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Amazon Responds After Third-Party Sellers Put Bootleg Games on Its Store (venturebeat.com)
Jeff Grubb, reporting for VentureBeat: Over the weekend, some thrifty gamers spotted a deal on Amazon. A downloadable version of the tough strategy survival sim Frostpunk was available on the Amazon Marketplace from a third-party seller for $3, which is a 90 percent discount from the standard $30 price. But after looking into the game, some customers who dropped the three bucks had some questions. For example, why does the metadata for this version of Frostpunk refer to the DRM-free version that people can buy from GOG. [...] So I reached out to Amazon, and it provided the following statement from a company spokesperson: "Our customers trust that when they make a purchase through Amazon's store --either directly from Amazon or from its third-party sellers -- they will receive authentic products, and we take any claims that endanger that trust seriously. We strictly prohibit the sale of counterfeit products, and these games have been removed." That's all it would say on this.
And the sellers have been removed as well?
Well, yes. Amazon's end tail business model is pretty scummy, because it beats up on little companies without the resources to fight back. Most recently I've seen it happen to a T-shirt shop whose designs took off in Amazon marketplace: as soon as sales got above a certain threshold, Amazon duplicated the designs on their own Asia-sourced T-shirts and kicked the shop off of marketplace.
Some attorney will probably get rich someday with an IP-based class action vs. Amazon on this kind of thing, but until they do, it's best to support your favorite goods and shops directly.
Popping up as a new one. It is not as of their stock has been confiscated. Nothing a bit of scripting could not handle.
Because it all depends how much they get, not how much they did not get.
I bought a microSD card from Amazon and I got a fake labeled with more capacity than it really had. Amazon really didn't care; they got their commission. I had to fight to get a refund from a Chinese seller who is still ripping people off many years later.
I will never buy from Amazon again.
You can say what you want about Walmart and Home Depot and other retailers, but bricks-and-mortar retailers hate thieves more than anyone else. If they accidentally sell counterfeits, they take it very seriously.
Jeff Bezos may be the richest man on the planet but I feel like he's one of the most unscrupulous. I wish only the slowest and most painful of cancers on him.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Brick and mortar stores don't inspect each and every product as it comes into the store. That would be insane. Brick and mortar stores get their shipments from trusted sources and assume they won't get screwed over.The only way for Amazon to do the same would be to not allow 3rd party sellers at all.
First, unless it goes through an Amazon warehouse, the product is handled and shipped by the third party. Amazon is only the store front. Second, the third party could always provide correct samples to Amazon while then provide fake ones to the customer, unless they manually test each and every product(Would be counter to the first point). Third, if it comes to digital products, the people they hire would have to be very knowledgeable about every digital product they check. They would also need to buy multiple copies of the product through "personal" accounts to verify they're getting what the customer gets and that each time it matches up. Then, determine if the digital product they receive is correct and contact the developer/producer/etc and verify. Again, this would be for every seller of every product.
Target doesn't allow third party sellers. You don't have these problems if you stick to stuff "sold by Amazon", but everything else is sort of a flea market. IMO, fraudulent sellers in general are a big problem. If the Chinese seller ships you anything you're better than average.
Amazon needs to get on top of obvious patterns of fraud. If I can recognize that a seller is likely fraudulent, so can an algorithm. Some of the problems are more subtle and require a specialist to spot bad products (e.g., hard drives or camera lenses), but Amazon can hire those.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
We buy from known suppliers. We know who we're buying from and what we're buying. Amazon is selling anything from anybody. Those two things are opposites.
I don't know what you're talking about, opening every product and testing it before selling it. I don't know what that has to do with this conversation.
I don't respond to AC's.