Very few products on Amazon are sold by the creator. Virtually everything is sold by a mixture of middlemen and importers and drop shippers.
Its virtually impossible to tell the difference between a product I'm middle-manning that's interpreted by investigators as real, vs a product that's interpreted as fake.
With books, nobody really minds if conceptually a book sat unopened on a bookstore shelf with the general public touching and pawing it occasionally vs a book that sat pristine untouched and cleaner on my home bookshelf, although one is marketed as "new" and one as "used", but in practice it usually doesn't matter. Also see the weirdness with $10 "indian subcontinent only" textbooks that normally sell for $200 to sucker american students, nobody complains their book was "fake" with a 95% discount to keep them quiet.
On the other hand, do that same game with toothbrushes and in roll the complaints.
This may be a problem inherent to online shopping in the long term. A copy of "Numerical Recipes in C edition 3" is a fungible commodity. Apparently, as per the linked article, that is not the case with fad overpriced gloves and toothbrushes. Possibly that type of product is inherently unsuitable for online purchase.
Regardless of whether the product is overpriced or fashionable, I want the correct product, without the shortcuts taken by a fake: unsafe paints, plastics etc.
I don't mind "Philips-compatible" brush heads being listed, but the description should be clear.
Otherwise we may as well repeal all trademark, copyright and product safety laws.
Several of the examples in OP are admittedly not counterfeit but simply look too similar to a name brand, or are older versions. Neither is illegal per se. (Assuming there's no design patent, and the product page doesn't specify year of manufacture or exact model number, which is common.)
Counterfeiters counterfeit the medium, not the information. It's mostly harmless to consumers in cases where it's the information that matters (books, digital content). It's harmful when the physical medium is the product.
Elsewhere in the discussion, 'erentz says:
> I see the Amazon fake products problem as related to the social network fake news problem.
I think they're right in more than one way. It's not only the platform vs. publisher issue. Fake news are the information goods equivalent of counterfeiting - faking the bits, not the medium.
I agree that the ambiguity between 'like-new' and actually new, but mildly shopworn would make it hard to tell a material difference between the two occurrences, however this:
> nobody complains their book was "fake" with a 95% discount to keep them quiet
This is conflating dishonest substitution of counterfeit goods with consensual purchase of a lower-quality product. If I'm not explicitly purchasing the 'international' version of a book, I would consider myself harmed and defrauded if its materials and construction are not up to expected [North-American / Western / ?] standards.
The user explicitly consenting to purchasing a knock-off is another thing entirely from having the seller 'fulfill' a purchase for a genuine item with the same knock-off.
>Possibly that type of product is inherently unsuitable for online purchase.
You're confusing online purchasing with "Amazon's approach to online purchasing." They are not the same thing. It's possible to manage the supply chain when selling online just like brick and mortal retails already do. Of course, you don't make as much money in the process.
Its virtually impossible to tell the difference between a product I'm middle-manning that's interpreted by investigators as real, vs a product that's interpreted as fake.
With books, nobody really minds if conceptually a book sat unopened on a bookstore shelf with the general public touching and pawing it occasionally vs a book that sat pristine untouched and cleaner on my home bookshelf, although one is marketed as "new" and one as "used", but in practice it usually doesn't matter. Also see the weirdness with $10 "indian subcontinent only" textbooks that normally sell for $200 to sucker american students, nobody complains their book was "fake" with a 95% discount to keep them quiet.
On the other hand, do that same game with toothbrushes and in roll the complaints.
This may be a problem inherent to online shopping in the long term. A copy of "Numerical Recipes in C edition 3" is a fungible commodity. Apparently, as per the linked article, that is not the case with fad overpriced gloves and toothbrushes. Possibly that type of product is inherently unsuitable for online purchase.