Amazon remains totally complacent of these issues which are now professionally hacked by China based providers day in and out. Tons of vitamins are now fake and downright harmful. A lot of books, even small scale ones, are also fake and very low quality.
I tried to move my purchases to Walmart and surprisingly, even after 25 years, they haven’t got act together. Walmart even haven’t recognized that they should jump on this problem by prominently showing authentic brand logo or something.
I also tried to move all my books purchasing to B&N and again, surprisingly, they haven’t learned any real lesson in past 25 years. Their website is clunky, they charge $7 delivery fee, they can’t even deliver to my nearest their own shop for free!
Amazon is definitely riding on this utterly deficient competitors and that’s why they get to be so complacent.
canpan · 7m ago
The "incompetent competitors" is a big point for me. I prefer to buy from a more trusted local (in Japan) store. But it is so cumbersome! Buying something on Amazon is fast and smooth, and they have a huuge selection.
Regarding price, many stores here price fit, so Amazon is not actually cheaper.
gavinsyancey · 10m ago
For books, your local independent bookstore can order pretty much any book for you if you walk in and ask (if they don't already have what you want). They won't charge shipping, it'll just come with their next shipment from the publisher and then you can come pick it up. Or if you have to do things online, try https://bookshop.org
Amazon lists thousands of junk products from China that violate US laws around product safety. Toys containing lead paint, crib bumpers that can suffocate babies, etc. The process seems to be that Amazon just needs to remove the product in violation but it really appears that this is a wholesale attempt on Amazon's part to circumvent legislation. It should not be this trivial for consumers to find products that are potentially dangerous.
PaulHoule · 30m ago
AMZN is my last choice for buying anything. An attempt to buy this stuff
because my wife found one flavor, slightly expired, at the Amish market and liked it fell through when I tried to buy it straight from the vendor because they charged my credit card with a scammy-looking name neither I nor American Express had ever heard of. Can't get it at Walmart.com, so... (For that matter, Walmart had the first five books of Bocchi the Rock and #7 but not #6)
Ever since the time I saw a product listing though which made no sense at all and reported it and got a reply that they don't care if I didn't buy it I started losing trust. Didn't help that 2 day delivery became 5 days suddenly and the fact that I live in a rural area is no excuse because I used to see an AMZN delivery truck driving around in my neighborhood every Sunday. After I quit Prime they started giving me free trials or a week for $2 whenever I bought something and... now I get the 2 day delivery everyone else gets.
jekwoooooe · 3h ago
I would barely trust Amazon for authentic shampoo never mind vitamins. Are people so desperate to save single dollars they gamble with their health?
newAccount2025 · 41m ago
Aren’t vitamins a crapshoot anywhere? I thought there was basically no regulations on any of it.
PaulHoule · 35m ago
Lately Wal-Mart has been going head-to-head with AMZN on its own turf. They've got their own version of Amazon Prime, and many of the same third party sellers of the same questionable supplements and other things. Next day shipping seems to operate pretty much the same between the two as well.
lmm · 2h ago
It's not about being cheaper, it's about convenience. And realistically what's the more trustworthy alternative? Even the reputable high street shops sell homeopathy and bags of random herbs that might be the thing on the label, never mind picking a no-name online store.
rincebrain · 2h ago
I think part of the problem is also that how prevalent it is varies wildly by where you are, and therefore which Amazon distribution centers you're hitting.
To elaborate - in NYC, I usually avoid ordering from Amazon for anything where it's cheap or something health-related, but even when I've sometimes given up finding it easily elsewhere and bought it there, it's not been, as far as I could tell, a counterfeit item.
That's not to say I can easily prove that or that I'm encouraging people to order from there, but I personally haven't encountered boxes full of things other than the intended item, or the like, and I would suspect the problem's prevalence varies heavily with volume (and thus, turnover) and location.
Spooky23 · 1h ago
In mass market stuff… Target. They sell stuff sourced through normal distributor channels and have a good shipping and pickup operation. Pricing is competitive.
Supplements are a scam industry, so you’re always going to have issues there, that’s a feature of the business.
weq · 2m ago
100% Americans are complicit in making amazon the beheomoth they are. Convenience above all else. Ive shopped online for 20 years and never purchesed from Amazon. There are very few things that cant be bought form other e-vendors. Its just that they wont turn up next day.
Amazon perpetuates the stealing of IP to the point that they are the global leader. They use their market power to steal anything that makes money. Whether its directly, or indirectly as above.
kevin_thibedeau · 3h ago
Walmart.com is a rebranded Jet.com. They've only owned it for 9 years.
ungreased0675 · 1h ago
It’s surprising they’re not trying to take Amazon market share by eliminating scammy third party vendors and counterfeit products. I think people would be interested in an Amazon like service without the dropshipped and fake junk.
bmitc · 3h ago
And they have the same problems because they allow third party sellers. So far, Target seems it hasn't gone done this rode yet.
Rebelgecko · 2h ago
As long as they don't commingle inventory it's relatively easy to avoid (not sure if that's the case or not, but seems like most of the 3rd party sellers do their own shipping)
FWIW my main annoyance with Walmarts website is that it's not clear if you package is coming via shipping service like FedEx, who has access to my apartment complex, or just some dude in his car who needs to call me while I'm at work to be buzzed in
Spooky23 · 1h ago
Walmart is Walmart. They hire the cheapest people possible and treat them like shit.
I get stuff from Walmart all of the time from their delivery drivers. The catch: I’ve never ordered anything from Walmart.
fortran77 · 2h ago
Try Target.com
alister · 1h ago
In case there are readers who don't know who Clifford Stoll is, he's the author of The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage, that was practically required reading if you were a programmer or hacker in the early 1990s.
I didn't understand how hijacking worked on Amazon until I read this lucid explanation. Clearly he's still a great writer.
He's on Hacker News as CliffStoll. This makes me wonder how Hacker News deals with someone registering a famous person's name if they are not that person? I'm guessing that it's not a big problem here on HN because there's nothing being sold.
ednite · 6m ago
Wow! One of my all time favorite books and authors and the reason I got into this field. Thanks for that info.
dunham · 25m ago
I think that was the book that I read on my Palm Pilot. But it's been a while.
I had the klein stein at one point, but got rid of it when downsizing. It was hard to clean, so not practical for drinking, and not as pretty on the shelf as a classic klein bottle. I'd recommend one of those if you're thinking of getting one.
I think most younger readers will be familiar through his videos on the Numberphile YouTube channel.
godelski · 3h ago
This stuff seems to keep happening and the problem seems to be that it is ungovernable. How is someone supposed to fight this if they are not half as famous as Cliff?
bluGill · 11m ago
Look for other suppliers. For everything I'm interested in I can find some small shop that has real reviews and advice. it takes a little effort to find them but they know their product and so it is worth finding them-
dleslie · 59m ago
My prime subscription expires this week. Perhaps the correct response to this systemic incompetence is to simply no longer give them money.
kevin_thibedeau · 3h ago
Take them to small claims court for each violation.
rendaw · 30m ago
That's the "This is the hill I die on" approach. From all the lawyers (family) I've talked to, this is such a massively large money and time sink, regardless of outcome, that you should never do it, even if it means fraud goes unchecked.
hippich · 1h ago
Ianal, but afaik small claims are for purely money claims. I.e. you have to prove to judge/jury exact amount of your loss. It works well in case of fighting over debt. But more abstract damages are likely outside courts jurisdiction...
On the other hand... It is cheap to try and see what happens, as long as expectations are right.
MikeTheGreat · 1m ago
I don't remember why I looked this up in Washington state, USA a while back (bad work by a plumber, I think) but here in WA I think there's also a rule/law that you can only take individuals to small claims court.
There's also a dollar limit ($4,000? Maybe 15 years ago?).
But yeah, by law you can't drag companies into small claims court. It's meant to settle minor things like your neighbor accidentally backing into (and damaging) your fence, etc.
Aurornis · 2h ago
Using your infinite time and money for legal representation to run a large number of legal cases in parallel?
Waterluvian · 2h ago
Time and money, sure. But small claims in many (most? all?) regions are specifically designed to not require a lawyer. I think in some you specifically can’t bring one.
hobs · 6m ago
In most yeah, you need a special dispensation, and you probably just want normal civil court stuff then - its kinda the point of small claims to not need all the extra stuff.
justin66 · 2h ago
Please cite a single example of that ever solving this problem.
ceejayoz · 2h ago
Take who to small claims court? Amazon?
kevin_thibedeau · 2h ago
Yes. They no-show and you get a default judgement.
ceejayoz · 1h ago
Why would they no-show?
They're far more likely to throw a couple hundred bucks at a local lawyer to show up.
hsbauauvhabzb · 2h ago
I’m not sure it’s wise to fuck with the legal department of a trillion dollar company even if you’re in the right.
labster · 12m ago
Bezos is thankfully not Elon, he won’t seek vengeance on you for literal nickels and dimes.
hsbauauvhabzb · 4m ago
No, but making an example of you isn’t a bad business move.
bmitc · 3h ago
Small claims is such a huge headache, though. It's far more expensive for anyone person than the company.
hippich · 1h ago
First time - when you learning all the details - may be. But it wasn't that bad. I represented myself vs insurance company with the lawyer. I did not get full claim amount, and could do better, but I got more than what insurance wanted to settle for.
burnt-resistor · 1h ago
Cliff is awesome. The care and effort he shows rivals most Etsy sellers. (I have a Klein mug and gifted several more.)
AnotherGoodName · 2h ago
I honestly think sites like stockx where they open the package and verify before shipping it forward will overtake amazon despite the increased costs. Absolutely not invested in stockx in any way, just an opinion that was formed as follows;
Amazon was built on trust. I bought a book from them in the early days. It didn’t arrive after 2 weeks and they said ‘we believe you’ and they shipped me the book again at no charge. A week later i got 2 books, the first was lost in transit. Contacted amazon and they and no problem keep both and give one to a friend. I and many others were loyal to amazon after these experiences, paying more due to the lack of hassle and high trust. They became the default online bookstore thanks to this trust. It wasn’t even worth price comparisons, you looked on amazon and bought it there knowing you’d get the product you paid for.
That’s now gone. They have fallen to ebay levels of trust at this point. You’re likely to be shipped a box of rocks rather than what you wanted at this point.
People are willing to pay more for trust and the lack of hassle it represents. I want to buy a hard cover book that’s well printed. If i keep getting poor photocopies on tissue paper the trust is gone. I'll happy pay more to buy from a site where that never happens. I won’t even bother with price shopping when one site is a good chance of a scam and the other isn’t. In fact i’m pretty sure that’s where amazons dominance as the default online store came from and i’m shocked at how little care they have for this fact.
ChrisMarshallNY · 1h ago
Personally, I don’t get anything for more than $50 from Amazon, and, usually, not even that.
Amazon used to have the best prices, but that is no longer the case. Just a couple of weeks ago, I needed to get bulk cat food (for a bulky cat). I tried Amazon, but they wanted double what I would pay at chewy. So I got it from chewy, and will never look at Amazon for that kind of thing again.
I also tend to go directly to manufacturer Web sites, and order from there. The price is seldom much higher than Amazon, and I won’t have to worry that I’m getting a fake, or gray market junk.
Aurornis · 2h ago
> They have fallen to ebay levels of trust at this point. You’re likely to be shipped a box of rocks rather than what you wanted at this point.
Between eBay and Amazon over the years I’ve done thousands of transactions, including probably 100 as a seller on eBay. The way people on HN talk about these companies, you’d think I would have been victim to endless amounts of fraud. In reality, both companies have handled the rare issues that came up just fine for me and the vast majority of transactions were perfectly fine.
The HN comment section version of Amazon is pure hyperbole at this point.
I’m aware that there are problems and some people haven’t been as lucky, but do you honestly believe you’re more likely to get a box of rocks than the product you ordered? Or that people will pay large fees to have average products verified before shipping when Amazon takes returns all the time? This is just silly.
ungreased0675 · 1h ago
I’ve never had a problem with buying on eBay, but I have received counterfeit products from Amazon. In one case, it was an electronic gadget that was using a counterfeit chip, so the real drivers wouldn’t work. They did nothing to remedy the situation. Customer service didn’t even understand what my problem was.
dimitri-vs · 1h ago
Agreed. To add to this I often buy warehouse deals which is an order of magnitude more risky and the percentage of returns I've had to do is in the low single digits. Almost always it's an obviously brand new never opened product.
I tried to move my purchases to Walmart and surprisingly, even after 25 years, they haven’t got act together. Walmart even haven’t recognized that they should jump on this problem by prominently showing authentic brand logo or something.
I also tried to move all my books purchasing to B&N and again, surprisingly, they haven’t learned any real lesson in past 25 years. Their website is clunky, they charge $7 delivery fee, they can’t even deliver to my nearest their own shop for free!
Amazon is definitely riding on this utterly deficient competitors and that’s why they get to be so complacent.
Amazon lists thousands of junk products from China that violate US laws around product safety. Toys containing lead paint, crib bumpers that can suffocate babies, etc. The process seems to be that Amazon just needs to remove the product in violation but it really appears that this is a wholesale attempt on Amazon's part to circumvent legislation. It should not be this trivial for consumers to find products that are potentially dangerous.
https://www.amazon.com/stores/RIVALZ/page/5690A202-6DDB-42BA...
because my wife found one flavor, slightly expired, at the Amish market and liked it fell through when I tried to buy it straight from the vendor because they charged my credit card with a scammy-looking name neither I nor American Express had ever heard of. Can't get it at Walmart.com, so... (For that matter, Walmart had the first five books of Bocchi the Rock and #7 but not #6)
Ever since the time I saw a product listing though which made no sense at all and reported it and got a reply that they don't care if I didn't buy it I started losing trust. Didn't help that 2 day delivery became 5 days suddenly and the fact that I live in a rural area is no excuse because I used to see an AMZN delivery truck driving around in my neighborhood every Sunday. After I quit Prime they started giving me free trials or a week for $2 whenever I bought something and... now I get the 2 day delivery everyone else gets.
To elaborate - in NYC, I usually avoid ordering from Amazon for anything where it's cheap or something health-related, but even when I've sometimes given up finding it easily elsewhere and bought it there, it's not been, as far as I could tell, a counterfeit item.
That's not to say I can easily prove that or that I'm encouraging people to order from there, but I personally haven't encountered boxes full of things other than the intended item, or the like, and I would suspect the problem's prevalence varies heavily with volume (and thus, turnover) and location.
Supplements are a scam industry, so you’re always going to have issues there, that’s a feature of the business.
Amazon perpetuates the stealing of IP to the point that they are the global leader. They use their market power to steal anything that makes money. Whether its directly, or indirectly as above.
FWIW my main annoyance with Walmarts website is that it's not clear if you package is coming via shipping service like FedEx, who has access to my apartment complex, or just some dude in his car who needs to call me while I'm at work to be buzzed in
I get stuff from Walmart all of the time from their delivery drivers. The catch: I’ve never ordered anything from Walmart.
I didn't understand how hijacking worked on Amazon until I read this lucid explanation. Clearly he's still a great writer.
He's on Hacker News as CliffStoll. This makes me wonder how Hacker News deals with someone registering a famous person's name if they are not that person? I'm guessing that it's not a big problem here on HN because there's nothing being sold.
I had the klein stein at one point, but got rid of it when downsizing. It was hard to clean, so not practical for drinking, and not as pretty on the shelf as a classic klein bottle. I'd recommend one of those if you're thinking of getting one.
I think most younger readers will be familiar through his videos on the Numberphile YouTube channel.
On the other hand... It is cheap to try and see what happens, as long as expectations are right.
There's also a dollar limit ($4,000? Maybe 15 years ago?).
But yeah, by law you can't drag companies into small claims court. It's meant to settle minor things like your neighbor accidentally backing into (and damaging) your fence, etc.
They're far more likely to throw a couple hundred bucks at a local lawyer to show up.
Amazon was built on trust. I bought a book from them in the early days. It didn’t arrive after 2 weeks and they said ‘we believe you’ and they shipped me the book again at no charge. A week later i got 2 books, the first was lost in transit. Contacted amazon and they and no problem keep both and give one to a friend. I and many others were loyal to amazon after these experiences, paying more due to the lack of hassle and high trust. They became the default online bookstore thanks to this trust. It wasn’t even worth price comparisons, you looked on amazon and bought it there knowing you’d get the product you paid for.
That’s now gone. They have fallen to ebay levels of trust at this point. You’re likely to be shipped a box of rocks rather than what you wanted at this point.
People are willing to pay more for trust and the lack of hassle it represents. I want to buy a hard cover book that’s well printed. If i keep getting poor photocopies on tissue paper the trust is gone. I'll happy pay more to buy from a site where that never happens. I won’t even bother with price shopping when one site is a good chance of a scam and the other isn’t. In fact i’m pretty sure that’s where amazons dominance as the default online store came from and i’m shocked at how little care they have for this fact.
Amazon used to have the best prices, but that is no longer the case. Just a couple of weeks ago, I needed to get bulk cat food (for a bulky cat). I tried Amazon, but they wanted double what I would pay at chewy. So I got it from chewy, and will never look at Amazon for that kind of thing again.
I also tend to go directly to manufacturer Web sites, and order from there. The price is seldom much higher than Amazon, and I won’t have to worry that I’m getting a fake, or gray market junk.
Between eBay and Amazon over the years I’ve done thousands of transactions, including probably 100 as a seller on eBay. The way people on HN talk about these companies, you’d think I would have been victim to endless amounts of fraud. In reality, both companies have handled the rare issues that came up just fine for me and the vast majority of transactions were perfectly fine.
The HN comment section version of Amazon is pure hyperbole at this point.
I’m aware that there are problems and some people haven’t been as lucky, but do you honestly believe you’re more likely to get a box of rocks than the product you ordered? Or that people will pay large fees to have average products verified before shipping when Amazon takes returns all the time? This is just silly.
No but seriously, that's Cliff Stoll they're messin with.