Amazon's Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse (cnbc.com)

A report on CNBC, citing sellers, says that counterfeit problem on the platform has gotten worse after it made it easier for Chinese manufacturers to sell goods to U.S. consumers. The report gives an example of a seller Jamie Whaley who started a bedding business on Amazon that reached $700,000 in annual sales within three years. Her patented product called BedBand consists of a set of shock cords, clamps and locks designed to keep fitted bed sheets in place. Whaley found quite an audience, selling up to 200 units a day for $13.99 a set. BedBand climbed into the top 200 selling products in the home and kitchen category. That was 2013. By mid-2015, the business was in a tailspin. Revenue plummeted by half and Whaley was forced to lay off eight employees. Her sheet fastener had been copied by a legion of mostly Chinese knockoffs that undercut BedBand on price and jumped the seller ranks by obtaining scores of reviews that watchdog site Fakespot.com determined were inauthentic and "harmful for real consumers." The report adds:Spend any time surveying Amazon sellers and Whaley's narrative will start sounding like the norm. In Amazon's quest to be the low-cost provider of everything on the planet, the website has morphed into the world's largest flea market -- a chaotic, somewhat lawless, bazaar with unlimited inventory. Always a problem, the counterfeiting issue has exploded this year, sellers say, following Amazon's effort to openly court Chinese manufacturers, weaving them intimately into the company's expansive logistics operation. Merchants are perpetually unsure of who or what may kill their sales on any given day and how much time they'll have to spend hunting down fakers.

Comments

Walmart mentality

[Anonymous Coward]

Many Americans want their stuff cheap and this is a reflection of that. Personally, if I were to buy this product I would want to pay as little as possible since it's not something I really care about. Now a grill, give me a Weber.

Re:Walmart mentality

[amiga3D]

A Weber? Not a Green Egg?

Re: Walmart mentality

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh huh. Are you aware of the problems with the race to the bottom? If you only place a value on monetary value, and nothing else, the you are not empowering those on lower wages but ensuring that soon everyone will be treated as slave labour. It is your own future you're handing over for a few cheap trinkets. Dumb,, but sure go ahead and vote for Christmas, you're going to get stuffed.

Re:Walmart mentality

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not even a novel old idea, it's a stupid idea.

fitted sheets

Learn how sheets work, and you won't need weird ass contraptions to keep them on your bed.

Re:Walmart mentality

[Smerta]

TFA's implication is that a white person has a right to make $700k/year, while the Chinese don't deserve to make a living because they are yellow skinned sub-humans.

You're way out of line here, dragging skin color (not nationality, but skin color) into this.

I think the article / story would have published even if the American was black, Native American, "brown", "yellow", etc. [I put those terms in quotes, because if I said Latino or Asian, that would be nationality, and I'm debating your choice to drag skin color into this. Personally, I think simplistic terms like white / yellow / brown to describe skin color over-simplify things, but I don't make the conventions...]

I totally agree with you about the patent bullshit, about similar products being around forever, etc. but I don't think this is a "Chinese are sub-human animals" piece. That's way too sensitive.

Chinese knock-offs, both legal and illegal, are widely acknowledged as being a reality. They have nothing to do with skin color.

The lady's business was fragile, she should think she had a good run. That also has nothing to do with her skin color.

Re:Walmart mentality

[ShanghaiBill]

Chinese knock-offs, both legal and illegal, are widely acknowledged as being a reality.

Yet the article doesn't give a single example of that. The main focus is on legitimate competition, that is somehow illegitimate because they are "Chinese".

Re:Walmart mentality

[danomac]

You mean Weber grills, who were sued for putting Chinese parts in a made-in-USA grill?

Don't kid yourself. I just bought a barbecue recently, and after some research discovered pretty much all bbq manufacturers use China to manufacture, even the $1k+ grilles (I looked at Jackson, Weber, and Broil King grilles.) So I said screw it, if I'm going to get one from China anyway I'm not spending $1000 on one, and found a Char-Broil one for $400.

Re: Walmart mentality

[ArmoredDragon]

There is no such thing as a "race to the bottom". What is the 'bottom' exactly? Lower prices? What's wrong with that? At the end of the day that means people who make less money can be wealthier. Wealth after all is material goods, not money.

And if you want to argue that quality is decreasing, you're wrong there. There's often this mentality that "the older things lasted longer" but that's not actually true. Ever since manufacturing has been a thing, there have always been both good and bad quality products. You tend to notice the ones that were good quality because you still have them around for a long time, and when you see these older items still lasting you just assume that everything made "back then" was built to last, but that's just not the case, because what you don't have and don't see from "back then" are the things that didn't last.

You can file this in the same drawer as "the old days were better" or "we're living in the worst of times" that backwards people like to use.

Re:Walmart mentality

[ShanghaiBill]

If patents did not exist, then why would they ever be illegal (outside of safety violations)?

Counterfeiting is not about patents, it is about trademarked brands. Brands are an indicator of quality, and it is, and should be, illegal for one manufacturer to impersonate another.

Note: TFA does not claim that either trademarks or patents are being infringed. Just that competitors are making similar products and selling them for less. But (and this is the important part) they are Chinese, so therefore we should be outraged.

Re:Walmart mentality

[Anonymous Coward]

Broil King. Canadian/Northeastern US made. All the quality you only think a weber has.

Re: Walmart mentality

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it stifles innovation and R&D or worse, puts the company out of business and people out of jobs.

Re:Walmart mentality

[mixed_signal]

Thumbs up on Broil King.

Re: Walmart mentality

[whoever57]

There's often this mentality that "the older things lasted longer" but that's not actually true.

The fact that after my 20+ year old washer failed 10 years ago, I had to buy two replacements provides anecdotal evidence that you are wrong.

Yes, some products last longer than they used to (cars?), but I think that many durable goods sold today are nowhere near as durable as their predecessors.

Re: Walmart mentality

[moosehooey]

They do still make them, and I bought one. It's one of the old top-loaders that have been around since the 60s or 70s. It uses some fairly simple electronics instead of a mechanical timer, but otherwise the same. It was cheap and has been going for 12 years with no problems so far.

Re: Walmart mentality

[cunina]

> than this little girl has been alive She's not a little girl, but you are a sexist.

Re: Walmart mentality

[WarJolt]

I seriously doubt the company selling suspenders for bed sheets has an R&D department.

Re: Walmart mentality

[ArmoredDragon]

Because it stifles innovation and R&D or worse, puts the company out of business and people out of jobs.

You're going to have to be more specific about what "it" is and how "it" does that, otherwise you're just handwaving.

At any rate, things have been getting less and less expensive over the last 50 years, and I haven't seen any sign that innovation has been stifled; quite the opposite, actually. Computers for example used to be super expensive in the 80's, and now even homeless people carry around portable ones. Simple tasks that people used to do faded away over the years as people did them with computers instead, (or in some cases, those tasks became outright irrelevant, such as licking a stamp and sealing an envelope and walking to the mailbox merely for the purpose of sending somebody a message) which freed up their time and money to do other things. Take for example written spreadsheets vs electronic spreadsheets; the later being a MASSIVE time saver.

Re:Walmart mentality

[Khyber]

The Green Egg is far better-suited to smoking than grilling. The shape of it does not lend itself well to items which do best in indirect heat.

I own both a Green Egg and Weber (just got a new Weber for an early birthday present, in fact!)

Re: Walmart mentality

[matbury]

"The bottom" is moving production to countries with regimes that either don't have or don't enforce basic human rights or have any kind of effective worker protections. People in those regimes have no choice but to work long hours in dangerous conditions under constant threat of violence and dismissal. Is that what you want to compete with? How about people working under those conditions starting to undercut your job?

Re: Walmart mentality

[ArmoredDragon]

"The bottom" is moving production to countries with regimes that either don't have or don't enforce basic human rights or have any kind of effective worker protections. People in those regimes have no choice but to work long hours in dangerous conditions under constant threat of violence and dismissal. Is that what you want to compete with? How about people working under those conditions starting to undercut your job?

In case you haven't noticed, this isn't a new thing by any stretch; it's almost as old as the industrial revolution, before which 90% of the population were all farmers. After manufacturing of petty goods in the US matured (and remember, we had things like child labor) then it moved to Japan, then Korea, then Hong Kong, then Taiwan, then mainland China, and now that China is getting more expensive it's starting to move to Vietnam.

Re: Walmart mentality

[Anonymous Coward]

Cuck, noun, 1. a team used by angry neckbeards who fancy themselves to be pussy-slayers but who in reality couldn't get laid in a morgue

Re: Walmart mentality

[guises]

Home computers are not a great example of increasing innovation. They have gotten more capable over time, but they have also consolidated greatly: how many commercial OS's do you have to choose from now? How many did there used to be? How about CPU architecture? Where are the modern day BeOS's and Amigas and Matroxes? Do you remember when the Parhelia was released? And it had a bunch of interesting features like edge antialiasing? Gone.

It's not that innovation is completely dead, Nvidia and AMD still compete with each other to push out the same features at cheaper prices... Oh, wait. Wasn't that what we were talking about? A race to the bottom?

Re: Walmart mentality

[Alumoi]

Back then planned obsolescence wasn't baked into every product.

Re:Walmart mentality

[guises]

Well I only read the summary, but it does say specifically that her product was patented. So no, this would not be legitimate competition.

Re:Walmart mentality

[AmiMoJo]

I think she has unrealistic expectations of what her patent grants. It's probably only valid in the US anyway, and it's not up to Amazon to enforce it for her. Unfortunately for her, her product isn't particularly novel or difficult to reproduce.

Essentially she is complaining about the global nature of commerce. Maybe 150 years ago her patent would have offered some useful protection, but that's not the world we live in now.

The Chinese are just easy to blame because they have no voice in the West.

Re: Walmart mentality

[Applehu Akbar]

I'm old enough to remember when Japanese mass-market products had the same "cheap junk produced by teeming millions" reputation that Chinese gear has now, with the perception that undercutting on price was cheating somehow. Building an industrial society from scratch costs a lot, and it's inevitable that Chinese export prices will have to rise. China is already responding to that just as Japan did, by moving toward the upscale ends of their markets.

Re: Walmart mentality

[buck-yar]

If they can't compete, that's what should happen.

Can be looked at from the other standpoint, for some time consumers have been gouged by Amazon's barriers to entry. Is it fair to these Chinese mfgs that a product is more likely to sell if it has a lot of reviews and large number of sales? Those are called barriers to entry and favor the establishment.

So this OP article is favoring one person, the supplier, over the large number of customers. We're supposed to feel sorry for this supplier, but they are rich from overcharging customers. If Amazon wasn't favoring established sellers with barriers to entry, the market price would be lower, and the customers would have more of their money.

In the end, people got what they wanted at a lower price. The only who is worse off is the original supplier. Who shouldn't have been reaping such profits, but was due to Amazon's setup.

Re: Walmart mentality

[lsatenstein]

Uh huh. Are you aware of the problems with the race to the bottom? If you only place a value on monetary value, and nothing else, the you are not empowering those on lower wages but ensuring that soon everyone will be treated as slave labour. It is your own future you're handing over for a few cheap trinkets. Dumb,, but sure go ahead and vote for Christmas, you're going to get stuffed.

Essentially, with your Dollar store mentality (Walmart is no longer competitive, though their products are of cheap quality), you are insuring that the next generation of workers will not earn enough to pay the taxes that are needed to cover your government pension.

Re: Walmart mentality

[ArmoredDragon]

Home computers are not a great example of increasing innovation. They have gotten more capable over time, but they have also consolidated greatly:

You 100% missed the point. It's not the computers themselves that were the innovation, rather its the things that we can do with them that enabled innovation. And because more and more of them are in the hands of everyday people, more people have been able to do more things.

It's not that innovation is completely dead, Nvidia and AMD still compete with each other to push out the same features at cheaper prices... Oh, wait. Wasn't that what we were talking about? A race to the bottom?

Remember how during the noughties Intel produced that crap Netburst architecture that perpetuated the megahertz myth (more megahertz means a faster cpu!) only they ran into a dead end when the things got so god damn hot. You know who forced them out of that? AMD. They were losing their ass because AMD, who they considered way below them, was producing much better products at a much better price. It was AMD who came up with things like x64, and on-die memory controller. Things that could still push the performance boundary where Intel was literally at a dead end. It was only after that when Intel decided to stop marketing CPUs based on megahertz.

Without having two competitors in this area, GPUs would most likely be in the same place that CPUs were when Intel felt that they had no competition. And in case you haven't noticed, GPUs are still getting MUCH faster while also consuming less power.

Race to the bottom my ass. Go throw out all of your computers and other post-industrial goods and party like it's 1699 you Luddite.

Re: Walmart mentality

[ArmoredDragon]

And by the way,

Where are the modern day BeOS's and Amigas and Matroxes? Do you remember when the Parhelia was released? And it had a bunch of interesting features like edge antialiasing? Gone.

You're blaming competition on consumer behavior. If BeOS and Amiga was really that awesome, people would have bought them instead of Windows based PCs. But they didn't; for whatever reason they chose, they preferred Windows. Windows PCs were also cheaper than Amigas. The same thing is currently happening with Android as well. What the fuck good is an iPhone if you can't afford to own one? Or better yet, if you're not a tech enthusiast and your phone is more of a phone to you before anything else it does, then you aren't going to want to spend a whole lot on it. You can't just assume that people want to throw their money at the most expensive thing on the market just because, in your opinion, it's better. In my opinion, the BEST product is something that does what you want at a price that you can afford, not something that does more than you want for more than you're willing to spend.

And Parhelia? Seriously? Matrox ALWAYS had shit performance on their GPUs compared to their competitors. Parhelia was aimed at gamers, who at the end of the day, want more FPS above all else. Not only that, but few people could afford 3 monitors at the time anyways (they were a lot more expensive then than now; even in work environments few people had more than one monitor, whereas nowadays it's common in most places to have two monitors, which I'll add have much better picture quality and resolution than the ones of even that time while costing less. How is that for your race to the bottom?)

As for edge anti-aliasing (actually called spatial-AA); remember that the target audience, gamers, want FPS. Nobody uses spatial AA because it's too fucking slow. Meanwhile AMD and Nvidia have come up with arithmetically less complex means of AA that achieve basically the same result; the only way you'd tell the difference is if you literally examined it with a magnifying glass on a frame-by-frame basis, which no gamer is going to do. So guess what? They don't care. Oh but wait, you want to render professional graphics because you're trying to create the next pixar movie? Great, but even for its time, Parhelia didn't have the processing power you needed.

You know what all of this meant? Nobody wanted the damn thing. Seriously, there was no consumer segment that favored it; just a few dweebs who REALLY wanted the novelty of three monitors while also having enough disposable income for that and also willing to put up with a lower frame rate. As you can see, that eliminates most people.

Also, Matrox ruined their own reputation far before Parhelia was even a thing. I remember getting burned on the Matrox Mystique when they promised a big list of game developers who were on board to support it, and only about 1% of them actually ended up supporting it, meaning most of your games were software rendered. I never wanted to touch Matrox after that, and neither did many other gamers.

Re:Walmart mentality

[lucien86]

There are too many to count.. As just one example of Chinese knock offs here(UK) - cheap iPhone charger replacements. Only trouble is they do everything on the cheap, those power supplies catch fire, explode, electrocute people. There are tens of thousands of cheap dangerous Chinese products out there. PSUs, LED bulbs, hoverboards, kettles, sports equipment, virtually anything you can think of. They use cheap inferior second hand components, they use nasty electronics tricks that reduce costs but at the price of safety, they even use cheap plastics that don't have the thermal or material strength needed for safe operation..

There's plenty of good Chinese stuff out there (newsflash virtually everything is made in China) but there's tons of bad stuff too.

Re: Walmart mentality

[lucien86]

The law of the jungle in other words. So if someone robs you then you're ok with that. Law of the jungle and capitalism after all. There's no more efficient form of capitalism than theft.

Re:Walmart mentality

[phorm]

Because China is being courted by Amazon, and is well known as an origin-country for authentic-looking but fake, often lesser-quality merchandise? It used to be that such goods - fakes etc - could be "blocked at the border" from being imported into local marketplaces, so even though some snuck though you were able to prevent any major retailers from stocking the fakes. More recently ,direct sales from places like Amazon (also eBay etc) tend to allow a lot more of these to sneak under the radar.

I buy a lot of stuff online, and frankly a lot of it is *already* made in China so I don't have a problem cutting out the middleman when it's outrageously inflated in local prices. However there definitely is a problem with certain types of items being "fake", so things like memory-storage devices (USB drives, SDHC cards etc), cellular phone batteries, etc one has to be very wary.

Re: Walmart mentality

[kaatochacha]

But follow this train of thought out. Assuming the original manufacturer only made decent quality items, and the knockoffs were low quality but cheaper: Eventually the original manufacturer goes out of business, and everyone associates this product with junk.

Amazon doesn't have barriers to entry compared to previously. They supply ease of entry. Think about like before Amazon: unless you had an enormous mail order catalog or brick and mortar store, nobody could ever see your products. Could a tiny Chinese counterfeiter have ever hoped to reach an audience then?

Re:Walmart mentality

[kaatochacha]

You can bet that if every time you bought some underwhelming/easily broken item, turned it over, and it said "Manufactured in Upper Madeupistan", we'd all be sitting around complaining about Madupistan stuff being garbage. Hell, if they were all made in Ohio it would be the same: Ohio would become synonymous with low quality.
But they're not. They're made in China and say so. This has nothing to do with anyone hating China or non western manufacturing.

Re:Walmart mentality

[Coren22]

Her patented product called BedBand consists of a set of shock cords, clamps and locks designed to keep fitted bed sheets in place.

From the third paragraph of TFA.

This is about patents being infringed. Claiming that it is about racism is silly.

https://smile.amazon.com/s/ref...

There are many products that directly rip off of her product, and are mostly from Chinese companies. Are you going to deny that they copied a patented item?

Re:Walmart mentality

[Coren22]

http://www.uspto.gov/web/paten...

There is the patent (the number is in the first picture of her listing on Amazon). The Chinese versions don't use the squeeze tightener, so may be getting around a direct copy of the patent by missing that piece, in which case this woman is wrong and they aren't copying her patented item.

Re:Walmart mentality

[Coren22]

http://www.uspto.gov/web/paten...

There is her patent. If you feel it copies a preexisting item, perhaps you should contact the US PTO and have her patent invalidated.

Re: Walmart mentality

[matbury]

In case you haven't noticed, this isn't a new thing by any stretch;

I didn't say it was. Since the USA and many other countries have managed to clamber their way out of feudalism to the benefit of most of their citizens, it seems such a shame to simply impose it on other countries so that a tiny minority can make a fast buck and tear our achievements asunder in the process.

It's a self correcting problem

[Wycliffe]

I have family members that sell on amazon and ebay. They say they can get almost double on amazon on many items. The main reason is that people trust the sellers on amazon more than the sellers on ebay. In this case, it's the exact same seller but amazon have managed to create an environment where even used items fetch a premium. If they screw it up and people start realizing that the same hucksters are on amazon (and they are) then people will start shopping elsewhere.

Re:It's a self correcting problem

[guruevi]

The difference is that Amazon is on the customer/consumer side while eBay is for the seller side. Refunds are automatic with Amazon, minimal proof necessary. I've had several claims that packages got broken/lost during shipping with Amazon or are otherwise deficient; for the seller there is no recourse, at least I buy insurance so I get my money from USPS but otherwise I'd be out of product and money. EBay doesn't really care whether you buy fake crap that's broken, once the bidding is done you get whatever you bid on and the most you can do is give bad feedback.

And it'll only get worse

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Counterfeits are a huge problem everywhere and it'll only get worse. The lure of money and the ease of capitalizing on someone else's idea make it a market that will never go away, even for niche products.

For some things, however, there ought to be truly severe penalties, like for the people who counterfeited brake pads for the 747's, which turned out to be made of baked sawdust and black paint. They didn't make it into a real plane as far as I know, but the consequences if they had would be staggering.

If you counterfeit a handbag, no one dies, but certain mechanical items, medications, and other "life-dependent "products should have serious penalties, decades in jail in my opinion. Counterfeit meds are problem all over the world, but especially in SE Asia where 50% or more are fake.

Re:And it'll only get worse

[amiga3D]

Counterfeit Meds should be life in prison.

Re:And it'll only get worse

[ShanghaiBill]

Counterfeits are a huge problem everywhere and it'll only get worse.

RTFA. Other than the headline, it is not about counterfeits. It is just about over priced products being out competed by lower priced products, and the people that are unable to compete are complaining about it.

Re:And it'll only get worse

[Anonymous Psychopath]

TFA states her product is patented, in which case it really is about counterfeiting.

Re:And it'll only get worse

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

RTFA. Other than the headline, it is not about counterfeits.

Maybe YOU should RTFA....this is all about counterfeit products. It's about knockoffs and cheap copies of patented products that are produced illegally, undercutting the original product in pricing. The actual article mentions counterfeiting over a dozen times. How the hell is this not about counterfeiting??

"Her sheet fastener had been copied by a legion of mostly Chinese knockoffs..."

"Initially, knockoffs were using her patented shock cord functionality and ripping off her design, she said."

"In May, CNBC.com reported on a Facebook group, now consisting of over 600 people, whose members have seen their designs for t-shirts, coffee mugs and iPhone cases show up on Amazon at a fraction of the price of the originals."

"To unsuspecting consumers, fake products can appear legitimate..."

"...meaning that a counterfeit jacket could be sent to an Amazon facility by one merchant and actually sold by another"

...etc etc etc... This is about counterfeiting, despite your lack of reading comprehension.

Re:And it'll only get worse

[Tablizer]

Hire some thugs, or actors, in China to scare the counter-fitters with intimidating gestures and whatnot. They won't go to the cops because then they'd be exposed.

Sometimes you gotta fight slime with slime.

Re:And it'll only get worse

[ShanghaiBill]

TFA states her product is patented, in which case it really is about counterfeiting.

She has a patent on a specific aspect of her product, not on the basic concept of an elastic sheet tightener (which have been available for many decades). TFA does NOT claim that her patent is being infringed, nor are her competitors using her brand name. This is just good old-fashioned competition, and she doesn't like it.

Re:And it'll only get worse

[Ichijo]

RTFA. Other than the headline, it is not about counterfeits.

RTFA yourself:

Birkenstock has seen dozens of stores at a time hawking its Arizona Sandal for $79.99, a full $20 below the retail price. The names of the online storefronts change all the time... On a single day in mid-June, CNBC sent notes to seven sellers on the list, asking how they're able to price the product so cheaply. Every response was the same: "It is a secret."

Those are obviously counterfeits.

Re:And it'll only get worse

[Anonymous Coward]

/.ers don't respect intellectual property anyway, just like many chinese manufacturers of counterfeited goods.

Re:And it'll only get worse

[clovis]

Maybe YOU should RTFA....this is all about counterfeit products.

Nonsense. TFA doesn't refer to a single case of "counterfeiting". p>

It kind of looks like you're just being argumentative. That's fun, I know, but at some point you should give the rest of us a break.
This article is not just about the bed-tightener.
To save other people (and you) the trouble of RTFA, I'll pull out the quotes that address the gist of the matter.

From the article:

In May, CNBC.com reported on a Facebook group, now consisting of over 600 people, whose members have seen their designs for t-shirts, coffee mugs and iPhone cases show up on Amazon at a fraction of the price of the originals. The designers described it as a game of whack-a-mole, where fakes pop up more quickly than they're taken down.

Birkenstock has seen dozens of stores at a time hawking its Arizona Sandal for $79.99, a full $20 below the retail price. The names of the online storefronts change all the time, one day including the monikers Silver Peak Wine Cellar and Ryan Hollifield and the next Keila*Knightley and Bking sewneg.

"Amazon is making money hand over fist from counterfeiters, and they've done about as little as possible for as long as possible to address the issue," said Chris Johnson, an attorney at Johnson & Pham LLP, which focuses on intellectual property and brand enforcement and represents clients including Forever 21, Adobe and OtterBox. "Word is out in the counterfeit community that it's open season on Amazon."

And this, Even Alibaba says they're doing fakes.

Counterfeiting online is nothing new of course, particularly when it comes to commerce. Alibaba, the Chinese e-retail giant, has been dealing with it since launching in 1999.

Some form of the word counterfeit shows up 30 times in Alibaba's latest annual report, and founder Jack Ma said in a speech last month in Hangzhou, China, that the fakes are of "better quality, better prices than the real products, the real names."

From a sub-link:
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/25...

"They respond and take down the images, but the very same images go up within a week by another new seller," said Kristi Spencer, whose e-commerce site Golly Girls sells personalized sports-themed T-shirts, backpacks and notebooks. "Counterfeiters are selling low-quality knockoffs of other people's artwork."

Re:And it'll only get worse

[Zontar The Mindless]

Including all the fake reviews? Hey, I like Chinese people, too--married to one, in fact--but you're barking up the wrong tree here.

Re:And it'll only get worse

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Nonsense. TFA doesn't refer to a single case of "counterfeiting".

Okay, now you're just being a dick. The article mentions "fakes" and counterfeiting 20 times from the headline to the last paragraph. For example,

"Always a problem, the counterfeiting issue has exploded this year, sellers say, following Amazon's effort to openly court Chinese manufacturers..."

"The designers described it as a game of whack-a-mole, where fakes pop up more quickly than they're taken down."

"To unsuspecting consumers, fake products can appear legitimate because of the Fulfillment by Amazon program..."

""Amazon is making money hand over fist from counterfeiters, and they've done about as little as possible for as long as possible to address the issue," said Chris Johnson, an attorney at Johnson & Pham LLP..."

""Word is out in the counterfeit community that it's open season on Amazon."

Seriously, did you even read the article? Because it sounds as though you didn't.

Re:And it'll only get worse

[thegarbz]

TFA states her product is patented, in which case it really is about counterfeiting.

The fact that an elastic band holding an elastic band can be patentable is insane on the face of it. Yeah I know, it is about counterfeiting. However I find it really difficult to get worked up about this case since this is exactly the kind of product you expect to find on a low cost Chinese flea market in the first place.

Re:And it'll only get worse

[whoever57]

Birkenstock has seen dozens of stores at a time hawking its Arizona Sandal for $79.99, a full $20 below the retail price. The names of the online storefronts change all the time... On a single day in mid-June, CNBC sent notes to seven sellers on the list, asking how they're able to price the product so cheaply. Every response was the same: "It is a secret."

Those are obviously counterfeits.

Or, given that the gross profit margin on those sandals must be quite high when sold in the USA, they could be grey market imports: sold for resale in a low cost country and then imported into the USA.

Re:And it'll only get worse

[mixed_signal]

Without a patent or trademark the original seller has no leg to stand on. The market has competition. Who would have thought?

Re:And it'll only get worse

[mixed_signal]

It's probably a design patent, since it's specific to the use of shock cords. A utility patent would be much broader, but it seems she filed a year or two after she started selling. At least, a few years ago the first sale sets a bar date where you have one year to file. (IANAL)

Re:And it'll only get worse

[Anonymous Coward]

If there are only 5 or 10 reviews of a product on Amazon, and they're all "5 star" with the review followed by "I received this product at a discount in return for giving an honest review"... don't trust any of them.

Re:And it'll only get worse

[mixed_signal]

The article does mention some brands such as Birkenstock and Canada Goose that most likely have trademarks. They are probably seeing counterfeits take sales. But the other 600 members of the FB group might not have patents or trademarks, in which case they have no leg to stand on. It's a free, and now global, market.

Re:And it'll only get worse

[MillionthMonkey]

Every response was the same: "It is a secret."

To be more precise, it's an "ancient Chinese secret".

Re:And it'll only get worse

[evilviper]

If you counterfeit a handbag, no one dies, but certain mechanical items, medications, and other "life-dependent "products should have serious penalties,

If an incident of counterfeiting becomes high profile enough to be an embarrassment to China, the authorities will hold a mock-trial and in short order you will be taken out and shot. Is that serious enough for you?

Re:And it'll only get worse

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

If an incident of counterfeiting becomes high profile enough to be an embarrassment to China, the authorities will hold a mock-trial and in short order you will be taken out and shot. Is that serious enough for you?

1) No, and
2) What's your point?

Re:And it'll only get worse

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

BTW, I like the pipedot project; is it still under active development?

Re:And it'll only get worse

[evilviper]

Bugs are still getting fixed, and a few stories still get posted, but it's very short on volunteer editors with time to spend, and that has kept readership low as well. It's one of those peculiarities of the market, that the best doesn't always do as well as the junk.

It's unfortunate that Soylent opened at the same time, got most of the attention and audience up-front, because it's basically all the worst parts of /. like HuffPo on slashcode.

Re:And it'll only get worse

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I tried to contact you at 'evilviper@pipedot.org' but the email bounced back. Is there an address I can contact you at regarding pipedot?

Re:And it'll only get worse

[evilviper]

If you log-in with your username & password on Pipedot.org, you can send e-mails to any other users via the web form:

http:/// YOUR_USERNAME .pipedot.org/mail/compose

Re:And it'll only get worse

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Tried to register and got this: mailer error [SMTP connect() failed.]

Re:And it'll only get worse

[evilviper]

This should be fixed now, give it a try. Nobody reported the problem before you.

Re:And it'll only get worse

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Okay...I made an account on pipedot and attempted to send you a message, but I don't think you got it. My 'Outbox' shows no messages sent, even though I sent one. Is there another way to contact you?

Re:And it'll only get worse

[evilviper]

Site e-mail should work. I'm guessing it was just a typo. Try using this link. Just ignore that wrong-user error message after you send:

http://username.pipedot.org/ma...

You'll see your own e-mails in Sent, certainly NOT the "Outbox".

Re:And it'll only get worse

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Ahh, my typo...there was nothing in the Sent mail either. I'll try again.

Re:Source of problem

[amiga3D]

I've bought several Samsung branded batteries on Amazon with no problems. Of course someone like Samsung has the muscle to attack fakes. Small niche companies are the most vulnerable.

What comes around goes around.

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop building your shit in China and maybe it won't be so easy for them to copy it. You outsource American workers? Well I'll outsource your product.

Re:What comes around goes around.

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried to find a local producer for my product (a simple cylindrical device with some round ring with etched letters -- similar to a bike lock), and no one in my city of over 1 million apparently is tooled up to make such a simple thing, or they quoted outlandish prices and no volume capacity. So I went to China. Fix the manufacturing wasteland that is today's North America, and small entrepreneurs will make stuff locally again.

The size of this comment is L/XL*

[Snufu]

U.S. S/M

Re:The size of this comment is L/XL*

[guardian-ct]

If there ever was a time that the "small comment" penalty was wrongly applied, that'd be it.

you my dear fellow...

[Lead Butthead]

Counterfeit Meds should be life in prison.

... are far too forgiving. seller of counterfeit meds should be force fed the counterfeit product until dead, or same number of doses sold consumed, whichever occurs first.

Re:you my dear fellow...

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

seller of counterfeit meds should be force fed the counterfeit product until dead, or same number of doses sold consumed, whichever occurs first.

I like this idea. I like it a lot.

Re:you my dear fellow...

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Save half for Pharma Execs that raise exacerbated drug prices in US over inflation rate since this practice is what causes much of this.

Re:you my dear fellow...

[Wycliffe]

Counterfeit Meds should be life in prison.

... are far too forgiving. seller of counterfeit meds should be force fed the counterfeit product until dead, or same number of doses sold consumed, whichever occurs first.

This wouldn't help in most cases. In many cases counterfeit meds are "harmless" because they are inert sugar pills. Not harmless to the person who actually needs the medication but harmless to someone who doesn't who takes them. The other categories are watered down meds, substituting for a completely different cheaper medicine that looks similar, or actual generic knockoffs likely at a lower quality standard.
You could argue that they are all fraud but there is a huge difference between selling something completely different from what you claim and selling something that is circumventing copyrights and patents. The later category (actual generic knockoffs) still hurts companies but might actually benefit some consumers.

There's a simple answer

[Pollux]

Sue Amazon. Well, get a patent on your product first, then sell it on Amazon, -then- sue Amazon for selling items that infringe on your patent. Wouldn't be the first time.

A related anecdote...Back in 2014, I received a solicited free iPad case to try that was a Griffin case knockoff. Looked exactly the same, just missing the logo, and $40 cheaper. I was interested, but curious why it was the exact same case w/o the cost. Long story short, the guy went right to Griffin's suppliers in China and paid them to make the exact same case for his company. His mistake was that he setup an office in the United States, and Griffin sued him into oblivion.

Re: There's a simple answer

[Bing Tsher E]

It's probably not the plans. It's probably the tooling. Tooling even for fairly simple parts is really expensive. If you can convince a supplier to sell you parts made with an expensive competitors tooling (at night, on a third shift, when the main customer isn't looking) you can make a lot of $$.

I have bought Textool ZIF sockets from a Chinese eBay seller. They were $7 for four of them. Real Textool ZIF sockets from DigiKey are nearly $20 each. The parts from China appear to be Textool sockets with 3M's trademark branding, but are made of a coarser grade plastic. If I were using them in a production environment and not just in a hobby setting, they probably wouldn't hold up well. The plastic likely has inferior temperature specs, and would quickly fail in a production burn-in or environmental test application. For my use they are perfectly adequate.

In China, "100% Cotton" means...

[Nova Express]

...10% Polyester.

Middlemen used to drive up the cost, but they would also provide a quality control filter that's now missing as you can buy things directly from China and India through Amazon and eBay.

Caveat Emptor

Re:In China, "100% Cotton" means...

[Anonymous Coward]

In China, the middlemen are the ones who are promising to find you 100% cotton, taking the money for 100% cotton, then passing on 80% cotton, 10% polyester, 5% lead 5% antifreeze to the garment sweatshop. The only way to not get scammed is to go there yourself and check all the sources.

Re:Example Not a Problem

[grimJester]

Looking at amazon.com there doesn't seem to be anyone else calling their product "bed bands". There are thousands of different "sheet grippers" though, some looking similar to "bed bands".

Tbh, this looks like someone just unable to compete. You can't call it counterfeit if it's just a similar product not using your brand name. Counterfeit = trademark violation.

Sold on globalism

[Okian Warrior]

About 20 years ago(*) we were told that globalism would result in a higher standard of living for the US.

People pointed out that salaries would stagnate, but economists told us that this was expected and would be more than compensated by the lowered cost of goods.

So effectively you would have the same salary, but the things you need would cost much less and overall everyone would come out ahead.

And here we have an honest, everyday, working person who invented something and made a lot of money who is complaining that their product is being made cheaper in China.

Get with the program!

People are overall *much* better off being able to purchase the cheap knockoffs from China!

It's the predicted outcome. Deal with it.

(*) Starting with NAFTA, and proceeding to the US free trade agreements with China and 20 other countries, as well as the rise of H1B visas and tele-commute outsourcing.

Re:Sold on globalism

[sjames]

Of course that prediction completely failed to note that housing and healthcare wouldn't go down any leaving most of us less well off than before.

Re:Sold on globalism

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

About 20 years ago(*) we were told that globalism would result in a higher standard of living for the US.

And overall that's been true, but there's no denying that it's been at the expense of lots and lots manufacturing jobs and the good salaries or hourly pay rates that went with them. We got cheap consumer gadgets and the price was lost jobs and wages.

It may have been a short-term gain, but long-term it's been harmful to the middle class (and probably even more so to the poorest Americans).

Re:Sold on globalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely agree. First, it is cheaper to buy globally manufactured stuff with your current salary. That assumes you will have the same salary. But very similarly your wages will soon be discounted, very much like the products you were buying. What is interesting, the quality of goods takes a deep dive in the process. We demand more and more junk products at cheap prices. Cheap? Oh no, the prices will catch up, and you will be paying MORE for cheap globally made JUNK, with the not-so-remote perspective of losing your job to global competition
Maybe we should get cheaper economists from China? Feels like our economists are overpriced for the advice they give

Re:Sold on globalism

[reboot246]

Speaking of economists, I think we should have only one-armed economists.
That way they couldn't say, "On the other hand . . . "

Where was she manufacturing?

[0100010001010011]

If you don't even manufacture in China it's hard for them to get your IP. I bet she went for the cheapest person that could injection mold her idea and didn't think about what would happen once they had the designs.

I highly doubt that they would import a product made at some local shop to reverse engineer it and start making clones.

It's one of the most frustrating things about watching a kickstarter fail because they decided to go to China. When I'm developing a new tool or idea I have a much better response time with a local shop. I can swing by after going to the bank, just tell them in my own English words exactly what I want done and they'll likely be able to do it. How many kickstarters have a "Sorry about the Delay, prototype .... was delayed because apparently there's a New Year in china". What takes a Week locally usually takes 4-6 months with Chinese transit time.

She chose to make it as cheap as possible and got her initial $700k for one year as a result. She could have either charged more or cut revenue to manufacture locally and had a business that lasted 5-10+ years.

Re:Where was she manufacturing?

[NormalVisual]

If you don't even manufacture in China it's hard for them to get your IP.

Depends on what it is. For a lot of things, all they have to do is order a couple and take measurements.

Re:Where was she manufacturing?

[thegarbz]

Manufacture? IP? Injection mould? Designs? ... Have you seen the product?

It's a set of elastic shoelaces with those clips from a name badge on the end of them. And I mean really those clips even have eyelets that don't fit the elastic shoelaces because they're designed for flat bands. I could make one right now at my desk at home from stuff I have laying around. There's no challenging industrial espionage or underhanded duplicating of corporate IP here (and I use those two letters very loosely here)

But interesting you mention kickstarter. One of the primary concerns about most kickstarter is the price they are aiming for. Local production isn't usually on the cards for them for anything beyond the initial prototype.

Re:Where was she manufacturing?

[thegarbz]

She chose to make it as cheap as possible and got her initial $700k for one year as a result. She could have either charged more or cut revenue to manufacture locally and had a business that lasted 5-10+ years.

Hate to double reply but I missed this one. You do realise that this was a 100% made in the USA product right, so literally none of your post applies here.

Re:Where was she manufacturing?

[0100010001010011]

> You do realise that this was a 100% made in the USA product right,

100% Assembled in the USA. Look at the box.

Re:Where was she manufacturing?

[thegarbz]

> You do realise that this was a 100% made in the USA product right,

100% Assembled in the USA. Look at the box.

Look at the product. It is made using off the shelf parts you can buy pretty much anywhere. There is no "manufacturing" there is only assembly, and a full zero of the components in that box are in any way proprietary in nature, represent some magic form of IP, or would require a person to seek out a Chinese company to manufacture for them.

Hell I could assemble one right now from stuff I find in my desk. I could start and manufacture a production line by raiding the stationary cupboards at work (which include the all important name badge clips that she's using to clip onto the sheets).

clueless

[luther349]

if you dont whant you stuff to have a china clone you have to file your patent with the Chinese government thats how there systems works but as most people do not take this step you get a china clone.

Re: clueless

[moosehooey]

If it's a US company vs a Chinese company, even a Chinese patent probly doesn't mean shit either. See the recent case with Apple, the biggest company in the world, and imagine how much worse it would be for a small company.

Article is bogus

[topham]

This article is mostly bogus; counterfeits are a real problem, but this article isn't actually about counterfeits. The seller is upset with their much cheaper competition that isn't even violating their patents, or Amazons rules.

Also, I find it funny when articles like this imply patent violations but never include the patent number. Patents are very explicit and it can be very misleading to imply a product is violating a patent when in fact they aren't. Even violating a single clause in a patent doesn't mean the patent is violated; individual clauses may not be enforceable due to prior litigation.

Re:Article is bogus

[djinn6]

Given how simple their "invention" is (basically some metal clips with elastic attached), I'm very surprised they even got the patent.

This is why I don't buy Chinese

[smooth wombat]

I will go out of my way not to buy a product made in China. About the only thing I can't buy are sunglasses and winter gloves, and that includes those overpriced Marmot gloves. Even companies such as North Face have their products made in China then charge outrageous prices because, you know, they're specially made for the adventurer in you.

Stop buying Chinese-made products and their industries will dry up. Stop having products made in China and they don't have the exact specs of your product. It's really a very simple solution but like everything else it makes too much sense so will never be done.

Re:This is why I don't buy Chinese

[thegarbz]

Stop having products made in China and they don't have the exact specs of your product. It's really a very simple solution but like everything else it makes too much sense so will never be done.

You mean like in this case where it was a USA made product, here locally in the USA without any Chinese involvement at all? The problem is things like this are basic. They are not nearly as clever or complicated as people like to think and barely worthy of the word Patented at all.

As for the "exact specs". If you can't reverse engineer this product from this picture then there's no helping you. And I purposely chose the lowest resolution product image I could find. Most of the pictures of the product are a cool 1000x1000 and plastered all over the internet.

Re:This is why I don't buy Chinese

[AmiMoJo]

I prefer Chinese products because they are honest. You get what you pay for, unlike many western brands where you pay for the brand name.

Re:This is why I don't buy Chinese

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

Please, please, tell me where I can buy a computer not made in china...

Capitalism

[should_be_linear]

Hey Americans, welcome to capitalism! Your politicians, backed by large companies and army, are pushing it globally down everyone's throat for 50 years now, at least. Now it is coming back home. Prepare soon to find out that there is guy in China or India capable of doing anything you can do for 1/3 money you need only to keep food on the table and pay bills. And forget about Sanders, capitalism will crush any Sanders standing in his way.

Not an entirely bad thing

[somenickname]

As cheap manufacturing countries start directly competing against their customers, the cost of using those countries for manufacturing will increase tremendously. At some point, knowing that you are likely to be competing against your own product (but cheaper and possibly built with slightly substandard parts) will make it more cost effective to build your product locally. It's kind of surprising that the governments of these countries aren't bending over backwards to try and prevent these counterfeiting/knockoff operations because it seems like the economic impacts for those countries could be devastating.

Copyright vs Patents

[Steve1952]

It is a bit ironic that if you assert that someone has violated your copyright (e.g. used one of your images or some of your text), then under the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act), you can contact Amazon and they are obligated to take the listing down right away.

But if you assert that someone has violated your patent, the process is much harder. So young man, remember that (cue disco ball): it's more fun to play with the DMCA!

Re:Copyright vs Patents

[evilviper]

The trade-off of the DMCA is that it holds the 3rd party blameless of the copyright infringement if they quickly obey the take-down request. Meanwhile, the 3rd party offering patent-infringing stuff gets no safe-harbor and can face big financial penalties, including retroactive before they were ever informed of the issue.

Re:Example Not a Problem

[Swave An deBwoner]

If you search for "bed bands" on Amazon there are (at the moment) 333 results returned with the trademarked (?) "Bed Band" brand at the top of the list.

In general I find this a problem with Amazon searches -- even if I provide a specific model number for something they return a shitload of "similar" and not-so-similar stuff with nothing to indicate that one of them is the exact match. Sometimes there is no exact match and they just return a bunch of stuff that maybe I'll buy instead anyhow.

This is also the case with NewEgg; I was bitten by that after searching for an exact model number, getting a single product returned, and buying it without realizing that they just matched me with something similar but different. In that case it was too different for my application. The joke was on me.

Be better. Innovate or die.

[stooo]

>> Her sheet fastener had been copied by a legion of mostly Chinese knockoffs that undercut BedBand on price

Yeah. Thats how it goes today. You have to innovate to undercut the copycats. Don't innovate and you will slowly vanish. That's trus for multibillion-corps as well as for small fishes.

DELA WITH IT.

Re:Be better. Innovate or die.

[stooo]

Just to be clear on this : This has nothing to do whatsoever with "counterfeits".

Re:Be better. Innovate or die.

[stooo]

So, in fact, the article's summary is B.S.
it does not speak about counterfeits. It speaks about copies.
Copies are legal, counterfeits are not.

Re:Be better. Innovate or die.

[Hognoxious]

Copies are legal, counterfeits are not.

*Sniff*. *Sniff*. I detect ... DeVry JD!

Bracers

[BlackHawk-666]

Bracers for sheets are not an invention, and certainly not patentable - unless the stuff kept your grand-dads pants up since before the first world war is worth a patent?

Re:Bracers

[ledow]

It is an invention.

But it's certainly not their invention.

I've seen straps that hold fitted sheets to beds for the last 20-something years at least. Hell, I've own a fitted sheet that came with them.

It's certainly not novel. And I think their "copies" have nothing to do with their downturn. You've been able to buy these things for decades. More likely is that people are camping on their trademark website and getting into the "related items" for their products and then consumers are realising "Hey, look, there's a cheaper version that does the same thing" and buying that instead.

But, to be honest, if you genuinely go into business thinking that product A of yours is going to sell, be successful, and repeat that success into perpetuity, even when your competitors start to clone it, then you're a damn idiot.

You have a strap for a bed. Great. You sold a lot of them. What's your plan to keep you buoyant NEXT year?

Mixing issues

[Kwyj1b0]

This article is mixing three issues, all of which should concern any online retailer.

The first is counterfeit or fake goods - a customer buys a product, but instead gets an item that doesn't match what they ordered. This is clearly fraud, and makes it difficult to trust online purchases. This doesn't seemed to have happened here. Most customers must have known they were buying the product from someone else, not the "original".

The second is that the signal to noise ratio drops very low because a lot of vendors flood the marketplace (perhaps automatically) with products that are supposed to grab the top spot (due to low price, for example). The product might not even exist - say I print a t-shirt when someone makes an order, but I can digitally generate a million t-shirt slogans and create a million different t-shirts to show up on search. This isn't fraud - I know exactly what I'm getting, but the marketplace experience as a whole is terrible.

The third is gaming the review system. I tend to read the content of the reviews carefully (I don't trust the rating system as much) to gain information, rather than checking the ratings. In this case, it seems as if the "inferior" product had a lot of fake reviews. If true buyers were returning the product in large numbers, however, Amazon might even pull the product.

I do agree that it isn't the merchant's job to track down fraud/fakers (which this particular example is not); Amazon should be careful that they don't become the next ebay or craigslist.

Counterfeit oscilloscope kits

[codepigeon]

I was recently looking for a cheap oscilloscope kit and eventually came across a comment on Amazon that led to this website. http://www.jyetech.com/Products/LcdScope/e138.php

I guess this would be one way to try and combat the counterfeiters; call them out.

Re:Counterfeit oscilloscope kits

[whoever57]

Since the PCB layout is stolen, surely there is a copyright violation here. Can't they register the copyright and then DMCA away the counterfeits?

Amazon cutting their own throat

[Areyoukiddingme]

Amazon, and unfortunately NewEgg, are both cutting their own throat in this regard. They forget that one of the services a store provides is selection. In both directions. Variety of available wares and culling of worthless duplicates. Amazon and NewEgg are absolutely buried under thousands of copies of the exact same product using literally the exact same photograph but somehow with unique listings that differ by one or two or zero cents. All of which have bullshit tags and bullshit categories.

This is not valuable to me. This is absolutely stupid for me, as a customer. It wastes my time, totally pollutes search results, and annoys the shit out of me. Enough that I will choose another store, even a brick and mortar store, just because the signal to noise ratio has become so horrendous I literally can't find what I'm looking for.

NewEgg are you listening? I know Amazon is not. But NewEgg, I expected better. NewEgg had useful, reliable, helpful category- and specification-based search for more than a decade, long before Amazon's half-assed attempt. Now it's been overrun by asshole third-worlders hawking $2 useless plastic shit I don't want, don't need, and REALLY don't want to see when I'm searching for a goddamned video card. A vinyl sticker designed for a Macbook cover is not a video card! Curate your collections! It matters!

</rant>

Re:Amazon cutting their own throat

[samwichse]

Seriously.

Go on Amazon or newegg and search for your model cellphone + "battery."

Now go enjoy the cesspool of "OEM batteries" with blurry, photocopied labels on them. I challenge you to find a real oem battery for say... a Nexus 5 or an HTC One missed in with all that crap. A battery that doesn't have an initial capacity less than 80% of what the label says and isn't worse in life than the one you were replacing after a month or two.

Amazon + Newegg are now broken, IMO.

Re:Amazon cutting their own throat

[Overzeetop]

Oh, it's easy to find the OEM battery for those phones. Just do a price sort high to low. The $50-100 per piece batteries are the real OEMs, for the most part. Then you have the recognizable third party batteries (wasabi and the like) for $8-15, and then the mystery meat versions which are maybe $2 cheaper. If you're suckered in by the third party battery at 6.97 vs a recognizable vendor/brand at 8.00, you probably get what you deserve.

Re:Amazon cutting their own throat

[samwichse]

I went safe and bought a $35 oem battery (vs the 6.97 obvious fakes). It arrived with a blurry photocopy-looking label and degraded quickly as described.

Sam

Re:Amazon cutting their own throat

[Zxern]

This soo much! I used to go to Newegg because I wanted to buy from Newegg. If I wanted to buy from some random third party I would have used ebay. Search on Newegg is worthless now as it's soo polluted with crap results now.

Worst thing about Amazon right now is the scammers

[Golden_Rider]

Would not worry that much about Chinese sellers, instead Amazon really needs to sort out their Marketplace and remove all the scammers which pop up recently. It seems to be the New Thing for scammers to put up notebooks/DSLR and other higher price items at prices which go from "very good price" to "omg what a deal", and when someone is dumb enough to fall for such an offer, the scammer tries to handle payment outside Amazon (only to then disappear with the money and the buyer has no Amazon payment protection). If you do not agree to pay outside of Amazon, the item you want to buy suddenly is not available anymore, of course. Sometimes these scammers even use hacked seller accounts. These scam offers ruin any search for items at a normal price because of course only these fake super low prices are shown in the search results. Look e.g. here, this camera normally goes for 3500+ Euro new, see all the "used-very good" results at less than half the price (totally unrealistic prices for this high end DSLR) and the "write to us xxxx@yyyy.de": https://www.amazon.de/gp/offer...

Re:Worst thing about Amazon right now is the scamm

[Golden_Rider]

Just in case Amazon actually manages to remove some of the fake offers, here is what it looks like right now: http://i.imgur.com/sG86jsG.png

Tired of sellers begging for positive feedback

[NothingWasAvailable]

I hate ebay, in part because of the constant begging for positive feedback.

Now I'm getting it from Amazon's sellers. Every purchase that's not from Amazon itself results in emails asking me to leave positive feedback, reminders that if I haven't left feedback I still can. I got tired of that pretty quickly on ebay. "A+++++++++" seller ... gack. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but doing exactly what I paid you to do is actually "C" level work.

There's also the "used book scam" which has hit me twice. Find a relatively inexpensive copy of a rare book. Order said copy. Copy ships. Copy never arrives. "So sorry, it must have gotten lost in the mail." Next day the same seller has a copy available at 3X or even 10X the price you paid.

It appears that they get "seller's remorse" and pretend to ship you a book (with no tracking, of course) and then miraculously find another copy they can sell closer to the prevailing rate. Several sellers seem to have a lot of feedback that implies this is what's happening.

The third scam I've seen is the "I don't really have the book, but I'll have someone else ship you a copy" ... Order from seller "A", book arrives from seller "B". They offer a book at a slightly higher price and better quality than the other seller.

Re: Tired of sellers begging for positive feedback

[jo7hs2]

Agreed. I'm getting sick and tired of being emailed and even called about feedback, even positive feedback with mildly critical comments, and I've told Amazon so repeatedly. While each vendor stops calling after I advise Amazon, new vendors do it with abandon so the cycle continues. Amazon doesn't really seem to care, and as somebody who orders about half his non-food items on Amazon for time reasons, I've come to expect better support than they currently provide. It used to be excellent.

Re:Tired of sellers begging for positive feedback

[Overzeetop]

Yeah, I've started leaving one-star vendor reviews "Merchandise was fine, but the nagging by the vendor to leave this review and rating was incessant. Will never buy from again." I realize that it sucks for them, but I didn't sign up for daily nag-ware.

Re:Example Not a Problem

[ledow]

Because it's a band for a fucking bed.

That's not really a trademark, it's a generic term that's likely to be challenged as a trademark even in the territories that have (stupidly) allowed it.

It's like complaining that if you go searching for "sticky tape" that you get things that aren't your genuine, registered trademark "StickyTape®" sticky tapes.

If you'd called your company "Joe's Shitty Products®" and someone sniped all your "Joe's Shitty Product® Sheet Fastener's", yeah, sure you have a case. But "bed band" is a description of exactly what the product is, using two generic and common English words related to that product. That's NOT what you should be trademarking.

If you want to protect a trademark you combine it with a company name that's pretty unique and which you own the trademarks in your territories and industry sectors for.

But trademarking TennisBall tennis balls is a) likely to not be allowed in the first place, b) likely to be struck down for genericity at any time and c) stupid because I don't have to be specifically sniping your trademark to have a website that scores high for searches of tennis balls that aren't TennisBall tennis balls.

BedBands is, quite honestly, one of the worst product names that I've seen. And one of the worst products that I've seen. I could make it myself, make something better, I've bought better things that do the same job, copy it in about ten minutes, and I could market it as the "best bed band product" without infringing on BedBands trademarks unfairly. Because it's a fucking band for a fucking bed.

And, to be honest, that "sit on the corner of the sheet" shite will last two seconds until I rip it off when I roll over. Most of the bed bands that actually work do so by tying the left of the sheet to the right of the sheet under the mattress, not just the corners.

I hope their blatant and unnecessary slashvertisement just waters down their trademarks even more.

This rant is trademarked by me. Nobody else can have an InternetRant internet rant but me, now.

Re:Amazon's Real Problem

[Overzeetop]

No Prime = No Sale, and that goes double if the item is shipping from China. It's not that all things Chinese are bad or cheap or counterfeit, but if I'm going to get a very inexpensive item* I'm more likely to look at ebay or aliexpress to truly minimize my cost. Amazon has some of the worst search engine sorting options on the planet so I may as well wade through mountains of crap on the other two sites and save another 20% than deal with Amazon .

*and if you're getting something from China, you either need to make sure you can return it to somewhere in your home country or be willing to burn that cash on the front lawn, because if something goes wrong it will cost a fortune to ship back.

Re:Welcome to capitalism!

[Dog-Cow]

OK... you're wrong. The "whole point" of capitalism is that capital is owned by individuals, as opposed to government (not as opposed to corporations). That's it.

China Don't Give a Shit About US Trademarks

[Greyfox]

Little secret guys, you want something made, someone in China wants to make it for you. They'll do it for cheap and if it's a hunk of technology, they'll do it with the same parts they made the original from. But why stop with knockoff routers and my little pony love dolls? Anything you can imagine and get on to paper, some dude in China will make for you, using only the finest tears from the finest ruined hopes and dreams of tiny little Chinese children. Does that guy in China care that your specification calls for an orphan heart? No. No he doesn't. And he can get them dirt cheap! And if you want some quality engineering, he'll outsource it to Korea! One of the Koreas for sure! So why let the big corporations have all the fun? Why wait for some corporation to make that awesome thing you've been kicking around in your head for the last couple years? Find a manufacturer in China and go into business for yourself! Just don't be surprised when they start ripping off your designs once you start making money. Because China don't give a shit about US trademarks.

Something's not quite right here.

[Zibodiz]

Something's not quite right here. I've been using this sort of product since 2010, when I purchased a set at Walmart for under $10. I know for a fact that it was earlier than May 2010, because I distinctly remember a conversation I had with a co-worker about them; I left that job in May 2010, and the co-worker passed away shortly thereafter.
While patent-infringing cheap merchandise may be a problem on Amazon, the particular item highlighted in this article seems to be a little misleading.

Re:Example Not a Problem

[Hognoxious]

Buy flat oversize sheets. Tuck the excess under.

If your sheets come off after that you probably aren't asleep anyway...

I'm largely alright with this...

[Kevin108]

Especially in regards to car parts. Many of these Chinese manufacturers ship the same item with and without branding. Example: a snorkel for a Toyota 4x4. If it says SAFARI on the side and has been shipped from China to Australia, then to the US, it's $400. If it says nothing and ships from China to you, It's $125. Likewise, eBay is a great source for low-cost radiators, AC condensers, etc. Same low-grade junk the parts stores are selling at twice the price.

It's the free market at work. You can sell your product for whatever you like, but your price point must be competitive with a Chinese knock-off.

Is that so bad?

Pricing from the crack pipe....

[MercTech]

I'm usually a big believer in patent protection and truth in labeling. In this case; I actually went to buy the product called a "Bed Band". When I saw how they were made I concluded whomever set the MSRP was smoking something. I went over to the sewing notions corner of Walmart and spent about $6.00 on the materials to make about a dozen bed bands. The first set went on the mattress in the RV so the sheets would not work off when bouncing down the road then used the leftover material for making more as a "kid's project" making something for mommy that is useful. All you need is elastic strips and the slide clasps from a garter belt and you have the gadget to hold a sheet onto the mattress.

    You can't patent a concept. You patent a design complete with materials specification. You can't sell a "Bed Band" made exactly the same as the patent holder but a concept so self evident will allow for at least three points of design difference without breaking a mental sweat.
      Remember the "Rubik's Cube"? The designer didn't patent the mechanism for the block hinges; he patented the whole toy. Well, the patent on the whole toy included the specification of the colors on the faces. Hmmm, the cheap knock offs were out within six months of the fad taking off with only different color stickers from the original.
    Compare the patented original: https://bed-band-store-llc.myshopify.com/
      Then compare with the competition, none of which is close enough to even hint at a patent violation.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TGPU3FC/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_2?pf_rd_p=1944687502&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B003M5XSDG&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=69AD7FHRNYZTAPHBZWQK

http://www.shopko.com/catalog/product.jsp?productId=95768&utm_source=CI&utm_medium=PLA&utm_term=17537929&utm_campaign=Home&cm_mmc=Google-_-PLA-_-Home-_-17537929&term={term}&productid={productid}&source={source}&medium={medium}&gclid=Cj0KEQjw5Ie8BRCJ9fHlr_bH24cBEiQAkoDQcY3VfK6exRTpr6WK2qiKBTIFvKLkePzRtyeaVF3O-LsaAsuj8P8HAQ#

Amiga profitability

[The Conductor]

Can't speak to the other systems (so this doesn't really invalidate your larger point), but I have to dispel the common misconception that the Amiga was anything but profitable to the end of its days. Commodore went under due to losses from the PC clone business, and Amiga production shut down when suppliers stopped delivering parts. Near the end, Amigas shipped with dealer-installed hard-drives (paid for in cash) since HD makers were among the first to get stiffed with delinquent invoices. I would posit that, under better management, the Amiga platform could have survived and have a market position similar to the Mac today.

There is a reason Amigans are so bitter about how that went down.