At Amazon, Some Brands Get More Protection From Fakes Than Others (bloomberg.com)
- Reference: 0153855211
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/21/10/18/176244/at-amazon-some-brands-get-more-protection-from-fakes-than-others
- Source link: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-18/at-amazon-com-some-brands-get-more-protection-than-others
> The first category includes sellers of some big-name brands, such as Adidas, Apple and even Amazon itself. They benefit from digital fortifications that prevent unauthorized sellers from listing certain products -- an iPhone, say, or eero router -- for sale. Many lesser-known brands belong to the second group and have no such shield. Fred Ruckel, inventor of a popular cat toy called the Ripple Rug, is one of those sellers. A few months ago, knockoff artists began selling versions of his product, siphoning off tens of thousands of dollars in sales and forcing him to spend weeks trying have the interlopers booted off the site.
>
> Amazon's marketplace has long been plagued with fakes, a scourge that has made household names like Nike leery of putting their products there. While most items can be uploaded freely to the site, Amazon by 2016 had begun requiring would-be sellers of a select group of products to get permission to list them. The company doesn't publicize the program, but in the merchant community it has become known as "brand gating." Of the millions of products sold on Amazon, perhaps thousands are afforded this kind of protection, people who advise sellers say. Most merchants, many of them small businesses, rely on Amazon's algorithms to ferret out fakes before they appear -- an automated process that dedicated scammers have managed to evade.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-18/at-amazon-com-some-brands-get-more-protection-than-others
Rely on the customers not the manufacturers (Score:2)
For many of these items, it's easier to rely on the customers. Most customers are going to notice a fake.
If the customers can return it for free and you pass the cost onto the scammer, it fixes this problem.
Also, they should make the rating of the seller more prominent. Stop pretending that everything is being
shipped by Amazon and let people realize that they are buying from a new seller with no history.
The decades old fake big MicroSD card scam. (Score:3)
Why is the decades old fake "big" MicroSD card scam alive and well?
Just search for "512gb microsd": [1]https://www.amazon.com/s?k=512... [amazon.com]
The first few are legitimate, followed by the fake "Hubmem", "NuiFlash", and "Alsinsen" cards. These will eventually get banned, and be replaced by others with different branding. The reviews on them are mostly fake.
It'd be one thing if this was a novel scam, but this has literally been constant on Amazon for at least a DECADE. At this point, Amazon, is a knowing and willing participant in this scam. This is fraud, being continuously committed by Amazon itself. How is this okay?
[1] https://www.amazon.com/s?k=512gb+microsd&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly the same stuff goes with countless other types of products, including non-electronic home appliances and whatever. There are many thousands, maybe tens of thousands or more, fake Chinese "brand names" on Amazon, most of which that sell items that are exactly the same as other Chinese "brand names" and "no brand" items. Everyone knows that Amazon is totally a part of this massive scam, complete with countless fake reviews. Why is nothing serious being done about it? Politicians are in their pockets,
Re: (Score:3)
To me the off-brand products that are unreliable or flat-out don't have the advertised capacity specs are actually the least insidious, compared to, say, trying to buy some legit Sony lithium button cells for something that actually needs to work when you power it on a few years later. I.e. it's when sellers try to pass of "Alsinsen" cards as Samsung cards that things get bad.
As with every other Amazon story (Score:2)
It's easy. Stop buying anything from Amazon.
Paywall (Score:4, Insightful)
Can we not have any paywalled stories? I'm not going to go through the effort of DOM manipulation for this.
Plus it's Bloomberg, so they're probably just trying to stir up shit about edge cases.
Mike and Jeff are rivals on several fronts.
Re: (Score:2)
There are two types of stories on Slashdot: those that link to paywalled articles, and those that are needlessly duped the next day.
Wait, there is only one type of story on Slashdot.
Re:Paywall (I don't know if this will show up) (Score:3)
There are two classes of merchant on Amazon.com Inc.: those who get special protection from counterfeiters and those who donâ(TM)t.
The first category includes sellers of some big-name brands, such as Adidas, Apple and even Amazon itself. They benefit from digital fortifications that prevent unauthorized sellers from listing certain productsâ"an iPhone, say, or eero routerâ"for sale.
Many lesser-known brands belong to the second group and have no such shield. Fred Ruckel, inventor of a popular