Alibaba Face Off With Chinese Regulator Over Fake Products

hackingbear writes China's State Administration of Industry and Commerce on Wednesday issued a scathing report against one of the country's biggest stars, accusing e-commerce giant Alibaba of failing to do enough to prevent fake goods from being sold on its websites. SAIC said Alibaba allowed "illegal advertising" that misled consumers with false claims about low prices and other details. It claims some Alibaba employees took bribes and the company failed to deal effectively with fraud. Alibaba fired back with charges of bias and misconduct by accusing the SAIC official in charge of Internet monitoring, Liu Hongliang, of unspecified "procedural misconduct" and warned it will file a formal complaint. Such public defiance is almost unheard of in China. Apparently, Alibaba has long attained the too big to fail status.

Comments

Need a fake gold coin?

[Rooked_One]

Alibaba has them. And even some great copies of NGC and PCGS slabbed coins.

Re:Need a fake gold coin?

[ArcadeMan]

I bought Bitcoins from Alibaba, but they turned out to be fake. They're Dogecoins with Bitcoin stickers on them.

why does anybody feel safe purchasing from them

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm at a complete loss to understand why anybody would purchase anything from a site name Alibaba.

Lets just call ourselves outright thieves, its right there in the title and yet people are surprised when they are sold a bill of goods.

Re:why does anybody feel safe purchasing from them

[ranton]

Yet, you need to learn the story of Alibaba and the 40 thieves.

Alibaba was a woodcutter and not a thief.

Before you get too high and mighty, you might want to remember that Ali Baba stole from those 40 thieves which is what eventually got his brother killed (because of his own greed) and almost got Ali Baba killed as well. So the OP calling Ali Baba a thief is 100% accurate.

Re:why does anybody feel safe purchasing from them

[Gavagai80]

As opposed to the $5 you'd pay if you walked into Fry's to buy the same thing (according to a quick google). Not much savings for dealing with strangers of questionable reputation.

Re:Not too big to fail

[TWX]

I donno, the Chinese seem to be willing to actually punish corporate executive and government official types from time to time. We'll just have to see if this is one of those times.

I can't deny it's annoying, searching for something using Google and getting fifteen Alibaba entries on the list first, when it looks like thirteen of them are using identical stock photos. That kind of crap is why I won't use Alibaba at all; I'd rather pay the markup from a local distributor than worry about being fleeced through international trade from a seller that I have no recourse with.

Amazon Looks the Other Way, Acts Innocent

[Press2ToContinue]

Alibabi is not unique in this regard, Amazon is due for a dressing-down for quite similar negligence. I have bought many supposedly name-brand items, only to realize upon receiving that they are cheap, fraudulent knock-offs. Yet Amazon seems unable or unwilling to address the issue. Reading recent comments, you can sometimes tell, but Amazon does not associate the product supplier with the comments, so there is no way to track which suppliers are providing authentic goods, and which are taking you for a ride.

What?

[ArchieBunker]

I go to Alibaba because they sell cheap knockoffs.

Re:What?

[tlhIngan]

Hmmmm.... somehow I thought that knockoffs are legal in China? Maybe only if they knockoff another Chinese manufacturer? Maybe only if they sell it to a Chinese person?

Ironically, it's more a case of "ripping off your own products".

Knockoffs are legal... if they're of a non-Chinese good.

But try to knock off a Chinese product or even pirate a Chinese product (say a DVD or something) and China Does Something About It(tm). There have been more than a few piracy groups busted for pirating Chinese movies and TV series.

This applies in other countries, too. The night market here used to be known for the pirated DVDs, but various busts between Hollywood (who only remove the Hollywood movies and leave the Chinese pirated DVDs alone) and China itself (who go after the pirated Chinese DVDs only, and leave the pirated Hollywood ones alone) has resulted in those distributors being busted. It apparently lead to the operators being more vigilant and ensuring there aren't pirated DVDs available for sale there anymore.

Now, it rarely involves jail time - usually just complete seizure of goods.

Re:New CSS is annoying

[rmdingler]

Why are the headlines so big? Why is there 3 inches of blank space between paragraphs?

Catering to our demographic.?.?

Re:Great!

[Nikker]

This is merely a waltz for the public. China knows what they are getting into with Alibaba, the ability to take what they have lying around and sidestep having to find someone else sell it for them. Right now China basically manufactures for the world but they sell at small margins so that resellers / contractors sell the goods at a markup to the rest of the world. Alibaba gives a chance to sell directly to the consumer. The Chinese government wants Alibaba to seem strong willed so "The West" builds confidence in buying their stuff. In reality most of what Alibaba sells is leftovers and over runs.

I personally don't think China would leave something this public to chance, most of Alibaba's backers are the who's who of Chinese nationals and Chinese mainland (which the govt controls) makes everything Alibaba sells. It's hard to picture Alibaba being as rogue as they put on.

This will not end well

[jimmydevice]

It's the same gang fuck attitude we saw in the 80' with the atari 2600. Junk carts, moving mfg to asia, fire everyone .This time, it's not a bunch of shit for brains designers / coders and polyester suit wearing sales droids, it's the chinese elite with unlimited capital and a unbridled desire to be a +one percent.
We are truly fucked. Get ready for food riots.

Not too big to fail

[Jumunquo]

Chinese official face their biggest challenge yet: too big to pay bribes.

Re:Great!

[americanpossum]

I'm living in China at the moment, and I can confidently say that probably 95% of the goods available on Taobao and Alibaba have some type of problem with them. If you're looking for something cheap, only need to use it for a little while, don't require any type of technical support whatsoever, and have no long term expectations, Alibaba is a wonderful place. If you're looking for something else, I would stick to American, European, Japanese, and Korean goods.

not ready for prime time

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought a 32GB USB 3.0 stick from Aliexpress. It said "Toshiba" on it, even though linux would show the vendor as generic. The drive showed 32GB free space. However, it only had 6GB of actual space on it (there are utilities out there that will actually test this). I gave the item 1 star, the lowest possible rating. For the next few days, the vendor was calling my house (yes, I was stupid to put my real phone number on my order - silly me, thinking that I was dealing with professionals, not thugs) at 3am, threatening to continue calling at that time until I changed my review to 5 stars. Only 5 stars would be "a fair review", as they were so keen to say.

So I just unplugged my phone at night for the next month and deleted my Aliexpress account. I had provided Aliexpress' abuse department with emailed threats that I received and voice calls, but they never even replied. Screw them. I'll stick with Ebay, which has a functioning feedback system, or something else that is legit.