Amazon Takes Counterfeit Sellers To Court For First Time (cnbc.com)

For the first time, Amazon is taking counterfeit sellers to court. The move comes after several sellers expressed strong concerns about their businesses getting ripped off by Amazon, which is not doing anything to curb distribution of fake, poor quality products on its ecommerce platform. Notably, even Apple had said recently that a lot of its accessories listed on Amazon are fake products. From a CNBC report: On Monday, Amazon filed suit against a group of sellers for infringing on athletic training equipment developed by TRX. In a second case, Amazon sued sellers who are offering fake versions of a patented moving product called Forearm Forklift. [...] There's no way Amazon can litigate away the problem. The company generates over $75 billion a year in commerce, and about half the volume now comes from third-party sellers. However, with Amazon showing its willingness to take abusers to court, the company can at least hope to deter counterfeit sellers with the threat of potential legal action.

Comments

fake carbon fiber

[andydread]

Now if only they will go after the people selling fake carbon fiber airframes then all will be good.

Re:fake carbon fiber

[Anonymous Coward]

Fake as in not made from carbon fiber or just cheap?

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Better yet

[TheRealMindChild]

Rather than litigation, start labeling sellers as counterfeiters right there on their amazon listing. Add a sort/filter feature to eliminate aggregating them or shuffle the listings to the bottom

Re:Better yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Then Amazon would be liable when they make a sale. Knew and facilitated anyways.

Re:Better yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a radical idea. Ban them and not let them sell on Amazon. It's very clear Amazon could care less about 'fake' sellers along as they get their cut.

Re:Better yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Then they'll just sell on ebay and other platforms (as they already are). I guess they're hoping that they can put some of these counterfeiters out of business by suing them, so they're not just handing them off to the competition. Or that the brands will pressure ebay etc to take similar action.

Re:Better yet

[crimson tsunami]

Or they can point and say "look we tried", even though it mad no difference whatsoever.

Re:Better yet

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad Amazon is taking action. It makes my life simpler. When I want counterfeit items, I go to Ebay, real stuff, Amazon. Unfortunately Amazon is letting me down.

Re:Better yet

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no, I not Sum Wing Ding company, I Sum Ding Wing company. Totally different. You sell my goods yes?

Amazon bans the counterfeit sellers all the time. They just register again with a new name and email and keep going.

Re:Better yet

[dgatwood]

Ban them and not let them sell on Amazon.

That's easier said than done. With scammers like these, when you stomp one account into the ground, a new one pops up the next day to take its place, and nothing ever improves.

Re:Better yet

[grahammm]

As the payments to marketplace sellers are made via Amazon, could Amazon not "follow the money"? Thus forcing a banned seller to use a new (bank) account to receive payments from Amazon as well as registering with a new name and email.

Re:Better yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but setting up a bank account is free as well. I agree they should check for that, but I don't think it will be a significant obstacle.

I'm taking YOU to court

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not sure what for, but my lawyer will figure that out later

Their mixed stock is going to hurt there case as i

[Joe_Dragon]

Their mixed stock is going to hurt there case as it contaminates the evidence

Connect product reviews to sellers?

[AthanasiusKircher]

As the summary notes, there's no way Amazon can police the system adequately with the way it currently functions. At best, it can hope to dissuade some counterfeiters through threat of litigation.

However, to my mind, the real problem is Amazon's lack of transparency when it comes to evaluating and purchasing products from 3rd-party sellers. Amazon will just default to a lower priced listing from some random company, and unless you're paying attention, you could end up purchasing from someone else. There should be a much stronger "flag" that goes up before you can do this -- otherwise, Amazon risks getting sued for liability when people think they're purchasing stuff "from Amazon" but they get defective crap from somewhere else.

But one further issue -- what about linking product reviews (particularly for "verified purchases") to SELLER? If I'm going to be purchasing a product X from company Y rather than Amazon, I should be able to -- in some easy fashion -- just get reviews of X from Y.

I'm sure we've all seen reviews on Amazon that say, "I purchased batteries from [this company], and they're fake!" It should be transparent to find such reviews. So even if the product X has 1000 reviews with an average of 4.5 stars, if the 20 reviews from company Y say, "Beware -- this thing is a piece of junk, not as advertised!" a customer has a chance of making a more informed decision.

(Obviously, lots of reviews on Amazon are fake anyway, and there's all sorts of problems there too. But this would at least be something a customer could try before just blindly purchasing a product from some random 3rd-party company.)

Re:Connect product reviews to sellers?

[petermgreen]

Worse than that amazon operates commingled inventory. With commingled inventory the seller you select is simply the one who gets your money, not nessacerally the one who supplied the product.

In general for products with high counterfieting risk I would advise avoiding amazon completely.

Re:Connect product reviews to sellers?

[phorm]

For me, the "flag" is usually when there's no free shipping option on something. Only stuff sold by Amazon counts for that.

Fake apologies

[Anonymous Coward]

They won't be sincere because in Asian culture it is considered an honor to be copied. To create something so unique and desirable that 1000 people try to re-create your perfection is the pinnacle.

Re:Fake apologies

[geekmux]

They won't be sincere because in Asian culture it is considered an honor to be copied. To create something so unique and desirable that 1000 people try to re-create your perfection is the pinnacle.

And when people try to re-create a product and ultimately fail in doing so, resulting in harm or death to others, is that also considered an "honor"?

Re:Fake apologies

[trytoguess]

Considering all the copyright lawsuits Asian companies like Samsung and Huawei file where on earth are you getting this idea?

Re:Fake apologies

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't fail. They did exactly what they were paid for. Companies elsewhere generally (there are exceptions) won't take on contracts to produce goods that of such shit quality they harm the user. Chinese companies are.

China is the extreme example of "you get what you pay more". More money into the product = more safety and quality. Less money = lower quality and less safety. All the way down to building a non-working 5 cent USB power adapter that the prongs fall out of (which weren't connected to anything internally to start with), and all the way up to building a $20 USB power adapter of the quality that Apple ordered that won't fall apart without being attacked by power tools, that actually works, for years on end.

Stop thinking you can get $20 of quality for 5 cents and this problem will go away.

Re:Fake apologies

[Anonymous Coward]

And how exactly are you to know on the sliding scale of quality versus cost exactly what you're getting ? Sometimes the $20 widget is exactly the same as the $10 widget. Sometimes the $12 widget is WORSE than the $10 widget. Hell, sometimes the $20 widget is worse than the $10 widget.

I agree, if the $10 widget is offered at $.05, it seems obvious, but there's a lot of unknown between "top-price" (and still not necessarily top quality) and "bottom-barrel".

Re:Fake apologies

[tlhIngan]

They didn't fail. They did exactly what they were paid for. Companies elsewhere generally (there are exceptions) won't take on contracts to produce goods that of such shit quality they harm the user. Chinese companies are.

China is the extreme example of "you get what you pay more". More money into the product = more safety and quality. Less money = lower quality and less safety. All the way down to building a non-working 5 cent USB power adapter that the prongs fall out of (which weren't connected to anything internally to start with), and all the way up to building a $20 USB power adapter of the quality that Apple ordered that won't fall apart without being attacked by power tools, that actually works, for years on end.

Stop thinking you can get $20 of quality for 5 cents and this problem will go away.

It's also why Chinese consumers are heading away from Chinese brands and buying Western brands. Basically they too are fed up of the fakes and knockoffs and poor quality, and they're wanting brands that police their brand. Sure they pay more, but they would rather get something that works than kills them.

Plus, the laws in the west generally protect the legitimate products so there's a perception there as well.

Amazon

[Anonymous Coward]

IANAL, but what basis does Amazon have to be suing these counterfeiters?

They aren't the trademark holders. From Amazon's point of view, all they did was violate the TOS.

Shouldn't Amazon just spot them, shut them down and pass along any relevant information to law enforcement and the trademark holders and let THEM handle it? I don't think Amazon wants to be in the position where they have to play trademark police. We saw how well that worked out with the DMCA...

Re:Amazon

[serviscope_minor]

IANAL, but what basis does Amazon have to be suing these counterfeiters?

My guess is that it's a huge violation of the ToS.

Amazon is becoming Alibaba

[DNS-and-BIND]

Yeah, I pretty clearly see that Amazon is headed down the dark road where Alibaba's always been. Amazon *used to* be a platform you could trust, at least most of the time. But now? With all these direct-from-China sellers on it? These people are sharks and they know every trick in the book.

A lot of them really don't know how to make money other than shenanigans. The idea that they should offer an honest product and run a good business, get a reputation, etc.? Foreign ideas. The counterfeiter idea is that the only way to win is to rip people off, and when they get burned and don't buy from you again, well don't worry there are billions more people out here and you don't need repeat business. A lot of these scammers operate on razor thin or zero margins, and they go bankrupt all the time. I really don't think it was a good idea for Amazon to open up to them.

What Amazon should do is go to Alibaba and hire away some of their anti-fraud department. Start playing whack-a-mole. It's just not going to get better any time soon. The winners are going to be the counterfeiters, and the losers are going to be Amazon honest sellers. It's a real tragedy.

Re:Amazon is becoming Alibaba

[110010001000]

I don't see why the average person cares about "counterfeiters". I buy stuff some Alibaba that most people would consider "counterfeit", but who cares if it is? It is the same quality as the "real" product and is typically run on the same production lines, but costs 10% of what the "real" product is. Considering we have exploding phones from some of the largest companies in the world (Samsung) and $100 shirts that fall apart in a few months, you can't really argue that the "real" stuff is better quality.

Re:Amazon is becoming Alibaba

[geekmux]

Yeah, I pretty clearly see that Amazon is headed down the dark road where Alibaba's always been. Amazon *used to* be a platform you could trust, at least most of the time. But now? With all these direct-from-China sellers on it? These people are sharks and they know every trick in the book.

And yet Common F. Sense can often spot a fake product from a valid one based on price alone, making me wonder who really is to blame.

Buying a $2 "Apple" charger that normally sells at a fixed price ten times higher and you really thought it was a legitimate product? Fucking please.

Yes, I'm all for going after counterfeiters, but far too often we are practically rewarding stupidity and ignorance by not pointing it out. Being a cheap-ass comes at a price sometimes, especially with products that are held to safety standards for valid reasons.

Re:Amazon is becoming Alibaba

[swb]

I was adding a battery to my boat meant to be easily removable and bought a set of Anderson PowerPole DC connectors off Amazon. They were terrible knockoffs that wouldn't create a reliable circuit when properly assembled. It's not hard to see counterfeits from this category causing a fire.

There's maybe a large class of products where counterfeiting may not matter, but outright counterfeiting of legitimate brand named products ought not to be tolerated.

Re:Amazon is becoming Alibaba

[NormalVisual]

It is the same quality as the "real" product and is typically run on the same production lines, but costs 10% of what the "real" product is.

Except that it's often NOT the same quality. Compare a genuine Music Man Stingray or Rickenbacker 4003 electric bass to the bullshit counterfeits that flood Alibaba, and then come back and tell me they're equivalent.

Re:Amazon is becoming Alibaba

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. I've brought a fair number of full priced products from Amazon's associates only to find they were fake. They were listed against the genuine items' pages but out of stock in Amazon, so I chose the also-sold-buy option. It it trivial for them to sell fake batteries and packaging, as well as dangerous PSUs in identical cases and plastic contains. So fuck off yourself. The problem is not limited to gray products, the criminals have identically looking products down to the injection moulded cases and metallic stickers. Likewise with clothing labels, garden tools and car parts. Tosser.

Re:Amazon is becoming Alibaba

[Solandri]

I think blaming the customer is misguided. The problem is, one of those $2 Apple chargers is in fact real - made by the same factory where the real ones are made, but made after normal business hours. And people know it. That's what happens when most of the value of a product is in the brand name instead of the in the product itself. The huge delta between the cost to produce it and how much people are paying for it attracts counterfeiters.

This isn't really a counterfeiting "problem" - the counterfeiting is a symptom. The real problem is companies vastly overpricing their products, coming up with ways to thwart the introduction of compatible competition to the market thus producing artificial scarcity, instead of dropping their prices to compete (printer ink cartridges are another example). If the Apple charger costs $1.75 to make and Apple sold it for $2.50, people would gladly pay the extra 50 cents to buy it from Apple directly instead of playing the lottery with $2 chargers on Amazon. But instead Apple prices it at $29, and people decide it's worth taking the risk to play the lottery. They can lose 13 times and still come out ahead.

Re:Amazon is becoming Alibaba

[dgatwood]

No, the $2 Apple chargers aren't real. Folks have disassembled them and found serious design horrors in the counterfeit supplies. The outside cases are probably made in the same factories, but not the guts.

It took Apple a lot of effort to design power supplies that fit into such a small space and are still safe. The counterfeiters don't use their designs because they're too complex and cost too much money to make. Instead, they use hack designs that are cheaper to manufacturer and significantly more dangerous when they fail.

Re:Amazon is becoming Alibaba

[LeftCoastThinker]

What I wish Amazon would do is give me preferences settings in the account configuration where I can turn off non-certified sellers from any of a number of foreign countries, China being one of them. This would let the users vote with their wallets and Amazon would soon figure out that it is better off cultivating a number of key relationships with quality vendors in China, rather than flooding their marketplace with junk. On the other end, in China becoming a quality producer of goods for Amazon would become a coveted and valuable commodity to be protected from the jeopardy caused by shoddy goods.

Re:Amazon is becoming Alibaba

[Anonymous Coward]

Discussion of counterfeit sales really does need to be separated into two categories:
One is where the buyer thinks they're getting the real product. They are the victim. This is what most legislation is aimed at.
The second is where the buyer is content to buy a decent-quality fake. This is probably restricted to clothing, watches and a few other categories where branding adds a disproportionate amount of the value. They can still be victims if the quality is too low for the product to be usable (if it falls apart, or can be spotted as a fake with a casual glance).

Re:Amazon is becoming Alibaba

[geekmux]

Bullshit. I've brought a fair number of full priced products from Amazon's associates only to find they were fake.

A fair number implies you went back again and again after not learning your lesson the first time regarding grey market products on Amazon.

And you're too cheap to buy directly from the manufacturer or a more legitimized retailer to mitigate risk when it is important to do so (like car parts, batteries, and power supplies)

'Nuff said.

Fake, Greed, Lazy bad for business

[Anonymous Coward]

All the scum from eBay are popping up on Amazon now. Listings for $20 parts going for $500 and things like that are everywhere now. It's one of the reasons why I stopped going to eBay and started shopping more with Amazon. Seeing someone trying to be super greedy like that pisses me off and de-legitimizes Amazons 3rd party sellers. Another thing that pisses me off is when product descriptions or images are missing or incorrect. If I were trying to sell something I would provide plenty of pictures and factual information so my buyer can make an informed decision, it's respectful. What I see in some listings is 1 generic picture taken from someone else's website and description that is closer to describing a circus clown than the electronic part I'm looking at.

Here's a dumb question

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is Amazon suing, instead of simply kicking off the counterfeiters from their system? Are they suing, but still allowing the counterfeiters to list their products on Amazon? That makes no sense.

Re:Here's a dumb question

[Anonymous Coward]

3rd time somebody's asked and I'd like to make myself the 4th. Why clog up the legal system at all? Just give them the banhammer.

Don't get mad! Just fucking fix it!

Re:Here's a dumb question

[green1]

Because nobody wants to buy from the "legitimate" sellers because it's twice as expensive as just buying it locally. People want to buy from the counterfeiters because their products are exactly the same quality as the legitimate ones, but at far lower prices.
Amazon doesn't want to pass up this revenue stream because they know people won't buy on Amazon if their prices are always higher than retail, but they have to do "something" because the owners of the trademarks, patents, and copyrights are screaming mad because they want extra money and profit to call something "genuine" and Amazon isn't helping them maintain their artificial monopoly.
End result, Amazon takes a couple of sellers to court, fails to actually solve the "problem", but can tell the IP rights people that they did everything they could.

Re:Here's a dumb question

[dgatwood]

People want to buy from the counterfeiters because their products are exactly the same quality as the legitimate ones, but at far lower prices.

That simply isn't true, and anybody claiming otherwise is kidding themselves. At my previous employer, they were cheap and bought generic fake Lightning cables that looked like the Apple cables. The average life expectancy was about a week. By contrast, the typical life of real Lightning cables is measured in years, because unlike the fakes, the real authentication chips don't overheat and burn out when plugged into a charger all day.

But either way, with the sole exception of fashion products, the counterfeit makers are generally free to make and sell their goods, so long as they don't pass them off as legitimate. It isn't a huge burden to call something "Lightning-compatible" or whatever, and nobody would sue over that.

What causes problems is when they advertise their products as the real thing, causing their fake products to be commingled with the legitimate products sold by other sellers, and causing other folks to get blamed when they turn out to not be as good as the real thing, which they usually are not.

The products are usually not identical except in outside appearance. Often, the guts of the product don't meet minimum safety standards, and thus cannot be legally sold in the United States. But even if the products were identical, they would still have a higher failure rate, because counterfeiters typically cut costs by skipping burn-in testing, which means that all the DOA products get returned by consumers instead of getting caught early and never making it out of the factory.

Re:Here's a dumb question

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd argue the truth is somewhere in between you guys. SOMETIMES the counterfeit is as good as the real thing, or near enough so for the consumer to be content. I guess you have to be aware of what can happen if it's not. Definitely an issue for goods connected to wall power!

Stop combining sellers for "identical" products

[swb]

I really wish they would stop the practice of combining a bunch of sellers for a given product. It makes the reviews even less worthwhile because you don't know if a couple of bad sellers pushing fakes are tied to the bad reviews, nor do you know who the legitimate sellers associated with the good reviews.

Re:Stop combining sellers for "identical" products

[Anonymous Coward]

And Amazon also combines the products in their warehouses if the third party seller uses Amazon for shipping. So you might purchase from Amazon LLC, but get the fake product from the third party seller.

Re:Stop combining sellers for "identical" products

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think that's true, frequently the specific vendor has some ID on the actual product package that came fulfilled from amazon and they usually match. If you just click 'buy' without picking a seller you'll get mystery meat.

Re:Stop combining sellers for "identical" products

[AthanasiusKircher]

This hasn't happened to me (that I know of), but I've definitely seen a number of reports of people ordering "true Amazon" products and getting what appears to be a product from a 3rd-party seller from their "fulfilled by Amazon" warehouse portion. I don't know how often it happens, but it wouldn't surprise me if Amazon tried stuff like this to increase efficiency in distribution and shipping.

Re:Stop combining sellers for "identical" products

[petermgreen]

The amazon term is "stickerless comingled inventory". Sellers can choose to have their products commingled with that of other sellers and that of amazon itself. From the sellers side this saves having to label up the products with seller information. From amazon's side this presumablly makes logistics more efficient.

Which works great until you have unscrupulous sellers introducing substandard (fake, damaged, not new, not the correct model etc) into the supply chain. Customers can order from a reputable seller or amazon themselves and yet end up getting stock from the unscrupulous seller.

Some product categories are excluded from stickerless comingled inventory and amazon claims to track where the products actually came from, but apparently this is not enough to keep the problem under control.

Re:Stop combining sellers for "identical" products

[cerberusss]

The amazon term is "stickerless comingled inventory".

This is really interesting, and I didn't know this.

Now the problem is that I'm shopping right now for USB-C cables. Cables that adhere to the standard are notoriously hard to find. For instance, _all_ USB-C to USB-C cables have to carry at least 60W (20V @ 3A) but there's lots of shit out there that'll lie about that, and heat up. Now imagine what happens if you forgot and hooked up a 100W MacBook Pro with that cable.

So suppose a buyer wants to avoid buying products that come from "stickerless comingled inventory", can you simply go to Amazon and only buy products that have 1 seller or something?

The fraudulent acts hurt Amazon's business

[raymorris]

The sellers a) engaged in unlawful acts which b) harmed Amazon's business. Amazon can therefore sue for damages. proving the amount of damages will be tricky, that may be negotiated.

> Shouldn't Amazon just spot them, shut them down

Yes, Amazon should close the scammers' accounts, and they do, then the scammer sets up a new account the next morning.

> pass along any relevant information to law enforcement and the trademark holders and let THEM handle it?

In one of the two cases mentioned in TFA, the trademark holder did join Amazon in the suit. That combines the trademark holder's clear legal rights with Amazon's lawyers, money, and data - potentially a powerful combination.

Re: The fraudulent acts hurt Amazon's business

[Anonymous Coward]

Demonstrating "unlawful acts" in the absence of a successful civil or criminal prosecution by an actual rights holder will be difficult.

This rot has to stop. Society grants these companies monopolies over certain designs, ideas, or expressions as recognition of the (arguable) enrichment they provide to society. In return, instead of gratitude, these companies have been steadily pushing the cost of protecting that monopoly onto the public purse and now they are trying to push it onto other commercial entities. If Apple/Louis Vuitton/etc. feel their reputation in being impugned by imitators then let them fight it. When they get their court ordered injunction then other parties have a legal obligation to comply. Acting as Amazon is ensures that this cost shifting continues and removes any argument that Amazon is acting as a "common carrier" when the next "rights holder" makes untested asertions about a competing product.

If goods (patented or not) are in breach of law pertaining to safety then the correct avenue is to use those laws.

they better fix it

[liquid_schwartz]

I have heard several people I know say that there are whole categories of product that they never buy from Amazon due to the number of fakes. They were specifically talking about hair products but it also applies to many other things. At some point people will lose faith in the platform as a whole and stop using it (ie don't bother it's all knocks offs anyway).

Re:they better fix it

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason I haven't bought anything from Ebay in over a decade.

Re:they better fix it

[Anonymous Coward]

If they're buying WEN by that flaming Chaz Dean, they're better off getting the fake stuff. The real product dissolves your hair right off your head.

Step one

[Anonymous Coward]

How about Amazon allow customers to leave feedback for sellers. Right now, you can only leave feedback for products. What happens is that someone sees a good product review but can't determine if that is what the seller is selling.

Web of Trust

[drinkypoo]

Before Creative Labs brought out the MuVo MP3 players, that name was attached to a music-selling site which they paid to have developed and then did not bother to go live with. I configured and documented the hardware that they didn't use. I forget, sadly, what I'd heard they did with it afterwards. It was nothing too special, just some Compaq servers with a dual-attach FC RAID. The music info came from allmusic. What was interesting (and relevant to this discussion) was the software, which implemented a web of trust review system. You'd review a reviewer and then the review scores that you saw would be biased based on that score.

In order to fix the Amazon problem, we need a web of trust review system that permits us to rate sellers. Once you find a scrupulous reviewer you can rank up their reviews. This lets the user almost completely dodge fake review scores.

Re:Web of Trust

[Anonymous Coward]

This lets the user almost completely dodge fake review scores.

Until the fake reviewers start ranking up each other so others will trust them.

Re:Better yet - Give manufacturers control

[dszd0g]

Better yet allow manufacturers to police their own products.

1) Allow Apple to take down any product listed with the words "official" and "Apple", "iPhone", "iPod", etc. Allow Apple to ban sellers of counterfeit Apple products (with the right of the seller to appeal). Have consequences (fees) if Apple incorrectly reports sellers so that it isn't like the DMCA with no consequences for false reporting.

2) Allow manufactures to specify a list of approved re-sellers on amazon.com. For products with a lot of counterfeits on Amazon currently, this might be the best solution.

3) Allow buyers to report counterfeit products. If enough buyers report a seller as trafficking counterfeit goods, the seller is banned. Require a field of proof in the report. Some of the counterfeit stuff I've bought off Amazon (I didn't know it was counterfeit when I bought it) were missing stickers and logos and such making it pretty obvious when you compared the real thing and the counterfeit. Sometimes the logos are wrong.

It's not like the counterfeit products are benefiting consumers. The ones I've gotten have been within 5% of the price from other retailers. There is no way a counterfeit product is worth 95% of the real deal. When I see a product on Amazon that's half it's normal price that's a pretty clear indicator that it is counterfeit, but when it's 95% of the price, there is no way to tell until it arrives if even then.

It would be complicated and a lot of work, but I don't see any other way to crack down on counterfeit products.

A lot of products I can't purchase on Amazon anymore because I am almost certain to get a counterfeit product. Amazon needs to address this issue. Lawsuits should be part of it, but it won't solve the problem. Lawsuits should only be part of the solution.

simple

[Anonymous Coward]

In the UK,complain to Amazon that you have been sold an UN-safe product,remind them,of what the law says in English trading legislation,they are who you bought from,it's them that receives your initial payment and that you want a full refund.
You then threaten them with cancelling or not renewing your prime,kindle,audible etc memberships,if you do t receive a satisfactory outcome,then do what you threatened to do and not buy anything from Amazon.
You will then start to receive emails,calls etc from Amazon,answer all of them with the same reply,you sort my problem out,then do something obvious,concrete and long term to get rid of and keep out fake and fraudulent products and suppliers and I MAY consider re-joining Amazon etc and buying things through your sites..
It's called voting with the one thing you totally control and that Amazon need,yer money,when enough people do the above and it starts to hit Amazon's bottom line,they will move in a big way.
I have consistently spent several thousand pounds per year on Amazon uk for the last three years,I had a few minor problems,they refused to sort them,I threatened to not re-new my subscriptions,I did so three days ago,I am already getting emails/calls from amazon asking why...
Simple,withdraw the one thing they need,your cash,they will soon be forced change,even a.axon understand the law of diminishing returns,multiple subscriptions money upfront is way better than any theoretical future sale that never actually happens...

Too little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

The real crooks are Amazon for allowing this to go on for as long as it did. The same goes for Ebay.
They both ride at the "top" of the wave as this goes on.
So to maximise their profits, they let it go on for a long time until they have established such a stronghold in the market place that by the time they turn around and whip some asses, they have what they need to just carry on afterward unaffected as others consume the void to fill a need.

"Go Ahead, Sue Me"

[gordguide]

Not me, personally. I don't do the things Amazon is suing people (or businesses) for. But ...

You typically need to sue in a US court if you want to get any reasonable settlement that covers your effort and costs. If Amazon wins the lawsuit, and the loser doesn't pay the judgement, then Amazon can seize all their US assets.

And if the offshore vendor doesn't have any US assets?

Ummmm

Lawsuit: Fail