For the products that are actually regulated like the child support seats: hold Amazon liable for selling product that is illegal.
Make it expensive for Amazon to not police the shit that third parties are throwing on the marketplace - and soon you won't see any fakes any more.
You want to know where Bezos got his billions? Partially because Amazon outright shits on all the regulation that traditional brick and mortar places have - like, not selling product that is illegal, counterfeit or offensive.
There is already legislation that should give the FTC teeth to fine or shutdown Amazon based on counterfeit goods, especially if the branding is illegitimate.
Easy on that one too: make the seller partly responsible for the shit they sell. Amazon is profiting from the situation, so make them responsible as well.
The problem here is Amazon making it ridiculously easy for people outside of our legislatures reach to commit crimes. So, the logical option is to punish Amazon (and similar companies) for distribution of counterfeits.
Is it legal what Amazon is doing (or rather, not doing)? Well, make it illegal.
We need a regulator to crack down on Amazon. There are so many products with fake certificates, unsafe or straight up scams. If you report those nothing happens.
I think you solve it by making amazon directly liable for fraud on their platform. They’d clean up the problem pretty quickly after losing a few billion dollars in lawsuits.
If you held Amazon liable for anything bad a 3rd party merchant ever does, they will react by clamping down on all unverified merchants, and a lot of small/medium businesses will find themselves caught in the crossfire.
Amazon could handle that problem by helping the small merchants more though. Bezos does claim to be "obsessed with the customer" after all, and those businesses are his customers.
Allowing people who buy things on Amazon to get fake products is failing everyone in the whole supply chain apart from the business that supplies the fakes and Amazon itself. If I were Bezos I'd be quite unhappy about that.
Regulating that a retailer selling genuine products is nothing at all like zoning or funeral homes.
We need to empower states to regulate Amazon like any other retailer or have reasonable federal standards. In some cases states can apply the death penalty to retailers (revoking sales tax license) if they are perpetuating a fraud. You need regulators with teeth to compel positive behavior from a company are large as Amazon.
I think they should be liable, but I think even just enforcing the existing laws without making them liable would put a stop to it.
Just have the police start tracking down what warehouses counterfeit items came from, and getting search warrants to search them.
Apart from the fact that this would directly reduce the number of counterfeit's... repeatedly shutting down warehouses for searches would kill Amazon's bottom line. Cleaning up after the police would kill Amazon's bottom line. Etc.
It's not exactly justice, but it is damn effective. You can beat the rap but you can't beat the ride and all that.
Personal, expensive, and hard to evade, liability is the solution. Make Amazon liable for the products they sell and in turn Amazon will move mountains to make their sellers more liable.
Amazon has huge fraud and counterfeit issues that you dont have with traditional large brick and mortar sellers. This is going to be a major crack in Amazon’s armor in the same way that privacy was a crack for Facebook. Wait until Amazon sells some kind of counterfeit and tainted baby product that injurers or kills. It will happen and it will be on Bezos because Amazon is clearly turning a blind eye in the name of profits.
Prohibit Amazon doing business until they fix the problem.
You can bet the problem will be fixed overnight.
My wider point is this: Bezos knows this is happen, and the only way he gets away with it is because the USA doesn't have enough consumer protection and no desire to.
This has gone beyond fraud, it's abuse of customers.
I don't purchase baby food by Amazon. You can't trust the resellers. I don't understand how there aren't regulations on policing your marketplace for unlawful products, especially those covered by strict liability.
This whole legislation is a huge waste of time as a way to fight fraud and fake products. Do you really expect the consumer to try to track down some person via their address (which may be a PO Box) and try to sue them, only to have them say their merchandise was actually mixed with others and so they are not liable?
The much better version is to make Amazon fully liable for everything they sell, even third party merchandise. Amazon can then figure out what it needs to do to fix the issue. Consumers shouldn’t have to worry about it.
Whatever level is needed, so that if I'm buying a product made be Nestle, I know that it was made by Nestle.
I think the policy mechanism here should be liability:
* If I buy a counterfeit memory card on Amazon, and it loses my photos, Amazon should be liable for the cost and effort of those photos. If I am poisoned with bad medicine, Amazon should be liable for the damages.
* If I spend money on 400TC cotton sheets, and get 300TC cotton/poly blend ones.
* If I write a book, and Amazon sells pirated copies, I should receive damages.
* If a bad medical product injures me, or doesn't have the intended effect, Amazon is liable (with standard astronomical damages)
Critically:
* It should be easy to extract those damages (Amazon can't tie me up in court or arbitration), and when this happens at scale, this should be class action or federal / state enforcement.
* Damages should include reasonable costs of enforcement. They should also be set at a minimum at treble damages, since not all instances will be caught / enforced.
At that point, the actuaries can do their thing on reasonable level of effort Amazon should put in. That may be shutting down all fulfilment-by-Amazon, co-mingling, and marketplace sellers, very different fee structures, inspections / enforcement, or something else. I don't know.
I actually think the most likely outcome is a verified supply chain, where Nestle (or any other manufacturer) sends to Amazon and Amazon to me with no middlemen. Vendors in compatible enforcement regimes with appropriate treaties (e.g. US and EU) are allowed in, so long as they have everything in order (corporate registration, etc.) and are selling under their own name. Vendors where the long arm of my local justice system doesn't quite reach aren't allowed in, at least directly, unless Amazon does a lot more scrutiny to the level to the point where I have similar guarantees about product safety, quality, environmental impact, labor laws, IP, etc.
I would not set a similar bar for eBay or Aliexpress, which claim to be marketplaces and not stores. However, when I buy from Amazon, Walmart, Target, etc., I believe that I am buying from a store (even if the fine print says otherwise). I'd want a very clear distinction between the two. Part of the way Amazon got itself into deep trouble is by trying to mix the two up. If I'm shopping at a flea market, it's caveat emptor, and those can be fun for some things. If I'm shopping at a store, I expect a certain level of trust.
What is clear, though, is that Amazon isn't self-policing, and we need regulatory enforcement.
Disclaimer: I don’t own amazon directly but do own funds where Amazon is a significant chunk.
I don’t agree with this kind of regulation. It’s simply not the governments role to decide. You as a seller are not forced to sell on Amazon. I say that as the spouse of a seller who owns a store on EBay that’s continued to be successful. We had a bad experience selling on Amazon and are better off without them. Of course that’s just our experience but I’m not convinced Amazon is a monopoly here.
I do think Amazon needs to be held liable for fake products and whatever damage they cause its customers. Amazon simply selling goods with no liability of fraudulent items is a disgrace, and I don’t think they will change until we ram some regulation down their throat.
I really don't understand how a law enforcement agency is supposed to prevent fraud on Amazon, especially one constrained by national borders, when Amazon is a global platform. In what way do you propose a third party (not Amazon) reduce fraud on Amazon?
It is clear that Amazon and its management knows that they have a counterfeit problem. How about we all band together and file a class action lawsuit? I am sure there are many millions of people, consumers and businesses, affected by Amazon's active negligence of policing the authenticity of items in their marketplace. I would even say there are probably tons of smoking gun emails between Bezos and staff regarding these issues.
Sometimes the only way to get companies like Amazon to play fair is with the threat of a billion dollar settlement hanging over them. The free market doesn't always work.
Make it expensive for Amazon to not police the shit that third parties are throwing on the marketplace - and soon you won't see any fakes any more.
You want to know where Bezos got his billions? Partially because Amazon outright shits on all the regulation that traditional brick and mortar places have - like, not selling product that is illegal, counterfeit or offensive.
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