Comment by mikeash
7 years ago
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.
You can pretty easily observe that they aren't. Try to find a company where googling the company name shows you a top result that is actually another company with a storefront selling the same products. Now try to find an Amazon listing for a company's products that includes a third-party seller.
It's easy to see why. Google's entire reputation is based on providing good search results, to the point that "to google" has become a verb meaning to search the internet. They put a vast amount of effort into ensuring that they provide good search results. It is possible, with nefarious SEO and such, to beat out legitimate results sometimes, but it's not easy or reliable.
Amazon, on the other hand, doesn't seem to care. Sign up to sell a product, done.
Why would a liability rule kill Amazon? They can make it a part of their seller agreement that the seller indemnifies Amazon for all liability. This is different from making the seller directly liable because if the seller bails out, Amazon it stuck with it. This means that Amazon will have to make sure they can actually get satisfaction from sellers. There are many ways this can be accomplished, such as requiring the seller to have liability insurance with sufficient coverage.
I'm sure that such a rule would result in Amazon losing a bunch of tiny, no-name, untraceable sellers. Which is, of course, the whole point.
How is failing to ship the item or charging too much worse than counterfeiting? Both are trivial to counteract: initiate a chargeback with your credit card company. The same is true for counterfeits, if you detect them. The whole problem with counterfeits is that it's hard to detect them. If it was easy, this whole thing would be moot.