Comment by mikeash
7 years ago
Amazon is also an extra layer of insecurity. Let’s say I buy a widget sold through Amazon by a trusted manufacturer. Some third party is also selling counterfeits. Amazon considers the two products to be the same, and sends me a counterfeit from the third party.
Seems to me that the alternative is simple: mandate that you receive what you ordered, and make the storefront you order from liable for any problems.
I admit that it isn't clear if Amazon can reliably have you choose from what vendor you are buying. That said, not all manufacturer have a storefront. A lot of items can only be purchased through some middleman. And it is hard to validate that a particular vendor is the actual manufacturer and not just pretending to be.
So say you wanted that product, and googled for a vendor, and you found xmanifacturer.com. How would you know to trust that? Also, I forgot to mention price. What if you find the item at xvendor.com at a cheaper price, and wanted to buy there? To me, that all just seem even less reliable.
It's actually trivial. If someone pretends to be from foo corp you call foo corps official listed number and inquire. If someone is an individual you ask for an identity document like a drivers license and keep that on file and associate that with all sales. You track who sends you widgets. This is trivial to do with increasingly cheap rfid tags.
For reference Walmart individually tags 10pks of cheap socks so it can via a wireless reader count how many Large foobrand packs of socks it has because it can differentiate between pack 5435454545 5435454546.
You can even give the user the ability to choose between getting shipments slightly faster by allowing you to fulfill their order via the closest item and send the info about fulfilling vendor along with the order OR get it slightly slower via the chosen vendor.
Amazon is technically excellent in a lot of ways its hard to imagine this would actually be hard for them they just don't want to.
Sorry, I meant for the customer. I agree that Amazon could both better validate and indicate to the customers which vendor are the official manufacturer, as well as allow you to opt out of comingling and actually say you want the item to have been from that vendor (even if at an extra cost)
But if there were no marketplace such as Etsy, Amazon or Ebay, I think it would be harder for the customer to trust a random website. At least with these marketplaces, you can trust the payment channels, the security of the data you give them, that the support contact will be responsive, that the item will be delivered properly and at all, etc.
If they’re at the top of the Google search results for “manufacturer” then you’re probably good. Cross check with Wikipedia if you want to be sure.
If you find some random vendor with a cheaper price then you need to make a decision about how much you trust them and how much it’s worth to you.
All of this is pretty standard and expected. The problem with Amazon is that people expect them to be trustworthy, and apparently when it comes to receiving what you order, they often aren’t. People’s defenses against scammers don’t work here because Amazon doesn’t look like one. And yet they will tell you “sold by X” and sell you a product from Y instead without ever telling you.
Stores should be legally liable for what they sell. If they want their suppliers to bear the burden then they can add indemnification to their contracts.
I don't know why Google results would somehow be less likely to be abused by fraudulent vendors then Amazon, Ebay or Etsy is for example.
I do think your point about these big vendors maybe providing a false sense of security is a good one, though I think it applies to Google results as well.
I don't know about legally liable though. I think that's where I'm more nuanced. If you impose that rule, than you kill marketplaces, everyone becomes individual retailers again, and Amazon, Ebay and Etsy becomes newer Walmarts. The selection shrinks again, prices go up, most manufacturers stop selling direct to customers again, since there are no cost effective ways for them to be a store anymore, and now you have fraudulent storefront opening up as websites again which will play the SEO game and potentially do even more damage to the customer then counterfeit, like just outright not shipping the item at all, or charging your CC for more money, or reselling your data, etc.
At the minimum, I'm not saying this could happen, but before enforcing these new regulations that you are proposing, we'd need to evaluate that it won't actually make things worse for the consumers. And in this case, I can see a case for it.
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