At Amazon, Some Brands Get More Protection From Fakes Than Others (bloomberg.com) 13
There are two classes of merchant on Amazon.com: those who get special protection from counterfeiters and those who don't. From a report: 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.
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.
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:4, Informative)
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 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.
Amazonâ(TM)s marketplace has long been plagued with fakes, a scourge that has made household names like Nike Inc. 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 doesnâ(TM)t publicize the program, but in the merchant community it has become known as âoebrand gating.â 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 Amazonâ(TM)s algorithms to ferret out fakes before they appearâ"an automated process that dedicated scammers have managed to evade.
Amazon says it works hard to proactively police its marketplace, including requiring increasingly detailed verification of seller accounts. The company didnâ(TM)t set out to create two classes of sellers, but merchants like Ruckel say that is the reality and have started taking their grievances to Washington, where lawmakers are considering new regulations for online marketplaces like Amazonâ(TM)s.
Ruckel started his company, SnugglyCat, in 2015 and began shipping orders of the Ripple Rug from his home in New Yorkâ(TM)s Catskill Mountains. Mostly manufactured at a plant in Georgia, the product is basically two sheets of carpet, one with a set of holes, that can be shaped into a cat jungle gym held together by custom Velcro strips. Ruckel is the sole distributor and doesnâ(TM)t sell the cat mat to wholesalers or any middleman.
relates to At Amazon, Some Brands Get More Protection From Fakes Than Others
Fred RuckelPhotographer: RUCKSACKNY
In August, Ruckel received an email from a longtime customer: Other sellers were listing their own âoeRipple Rugs,â violating not only Ruckelâ(TM)s designs, but his copyright. By offering the product for a lower price, they had snagged prime placement in the âoebuy box,â the first product customers see and are most likely to buy. Amazon, which groups identical products together on a single page, had inadvertently given the counterfeiters prime placement.
Amazon support teams removed the first few listings Ruckel flagged. But like clockwork, new sellers popped up. Growing desperate and dissatisfied with Amazonâ(TM)s response, Ruckel defaced his own product listing, superimposing an SOS on top of the cat mat and warning shoppers to email him before buying.
âoeThe easy fix was Amazon simply locking the product down,â Ruckel said. âoeA small business should not have to expend so much energy.â
An Amazon spokesperson said the company does not allow counterfeits. âoeWe protect all brands, regardless of size,â the spokesperson said by email, adding that more small- and medium-sized businesses than large brands were enrolled in programs designed to block suspected scam listings before they pop up. âoeIf we detect suspicious or abusive behavior, we investigate quickly and make improvements to better protect the brand.â
In SnugglyCatâ(TM)s case, Amazon said there was a mismatch between the brandâ
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:4, Interesting)
Just search for "512gb microsd": 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?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
You should look up flash drives in the Wish platform.
I once purposely bought a usb 2 flash drive, claiming to be 4tb or some other absurd size for about 10 bucks. Absurd size cos those capacities were uncommon about4 years ago, when I got it.
I knew full well that it was 99.99% fake, but wanted to see what was actually being sold.
I created a bunch of random data in the multi GB size and started to copy it into the card. Transfer speed was about 1-2MB per sec, and although it did not stop me from copying data
Re: (Score:1)
Yeah, there are so many obviously fake USB drives and SD cards it's just ridiculous.
But I think SanDisk are one of the 'lucky' brands with brand protection. All their stuff seems genuine, and for the capacities I was buying (32Gb) cost very little anyhow (I bought two and verified them, they were fine).
For a laugh, try searching for "2tb usb stick". On Amazon UK, the first result has a load of 4/5 star reviews - for some sort of printer cleaning product. The one star reviews basically say 'fake', 'fails im
As with every other Amazon story (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)