products. It's created a huge gap in quality distribution. either I can spend $90 on a pair of mediocre pants with rhinestones from lane bryant, or $18 on a pair of pants that probably won't even fit and will rip on any given day.

Anyway, this year I've decided to re-do my entire wardrobe and make all of my clothes. I can't stand the thought of lining the pockets of a man who uses slave labor and marketing thats designed to make me ashamed of my body
posted by FirstMateKate at 12:38 PM on February 26, 2020 [8 favorites]


Don't you feel like much of the fashion industry has been this way for years, but they've hidden shoddy workmanship, sweatshops, and other commercial misbehaviour behind flashy advertising and cool sponsorships? What's the difference between what Amazon is doing and the guy who owns the eyewear company Luxottica, which markets the same product under multiple brand names and a large price spread? The bottom line is that you're paying for something for which you never have enough information to correctly assess the value of the product. But hey, those look cool!
posted by sneebler at 12:58 PM on February 26, 2020


I regularly get ads from no-name web shops advertising sweaters that I recognise as handknit. They take photos from designers and pass them off as something that's for sale for pennies. God knows what you will actually receive.

Oh, those piss me off so bad. I keep trying to report their ads to get them to stop (for me at least), but no dice. Though I can say a few knitwear designers made a sale from me when I bought the pattern after being spammed with it constantly for weeks, anyway.

Also, China is so divey/awful with anything involving mail that I probably won't order it if I find out China is involved. I can rant about that for weeks.
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:39 PM on February 26, 2020 [1 favorite]


Yeah... I gave up shopping at Amazon last November. It was a tough transition for me, because I live in a small rural town, and the nearest anything-that's-not-a-Walmart is 110 miles away. I end up ordering a lot of stuff from target.com now.

One of the last straws for me, Amazon-wise, is when we moved house and I ordered a set of 6 Kidde smoke detectors for the new place. And such a good price, too! They were half the cost of the ones I saw listed elsewhere. What a bargain!

I received 6 smoke detectors in dinged-up thin cardboard boxes, badly printed, Kidde logo smudged, text seemed badly translated from another language, and the smoke detectors themselves felt oddly lightweight and were of an unusual shade of ecru.

I didn't even bother trying to return them. I felt like I had a responsibility to take these six little death traps out of circulation. So I dumped them into the trash and went down to the hardware store to buy 6 more.
posted by ErikaB at 2:29 PM on February 26, 2020 [4 favorites]


It is impossible to find lasting clothes for my size that aren't around $70-$100 per piece. There were 3 stores in my area that carry a size 24, but one was just closed.

Try eShakti. Wide variety of styles, good production, custom made (they require your height when you order - or you can pay a bit more and give them all your exact measurements). If the prices make you nervous, start by looking at their sales and overstock options. Regular customers get discounts.

More related to the topic:

I thought that "fulfilled by Amazon" meant "this uses Amazon's return policy" rather than "Amazon has verified this item."

My recent Amazon purchases: HP laser printer, ream of paper, pack of star stickers, gamer dice, index cards, kitchen strainers (I suppose that one's potentially risky), some movie DVDs, Sharpies, cheap jewelry from third-party vendors obviously being imported from another country... very little where counterfeits are relevant at all.

I have bought tech things - Portable hard drive, USB drives, charge cords, etc. I haven't had any problems with them; none of them seemed to be weird knockoffs. But none of the ones I bought were at amazing cheap prices. (If there were a 4tb drive being sold for $50, I probably would've got it, and probably would've had to return it. But I gather that's not the area where the scams are centered.)
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 3:07 PM on February 26, 2020


 Confirmed fake by a sales rep but they were really interested in how some of the fabric seemed identical

That's cabbage - excess material illicitly turned into garments at the factory. Most labels are incredibly careful with material control. This would be a big problem if it were really coming from Patagonia's supply chain.
posted by scruss at 3:23 PM on February 26, 2020 [5 favorites]


Don't you feel like much of the fashion industry has been this way for years

The 'clothing' sold by Chinese scammers is far, far worse. Like, much of it is literally unwearable. So bad that it seems like deliberate fuckery.
posted by LindsayIrene at 4:53 PM on February 26, 2020 [3 favorites]


Pope Guilty: "I went on Amazon looking for a replacement for the Samsung fast-charging wall wart I lost and every single search result, including those which listed the product as made by Samsung, was either distinguishable as a fake by the page copy or by the reviews."
Amazon 'pools' reviews too - not only between different vendors of allegedly the same product, not just between different but similar products, but sometimes between totally different products..

So the supply chain's untrustworthy, you can't be sure the product you're buying was sourced by the stated vendor and, even if the product happens to be genuine, you can't rely on the reviews to determine that.

Amazon's a garbage fire.
posted by Pinback at 5:17 PM on February 26, 2020 [10 favorites]


It's like the house made of paper. "I can't believe we nearly bought this."
posted by heatherlogan at 5:23 PM on February 26, 2020


What if the seller is the actual company itself?
posted by Beholder at 5:37 PM on February 26, 2020


The problem is if there is a third party seller with nominally the same item Amazon just tosses all the items from the "discount" supplier and the people actually making it into the same bin. When some one orders the item it's a crap shoot whether they get a genuine, grey market, or counterfeit. And as a manufacturer or designated agent you can't stop this behaviour.
posted by Mitheral at 7:07 PM on February 26, 2020 [2 favorites]


I got an Amazon gift card for Christmas last year, and it was so damn hard finding non-counterfeit stuff to buy. I hadn’t bought anything from Amazon in the 3 years prior besides a used cookbook, so I was stunned. I quickly fell down the fake toothbrush head rabbit hole and ultimately spent most of the gift card on coconut coir bricks and plastic pots for seed starting, plus felt furniture pads (and I highly recommend that sketchy box of furniture leg pads - they’re way better than my sketchy bag of felt pads from Menards).

But I did buy one cat toy that was so obviously counterfeit (and broken upon arrival). When I tried to return it to Amazon they initially offered me a credit of twice as much as I had paid for it, which was then cancelled a week later by Amazon for not matching the purchase price, but I was never notified and only got the money back after I chatted with a remote customer support person. Is that part of the scam? Offer to refund you more than you paid, then get the transaction quietly canceled, and the vendor gets to keep the money when the customer doesn’t notice? Also, Amazon deleted my negative review because I mentioned how poorly it was packed for shipping.

Also, I can’t believe it took me until this exact moment to realize that the Panasonic earbuds my parents got me for Christmas via Amazon sound awful because they’re counterfeit.
posted by Maarika at 7:27 PM on February 26, 2020 [5 favorites]


Since we seem to be posting personal anecdotes now...

I live in a small town with few retail options. For what it's worth, I've had 71 orders from Amazon in the last 6 months and an average of about 100 orders a year for the last few years. I get everything from essentials like coffee and vitamins to electronics and office supplies from Amazon.

I haven't had a single counterfeit.

I have had a few returns (Items that didn't fit, weren't what I expected, were obviously returns themselves, or shipped too slowly to be useful) and they've processed them all quickly and honestly with no issues.

I think there's a problem here, and I think it's getting worse, but I'm personally not ready to declare "garbage fire" yet.
posted by mmoncur at 9:17 PM on February 26, 2020 [6 favorites]


Since we seem to be posting personal anecdotes now...

You probably weren't thinking of my comments when you wrote that, but I don't think it would be a fair characterization of them. I have tried to offer alternatives to Azon for specific types of items, because I think it's worthwhile avoiding the place. Here's another recommendation: anything from LL Bean. Their quality is top-notch, warranty is likewise, and given that, the prices are reasonable.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 3:52 AM on February 27, 2020 [5 favorites]


I think this is somewhat related, but I get very annoyed when I am viewing a product on Amazon, and it is clear the seller has switched the product to be a completely different one. For example, I was viewing this baby toy. The description and photos say it's a keyboard thing with animals.

But if you scroll down to look at the reviews, the reviews are for a completely different toy, different pictures and everything! If it weren't for the pictures I would not have noticed, they are all talking about some sort of music toy with buttons. But it's clearly a different toy.

It doesn't make any sense that Amazon would allow a seller to replace details of a product in its entirety whilst keeping the reviews for a completely different product.

This is not a rare occurance, I've seen this happen quite a number of times. I wish some investigative reporting can be done on this angle as I think it borders on fraud.
posted by like_neon at 4:44 AM on February 27, 2020 [7 favorites]


tl;dr if in your product review you report that the seller is trying to bribe you to post positive reviews, your review gets taken down.

I had bought an adaptor for an old monitor that isn't supported anymore and for which it's impossible to find an adaptor in stores. I knew I was going to get a something random from China, but sometimes folks there come up with solutions to technical problems that aren't cost-effective for big brands to try to solve. And in fact the adaptor almost worked -- it could clearly send the signal to the monitor, but the screen flickered to black repeatedly, so it wasn't a workable solution. I wrote a full review of exactly what the adaptor could and could not do, and for a while it was the "most useful" negative review. But the seller kept sending me emails, and had started sending several texts a day offering me money if I would change my review. I told them after the first one that I wouldn't, but they just kept up the harrassment, so I added an update about it to my review because I'd like to know when sellers are bribing reviewers, so I figure I should be a responsible user and report. (I had also reported them to Amazon.) Once I put the update on my review, Amazon took down my review, and refused to put it back up. I tried reposting it, and they took it down again.

So -- now I really don't trust reviews on the site.
posted by antinomia at 4:59 AM on February 27, 2020 [13 favorites]


It’s annoying Amazon has become a faster-shipping AliExpress, at 5x the price. That said, I’m not going to agonize over whether a scrub brush or a rug for the dog’s muddy paws is Chinese-made - if I buy these kinds of things from Target or Amazon or Aliexpress, regardless of brand, I get essentially the same item. The only difference is how quickly I receive it, and how much I pay. Clothing and shoes, too. I’m primarily a Taobao shopper these days, because I see no reason to pay significantly more to buy a swimsuit I’ll wear twice a year for $30 or $60 or whatever, when I can pay $7 and get it two weeks from now. So many things are made in China - whether you shop at a local chain or online. And I’ve found some really cool, well made, unique things that either don’t exist locally (double-layer sheer tights!) or are stupidly expensive when you slap a recognizable brand name on them. My tip for shopping the Chinese sites is to filter by price, and set the lower end of your price range to roughly 20% of what you would pay locally. That $8 cashmere sweater? Nope. It’s all sloppy stitching and synthetic fiber. But the $50-70 cashmere sweater is probably going to be just as nice as something you’d spend a few hundreds on.

And if you wear smaller sizes in clothing or shoes, the Chinese stuff is great. If I buy one-size-fits-all socks in the US, for example, I get socks where the heel is an inch or two up the back of my ankle. If I buy the Chinese ones, I get socks that fit.
posted by ortoLANparty at 8:16 PM on February 27, 2020 [3 favorites]


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