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Amazon's Jeff Bezos Called Out On Counterfeit Products Problem (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Here's the scenario. A small company designs and creates a product and puts it up on Amazon. Things go well. People really like it. They post hundreds of positive reviews. Sales build -- and keep building. Everything is going great. And then, boom, things go south in a hurry. Another company has created a counterfeit version of the product and is selling it under the same name only it's selling it for less, stealing all the sales. That's exactly what happened to Portland-based Elevation Lab, its founder Casey Hopkins said, accusing Amazon of being "complicit with counterfeiting" in a blog post.
The Anchor, Elevation's popular under-desk headphone mount, has been getting flooded with counterfeits, Hopkins said, noting the situation certainly isn't unique to his company. "The current counterfeit seller, Suiningdonghanjiaju Co Ltd (yeah they sound legit), has been on there for the past 5 days and taken all the sales," Hopkins wrote. Adding further insult to injury, he said Elevation has paid Amazon a "boatload of money" to advertise the product that it has "built, invested in, and shipped." Amazon has now purged the Suiningdonghanjiaju listing, which is noted in our cart as "no longer available from the selected seller." It instead defaults to Elevation's own stock. Hopkins told CNET that counterfeiters have been purged at least five times in recent weeks only to return a week later under a different seller name "to hijack the listing." He said it takes Amazon 5 days to remove the seller. "If you have a registered brand in the Brand Registry and don't sell the product wholesale, there could be one box to check for that," Hopkins wrote. "And anyone else would have to get approval or high vetting to sell the product, especially if they are sending large quantities to FBA [Fulfillment by Amazon]. I imagine there are some algorithmic solutions that could catch most of it too. And it wouldn't hurt to increase the size of the Brand Registry team so they can do their work faster." Hopkins took a final poke at Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, saying: "If you're reading this, come on, this is Day 2 activity."
The Anchor, Elevation's popular under-desk headphone mount, has been getting flooded with counterfeits, Hopkins said, noting the situation certainly isn't unique to his company. "The current counterfeit seller, Suiningdonghanjiaju Co Ltd (yeah they sound legit), has been on there for the past 5 days and taken all the sales," Hopkins wrote. Adding further insult to injury, he said Elevation has paid Amazon a "boatload of money" to advertise the product that it has "built, invested in, and shipped." Amazon has now purged the Suiningdonghanjiaju listing, which is noted in our cart as "no longer available from the selected seller." It instead defaults to Elevation's own stock. Hopkins told CNET that counterfeiters have been purged at least five times in recent weeks only to return a week later under a different seller name "to hijack the listing." He said it takes Amazon 5 days to remove the seller. "If you have a registered brand in the Brand Registry and don't sell the product wholesale, there could be one box to check for that," Hopkins wrote. "And anyone else would have to get approval or high vetting to sell the product, especially if they are sending large quantities to FBA [Fulfillment by Amazon]. I imagine there are some algorithmic solutions that could catch most of it too. And it wouldn't hurt to increase the size of the Brand Registry team so they can do their work faster." Hopkins took a final poke at Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, saying: "If you're reading this, come on, this is Day 2 activity."
This has plagued Amazon for the longest time, and what makes it worse is when the counterfeits get sent to Amazon's warehouse for shipping. People trust items that go under "Prime" and don't realize they may be marketplace items. I've gotten several fake batteries and other items, and while Amazon has refunded me, I know not everyone is so discerning.
Maybe if your product wasn't a 12 cent piece of plastic that you sell for $12 you wouldn't have such a hard time with counterfeits. What does your product do that the counterfeit product does not? It's a stupid plastic hook with a piece of double-sided tape on it. If I see one for $3 and one for $12 then I doubt I am going to give your company my money just so you can afford to show me even more stupid ads to inflate the price of your plastic crap.
Enigma
A few years ago I bought a camera tripod from a small specialist British company... It gets lots of regular (ab)use and is doing brilliantly. About a year after I bought it, I happened to see what looked like a mirror copy, only smaller, being sold on Amazon's web site.
With no more knowledge of the original company than having purchased one of their products direct, I picked up the phone and gave the company a call. Because it was a small British company at the time, the person who answered the phone turned out to be one of the owners... and we got talking. It turns out that he'd taken a phone call from Amazon one day, with the Amazon person saying something to the effect of,
"We've got a solid demand for your product, people asking us for something exactly like your current model range and enough to provide about £100,000 of orders. We're going to buy your product in bulk and sell it, and here are the terms you're going to agree to..." [ I'm exaggerating to make the point].
The small British company decided that they did not want to sell through Amazon, but, believe it or not, ensuring that this happened ended up taking a court case which - despite the win - cost this company a *vast* amount of time and money. In response, Amazon went out and started to purchase rip-off clones from a Chinese manufacturing supplier... Amazon are still selling the rip-off model on their site... This sort of scenario is going to be applicable in every case, of course.
By now, Amazon will know that some of the products they are selling infringe on original product designs from other companies, but in some cases there may be more to the story than Amazon simply being an innocent victim.
America needs the Chinese a lot more than the Chinese needs America. China sells to a lot more countries, which combined dwarf what the US buys. But the opposite is not true - the US depends on Chinese production to a very high degree.
With the dollar based oil economy being on its last leg, the US will lose more and more control, and protectionism will do more harm than good. Already, the rest of the world can go on without the US a heck of a lot better than the US can go on without the rest of the world, and as the last control measure dwindles, this is going to be even more apparent.
Chinese counterfeit products are known all over the world and people are wary of them. America is so insulated and well protected in the past by good law enforcement from fake products and infringements. So in some sense most American consumers are naive, unfamiliar to such scammers. Amazon is the big enabler and the race to the bottom will be very fast. Soon most Americans will learn not to be so trustful of the vendors.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
When the 'counterfeit' is just as good at 1/3 the price or less including free shipping, then the problem is not a matter of selling cheap counterfeits but having overpriced the original product.
Its amazing how someone can write an article that long and not even cover Amazon's lawsuit a few months ago.
If they're using a similar name and logo then that is probably trademark infringement, passing off, or the like, and as such would probably be against the law in most places in the West. If it's a registered trademark, that would surely be the case.
If they're producing a similar product but without any implication that it comes from the OP's business, those restrictions wouldn't apply. Other things being equal, that's just plain ordinary competition.
If there are other IP rights involved -- most likely patents or some sort of design right, depending on where you are -- then those might be infringed. However, these sorts of legal rights tend to need a more expensive and time-consuming registration process to acquire, so unless OP has done that, this area probably isn't going to offer much help.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
It's a hook to hang your headphone so it doesn't take up desk space.
Actually looks liker a nice product, I think I'll buy one.
Even worse Amazon pools them in with products they sell. So you may think you're buying razor blades from Amazon, but it's the counterfeit ones that Amazon sends you because they have the same packaging and UPC.
Amazon does not care. Sure you can get refunded if you complain, but the problem continues.
Amazon should end marketplace sales unless the seller is confirmed and not some shell Chinese company.
More than Amazon doesn't care, Amazon has no reason to care. I'm sure they get paid the same/similarly whether the product is the real deal or not.
Several years ago, I made the mistake of buying a MicroSD card for my phone from them. (Hey, I got burned, it doesn't happen often.) I got an 8GB card in a 64GB Samsung-branded package that looked like a 14-year-old's first attempt at making a fake ID, and I had to *fight* with Amazon to get the charges reversed. The seller even had the gall to demand that I send it back to them. A quick call to Samsung and the RCMP had Amazon cheerfully refunding to my credit card.
It's as bad as Pacific Mall in Markham.
How could any allegedly intelligent business leader not know how rampant the corruption is within his own company? I wipe my ass with Amazon. I hope they tank. I hope Jeff Bezos gets counterfeit chemotherapy drugs.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
This looks like something that I could ALMOST use.
Except that my desk is custom built by me and the keyboard drawer slides back so far as to make this thing useless.....
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
It's a hook to hang your headphone so it doesn't take up desk space.
Actually looks liker a nice product, I think I'll buy one.
Yeah, I don't care about the bad parting lines on the Amazon knockoffs...
(LOL - Just kidding. I'll get the real ones, from the manufacturer's site, I wouldn't trust Amazon to sell me cigarette butts.)
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I know - I'll get a regular coat-hook for $0.99 at Ace Hardware, screw it into the side of the drawers that way it will be out of the path of the keyboard tray, serve the same purpose, not need adhesive, and not violate any I.P.
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Oh grow up. NoScript is blocking 13 sites on Slashdot. Get with the program.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
"You Americans"
Please identify a single country on earth that doesn't do the same thing and buy cheap Chinese manufactured goods.
IF they were smart, they have registered their trademark. When a counterfeit item pops up, not only use a DMCA on the offending listing, sue Amazon for willful misuse of a registered trademark. Trademarks carry the force of patents - it's a Government granted monopoly on a logo and/or branding element. Use it. A few hits at Amazon and they'll quickly pay attention to anyone trying to use your trademark.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
No, the problem is that US businesses aren't competitive, and need subsidies and government protections like import tariffs to stay alive. As a manufacturer, why would I want to (or should I be forced to) have to pay more to get inferior American steel than I'd pay for higher quality Swedish steel? And as a retailer or consumer, why would I want to (or should I be forced to) buy inferior products made with American steel instead of higher quality steel? That's what happened in the Eastern Bloc, where tariffs made imports near impossible, and quality went down the drain. Protectionism is a communist/dictatorship "solution" that never works.
If a business cannot compete on either quality, delivery or price, it needs to go away and be replaced with something different that is competitive. Tariffs won't work in the long run - it's like peeing your pants to keep warm.
This kind of talk is why trade wars (and wars in general) start in the first place. Everyone gets focused on who would "win", when in fact even the "winner" gets hurt. Trade, done properly, can benefit both parties. Trade wars, consequently, hurt both parties.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
But then it won't have the brand name obnoxiously embossed down the front!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Go for it. When the half assed main bearings go south, good luck doing anything but tossing it. If you're just cutting up a 2 x 4 on occasion, no big deal to wait a week to buy another $60 wondersaw. If you actually need to use it on a regular basis, well, not so much.
Lots of 'home owner' tools out there. Black and Decker / Harbor Freight and a couple of others have been selling this crap for years. A main line manufacturer will give you decent main bearings, guide fences strong enough to actually cut in a straight line, bolts made of of real steel and the ability to actually get something fixed. But if you don't need that sort of support, be my guest.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Trade tariffs are a loose-loose measure. They are basically subsidies for companies that are not competitive enough, and by benefitting from the artifical trade barriers these companies become even less competitive internationally. It takes a while for these obvious and logical mechanisms to kick in, but in the end everybody looses big time.
or is that competition? If Amazon infringed on a novel patent I could see it being a genuine rip off. But baring that, well, it's a camera tripod. Maybe even a really nice one, but still a camera tripod.
Now that said, I do think we ought to start thinking (and doing something) about the scenario where Amazon eats the world. Once everyone else is out of business it won't end well for us working stiffs.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
China can't feed it's population without our granaries. Also, you're massively underestimating the power of modern logistics. We need Taiwan for CPU manufacturing. That takes decades to build up. Everything else can be up and running in 5 years or less.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Well, you should do what a self-respecting nerd would do: make your own.
As for whether the price should be based on the marginal unit production cost, by that argument the price for proprietary software should be zero.
If you sell things, the production cost is just part of the costs you have to accrue. You have development and marketing costs too, and overhead. After all that you have to pay yourself. For low volume items the costs of these things is a big fraction of the retail cost.
Now if somebody just copied the idea, that's actually fair game under our system if it's not patented. But counterfeiting is freeloading on all the marketing costs by the original developer. And even if you don't think that is wrong, there is the fact that you are misrepresenting what you are selling to the consumer. The honest approach would be to reverse engineer the product and tell the consumer that you'd done so.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I could have designed that thing in under 5 minutes in SolidWorks and had it printed up in about an hour and a half.
Companies like this need to fuck off and die.
With that kind of logic the US would have never stopped being a colony of the UK. Exporing raw materials and importing manufactured goods. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I'll tell you the name of one such company: Samsung.
"ou Americans need to pull your heads out of your asses and fix your fucking society so you don't NEED to buy cheap Chinese shit."
We know and we are trying to figure out how to do it. We elected Trump to speed along the process. It has so far gone nicely. We have to deal with Trump but any catalyst for a change in direction was game--and so it had to be done. Get the popcorn.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
You are correct. This war started decades ago. I wonder what action spawned this reality?
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
If we stop labeling them with words like "republican" then perhaps we will see these people for who they really are?
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Chris? Is that you?
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
"Nice except the $500 American version paid for patents, marketing, American jobs, American taxes, social security, etc. The Chinese one had none of those inbuilt costs. That's why tariffs are supposed to exist to ensure that globalism doesn't become a one way street for money and goods to flow out of a country but never back in. Without proper trade regulations and tariffs it's just a system to bleed a country dry. Fortunately it seems like we're finally coming to our senses." --AC
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Second-hand account: A government organization purchased a large quantity of cheap network cards. The reason they were so cheap was that it was a mass-produced knockoff, where all the network cards were identical down to the MAC address. This resulted in a MAC address conflict that brought down the local network, and the counterfeit company ran off laughing with their money.
If you see a cheap knock-off, it is likely to be a cheap knock-off that will cause problems if you need anything more than basic use.
If they were competing, they would use their own brand name (or perhaps no brand name) rather than trying to pass their own product as something else.
"If you have a registered brand in the Brand Registry and don't sell the product wholesale, there could be one box to check for that," Hopkins wrote. "And anyone else would have to get approval or high vetting to sell the product
I've seen exactly this happen. Amazon restricts some brands or even whole categories until you provide paperwork showing you've either bought it from a reputable supplier or have written permission from the brand owner.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
i seen it myself, i would find a good product, but not be able to afford it, a few weeks to a couple months later i search amazon for the product and its gone but there are knockoffs that look the same under a new seller with a new account, i even bought clothes and the product delivered to my door was not the same as advertised, amazon is doing the same dirty bait & switch crap ebay has been famous for in the past, somebody needs to do a class action lawsuit on Jeff Bezos and amazon, they need to be in real trouble for this, because if they dont it will contine
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Canada, Mexico, China, & Japan.. order of biggest buyers of US goods. Japan buys 1/2 as much as China. China buys 1/2 as much as CA & MX.
US, Hong Kong, Japan, S Korea... order of biggest buyers of Chinese goods. The US buys 2.5x SK.
The only winners when two partners who are highly reliant on each other, wage war.... is no one; not even everyone else.
Believe it or not, even with the unemployment where it was in 2010, the US does not have the labor force to produce at the level of the Chinese. We would basically go without many of those goods. The Chinese can not keep floating their currency, make all those infrastructure investments, nor keep the people content without the US demand for labor units.
The US is bitching and complaining about two of its three biggest trading partners. That is stupid and a disaster in the making.
America needs the Chinese a lot more than the Chinese needs America.
That simply couldn't be further from the truth... as evidenced by the simple fact that China continues to demonstrate their willing to expend vast resources to prop up our demand or their shit.
Try harder next time.
If you are buying an apple product that is cheaper than you can get it from one of the well known mac Resellers like MacMall, then it's a fake.
I've gotten some lovely fake apple earphones from amazon. Visually identical, and with packaging declaring it made by Apple. But they sounded crappy, fell apart, and the packaging lacked high end finish.
I knew they were fakes immediately and the seller said keep them but don't give us negative feedback. I told Amazon but nothing happened. They and a zillion others like them pop up like whack a moles.
Recently I've seen a new scam in which ludicrously cheap gaming computers are on sale. You add them to your cart. They say in-stock. and then when you check out they vanish and go to out of stock for a few hours. When you write the seller they try to get you to buy it directly outside amazon for an even cheaper price. Nice scam. I've reported them to Amazon but nothing happens. The marketplace ads themselves disappear and new ones show up.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Since amazon often merges all the reviews for a given UPC, the reviews saying a product is fake will also tar a vendor not selling fakes. The feedback for vendors is ineffective since they come and go.
What amazon should do is anytime someone leaves a review they should ask if this review about the vendor, the product or both. Then list the vendor in the Review.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
As someone who lives in a country from the former Eastern Bloc, I totally agree.
It's exactly what happened: forcing locally-produced stuff rapidly decreases their quality (no competition, why should they bother with quality), keeps or increases their price and the customer is screwed.
There was a point in time when smuggled goods (razor blades) from the Western Bloc were better still cheaper than locally-produced ones (which you couldn't find much of anyway), eerily 1984-esque.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
What are you even talking about? No one involved in any of this is opposed to legitimate competition (e.g. someone selling their own product for whatever price they want to set). The problem here is that someone is falsely claiming to be selling someone else’s product when what they’re actually selling is something else entirely.
The cheap knockoff company is selling a counterfeit item that purports to be the real deal by illegally using the brand name’s trademarks, packaging, and nearly exact product design. No one is suggesting they shouldn’t be allowed to sell their own product under their own name for $1.50. But instead of doing that, they’re falsely claiming to sell a name brand thing for less, literally stealing sales from the name brand in the process.
And even if you don’t care about brand names (which I have no problem with), you should care about people getting what they pay for, which isn’t happening when these counterfeits get sold in place of the real goods. That’s fraud, plain and simple. The fact that you’re dismissing illegal activities that are hostile towards both legitimate businesses and consumers as nothing more than someone crying about competition is astoundingly absurd.
As for whether the price should be based on the marginal unit production cost
Absolutely not my argument. The cost should be whatever the market will bear. Unfortunately for this company, anyone can make even low-volume injection molded silicone rubber for well under a buck. Hell, you could 3D print this thing for around $5. That means competitors that will undercut their high $12 price. I mean, it's a hook...
But counterfeiting is freeloading
Agreed, and Amazon was in the wrong. They seem to have fixed the listing, but if people are allowed to sell generics under brand-name listings, that is a huge problem.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Is English that difficult for you?
It's redundant enough that you should be able to make sense of things even when they miss a word here or there, though "Amazon's Jeff Bezos Called Out On Counterfeit Products Problem" isn't missing anything. It says who was called out. It says what they were called out for. It doesn't say who did the calling out, but that's not important because Bezos is the party that matters.
Bezos doesn't care about you, your business, your health, welfare, or anything except getting your money off you and into his pocket. He doesn't care if you are a thief, a slaver, or a drug-dealer. He doesn't care if the money comes from legal, illegal, or ethically-dubious sources. He doesn't care if you made it by selling people, animals, burning the rainforest, or conning old women out of their life savings. The only thing that matters is that it comes to Amazon.
Bezos is a sociopath, pure and simple.
Don't
Buy
From
Amazon
EVER
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Can't even do that, because with Amazon Fulfillment, you don't actually know whose product you received-- just who claimed the order.
let alone the DVD itself not playing
You mentioned the unholy duo of "Disney" and "DVD".
Disney's anti-copy measures can be described as "I've altered the deal, pray I don't alter it further." They produce discs which aren't entirely compliant with the standard, and they don't play in many devices -- and even destroy others.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
If we stop labeling them with words like "republican" then perhaps we will see these people for who they really are?
Should clarify. Do you mean Republicans in name only (RINO) or a real Republican?
Strip away the word Democrat and you'll see who they really are - racist bigots. Just look up Senator Byrd - a recent Senator. Also a KKK Grand Dragon. Right back to Dem Governor Wallace and the Jim Crowe laws. This goes back to the civil war. The Dems were the south, the Reps were the Union. They've been trying to destroy the US ever since the civil war.
This needs a mod point.
Cheap storage VM.