Amazon Japan ordered to pay 35M. yen for allowing listing of fakes

I wish this was more common.

I rarely, like once every 6 months, look for some obscure thing on Amazon. First thing I do after finding products, I research which one of the listing has any chance of not being a fake/dud/scam.

I can't imagine buying anything of value on Amazon.

Yeah Amazon is my last stop these days.

You wish paltry fines of the equivalent of $250k USD were more common for infractions like this?

Well, I'd probably shop at Amazon before Temu, but yeah, Amazon is the option of last resort. I do wonder how common that sentiment is, probably not very, even if it seems like at least the people around me never really use Amazon anymore.

It varieres from region to region obviously, but here there's no point in ordering from Amazon. Everyone else is cheaper, have faster shipping and don't have a ridicules number of scamming sellers with fake, defective and dangerous products. It seems like Amazon should be failing, but I don't think they are.

The Amazon store really have become an absolute shitshow.

I don’t buy anything over $50, on Amazon. Been burned by fakes and gray-market stuff (sold as legit brand).

Amazon definitely explicitly supports this.

What I do, is go directly to the product Web site (not the Amazon page for the manufacturer), and order from there. Sometimes, the fulfillment is via Amazon, but I know I’m getting the real thing. The difference in price is often smaller than you might think. Amazon prices aren’t that good, anymore.

Not GP, but yeah, more frequent fines, e.g $250k USD per fake listing would likely motivate Amazon to do something about it.

I have one use only from amazon. Since basically all books in print are listed there, I use the shopping cart as as a wish list.

At least with Temu I know I’m getting cheap Chinese crap, and they sometimes slip me $130 in my PayPal account after ordering $200.

Honestly, I'm surprised authorities haven't come down hard on these 'marketplaces' for neglience given how often they seem to completely ignore both safety and IP laws.

I guarantee a smaller company would probably be sued into oblivion if they were as relaxed about what they stocked as Amazon is. Same with an app store that was as willing to stock knockoffs and fakes as the iOS App Store and Google Play.

The fact these companies seem to be able to just stock anything and everything without any sort of oversight or quality control, and can just basically say "buyer beware" boggles the mind, especially compared to traditional retail and offline equivalents.

Exactly. I wish fines for selling fakes were more common.

If the fulfillment is by Amazon, how do you know what you are getting? I thought Amazon commingled all their stock in one bin no matter where it came from.

If the fulfilment is by Amazon, how do you know you aren't getting a fake? Is there a way to see if a seller is using commingled inventory or not?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20499808

Vendors using FBA have some control over whether commingling happens but I don't know if consumers have any way to know the current status of whether its commingled or not.

I would think that it would only take one or two incidents, to destroy that whole business model.

Vendors can be flexible, if the malfeasance is under the Amazon imprimatur, but it's a completely different story, if they act as fulfillment for a separate company, and substitute fake stuff.

Amazon is going to ignore this problem until enough people actually stop shopping there.

In the UK the retailer is responsible for refunding you for a dodgy item.

The one time I had a problem with an Amazon item it was immediately refunded.

They are still operating in the UK so can clearly operate profitable under these rules. You shouldn't accept anything less.

Same with France, also applies to warranty, or delivery issue, or... You buy from X you deal with X.

Not only is it much better for the customer, it's also clearly profitable.

It can also act as a differentiator, many retailers here including some big French ones tried to play around that law with the marketplace system, "we are not the seller just an intermediary", and while changes to the law is on its way to stop that it allowed Amazon to easily take over by not making that distinction.

There is still some issue about the difference between shipped by Amazon or not for the warranty request (not refund or fake or... but regular warranty issue), which I hope the law tackles head on.

I make a habit of asking support whether things I’m buying are commingled. First-level support used to be able to tell me pretty quickly (and I got both “yes” and “no” answers), but these days I’ve had to escalate most of the time. Kind of nuts to me that it’s worth ten minutes of support time and twenty minutes of supervisor time for them to sell me a $3 usb cable, but they’re the ones paying, so…

Untill you notice to late and fake washing machine burns down your house.

There was a wave of fake household appliances sold in the UK.

Amazon is ceaspool and should be shutdown for the betterment of humanity.

Dodgy af. The world needs less cheap plastic throwaway crap and China is happy to oblige as many would be.

Bit we can't help ourselves, I suppose. I'm also guilty of ordering cheap plastic crap.