You can get fined for selling counterfeit goods, and apparently if you sell through Amazon you can get fined for it even though the goods were put in Amazon's warehouse by some other merchant.
It's also pretty bad for the merchants. If you sell a product via Amazon, and it gets comingled with counterfeits from another merchant you can get fined because you ended up selling someone a counterfeit.
Let me check I understand this correctly: You could be a seller of genuine articles, but could be fined if Amazon substitutes a fake supplied by someone else?
It reminds me of the case where someone got in trouble with customs because Amazon substituted a counterfeit for the genuine article he ordered and paid for.
According to the article he really did sell a counterfeit item.
Presumably accidentally, and perhaps the punishment does not fit the crime, but he can't claim complete innocence here.
And this demonstrates that he doesn't understand how amazon works:
> When we sent out all of our items to the FBA program, they all went to 2 different Amazon warehouses. Now that I’m receiving them back, guess what? So far, the new sealed product has arrived back from 9 different warehouses. Yep, they’re sending back someone else’s new sealed items to me.
NO! Amazon has a program where they internally distribute items to warehouses all over the US to increase shipping speed. It does not mean they are shipping someone else's items back to you.
Counterfeiting is a crime in the US. The act of importing counterfeit goods into the US can get you arrested at the border, as an individual. However, Amazon seems to have been given a free pass.
Amazon flagrantly sells counterfeits due to comingling. Repercussions? Zero. As long as you're outside of US jurisdiction, the chances of you being prosecuted are close enough to zero to round down.
Amazon didn't handle any of the merchandise. It's Amazon Marketplace so it works like ebay, they just host the listing and process payments while the seller does all the shipment and the buyer is the one actually importing the counterfeit goods (this is what is illegal in the US). I don't think Amazon is the one at fault for the crime necessarily but they should be proactive in taking down counterfeit listings to prevent this. I've bought things on ebay before for what seemed like a fair price and it turned out to be counterfeit. I don't blame ebay for that but I wouldn't be happy if the same post was still up after I reported it for counterfeiting.
To anyone who receives counterfeit items sold on Amazon: alert the company that makes the real items. Amazon is violating the law by selling counterfeit products, and the companies can go after them for doing so.
True. Amazon also clearly has a problem with counterfeit goods (as addressed on HN repeatedly in the past), and that's not sufficiently enforced. But at least it's possible to enforce. That's not to easy when the shop is outside your jurisdiction.
Sometimes. It depends on the level of proof they have. I've heard from a seller who was banned after a distributor sold them counterfeit goods and Amazon gave customers refunds to the tune of over 50k.
All the investigator sees is that someone went to a website with your name on it, bought product X, and received a counterfeit of product X instead. It doesn't matter how that happened; all that matters is that your business enables counterfeit goods to find a market. Of course if you run a business that sells via Amazon you have to specifically opt out of this inventory mixing, even though it increases your costs. Either that or you shouldn't do business via Amazon at all, or you should gang together with other businesses and force Amazon to change it's operations. But no matter what you do it's likely to increase your costs.
Punishing consumers for ordering a product for which the supplier/supply chain sent a counterfeit which was flagged by customs is just dumb.
Importing and selling counterfeit products is already illegal. If the person has a 20' shipping container full of counterfeit product, maybe investigate it and level penalties.
But to disqualify someone from an entry program because of one counterfeit product, when clearly no one from Amazon, CBP, or the manufacturer put in any effort whatsoever to investigate, is just wrong IMHO. The article states the manufacturer took the lazy route and punished the innocent customer because going after Amazon and someone in China would be more effort/expense.
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