Amazon Is Complicit With Counterfeiting
This is exactly what has happened to us. Our popular product The Anchor, the first under desk headphone mount, with 1500+ reviews, has been getting flooded with counterfeits. The current counterfeit seller, suiningdonghanjiaju Co Ltd (yeah they sound legit), has been on there for the past 5 days and taken all the sales.
They literally reverse engineered it, made steel compression molds, made the logo wrong, used fake 3M adhesive that’s very thin and was diecut smaller than the top (measure once, cut twice), they use a lower durometer silicone so it flexes more, its has huge mold parting lines, and the packaging is literally photocopied then reprinted (you can tell by the lack of image contrast). And they had to apply a big sticker to cover our SKU with theirs. But to the untrained eye, it would pass. Can’t wait for the negative reviews to come…
This is not a cloned product with its own listing on Amazon. Rather, the counterfeiter is listed as a seller on Elevation Lab’s own product page.
There is something extremely simple Amazon could do about it. If you have a registered brand in the Brand Registry and don’t sell the product wholesale - there could be one box to check for that. And anyone else would have to get approval or high vetting to sell the product, especially if they are sending large quantities to FBA. I imagine there are some algorithmic solutions that could catch most of it too. And it wouldn’t hurt to increase the size of the Brand Registry team so they can do their work faster.
Previously: Sellers Printing Counterfeit Books and Selling Under Amazon’s Brand, Amazon Selling Fake Apple Chargers and Cables, Amazon’s Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse.
Update (2018-03-05): See also: 9to5Mac, BuzzFeed.
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Amazon.com, not a reseller, sold me some kind of grey market LG G5 phone that is identified as uncertified, NFC payment won't work, there are no more updates forthcoming because of this, and even if you reflash with T-Mobile firmware, while those negatives go away, it can never be unlocked. Needless to say, I returned it.
Now, the phone was not a fake phone or anything, but the ROM status meant I bought an orphan product that will never be fully supported by anyone, not LG, not T-Mobile, no one. I'm just saying Amazon is a huge market place. Buyer beware. Read the reviews!!!! Then run the reviews through something like Fakespot https://www.fakespot.com/
As far as the linked content, yeah, I don't mind clones....store brands so to speak, it doesn't bother me at all. However, bootlegs are never cool. That's straight up fraud.
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Hopkins' degree of Stockholm syndrome is mind boggling:
"I love Amazon as a customer, I buy way too much stuff with Prime, I'm a long shareholder, and think they are on track to become the biggest company in the world"
So Amazon's lackadaisical approach to counterfeiting is destroying his company, but he's still a loyal Amazon customer and shareholder?! WTF? Boycott them, for crying out loud, and urge all your friends to do the same. Complaining on a blog is not going to change their bad behaviour one iota. Taking away their business, and telling them why, just barely might.