Comment by tracker1
7 years ago
Or at least require a deposit for sellers of a non-insignificant amount, a hold on new seller payouts for up to 30-60 days and per-seller stickers on intake inventory so sellers of counterfeits can be rooted out better.
Also, allow product manufacturers who sell directly, to block other sellers on the platform for their products and handle reports for alike-named and-or brand confusing products.
Amazon does very little to actually do anything meaningful to limit counterfeit products.
Screw the deposit. Amazon itself should be liable if they don’t track who actually sold the merchandise.
Amazon does track the original supplier.
From their seller help pages:
> Note: Amazon ensures that the initial source of the commingled units can be traced throughout the fulfilment process.
> Important: Amazon ensures that the exact same units from two sellers, participating in the commingling programme, are always physically segregated. This means that Amazon storage logic does not allow same ASINs of different sellers to be stored in the same bin in our warehouse if they are commingled.
In other words, Amazon ensures that commingled items are never physically commingled.
For a public source, see e.g. Amazon comment in this article: https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2019/04/03/1554287401000/Amazon-... (outline link: https://outline.com/4R7fp6)
> The system is purposefully designed so that similar products are not placed next to or near each other, and Amazon can also track the original seller of each unit.
The next sentence of your last paragraph says:
> Sellers are able to choose whether to share identical inventory or not.
That seems to indicate physical commingling. IIRC, avoiding commingling has an additional cost to the seller.
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> Also, allow product manufacturers who sell directly, to block other sellers on the platform for their products and handle reports for alike-named and-or brand confusing products.
They do have a program for this, I believe: https://brandservices.amazon.com/
FWIW, they’ve started a program to apply serial numbers to individual units. It takes time to shift large platforms like this.