Amazon fights against counterfeit OtterBox and Vera Bradley products

Greg S

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Offering millions of items for sale on an ever growing marketplace makes it difficult to review every product being sold. Fake products and counterfeit merchandise can harm the reputations of legitimate sellers and also the store that sold the goods. On Thursday, Amazon took to federal court along with Otter Products and Vera Bradley to file suit against counterfeit sellers.

Amazon has adopted a much tougher stance on counterfeit product sales since 2015 but is still having a difficult time finding and removing potential scammers. Every time a handful of dishonest sellers are banned, several more appear in place with more creative methods of deception.

Despite the difficultly in identifying and appropriately handling suspected scammers, Amazon says there are dedicated teams addressing the issue. Research scientists, software engineers, program managers and investigators employ routine scanning with software tools and human review to check for illegal products.

A major difficultly in the prevention of fake products is actually obtaining a product to check for validity. Interception of shipments requires court or law enforcement involvement. Once one delivery of product is found to be legitimate, scammers are aware that it is not feasible to repeatedly stop shipments for verification of origin.

Brand reputation is a major concern for Amazon and other retailers alike. Recently, Elevation Lab decided to publicly shame Jeff Bezos and Amazon for not doing enough to protect brand image. The Elevation Lab's The Anchor was a victim of countless fakes being sold on Amazon. Elevation Lab has since decided to leave Amazon as a result.

The battle of finding scammers will undoubtedly be an arduous journey with little reward for Amazon but it must be done to appease sellers that generate revenue and attract customers to the platform.

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"Damage control against angry sellers"

Should that be "Damage control against angry buyers"?
 
"Damage control against angry sellers"

Should that be "Damage control against angry buyers"?
Both, sellers do get angry if they find out that a "reputable" company is selling counterfeits of their products, reason why they talk about The Anchor.
 
Manufacture Not Equal to Seller
So... Amazon is not the one selling products, they have a platform for MANUFACTURERS to put their items out for sale. Amazon keeps inventory for popular items in order to react quickly to impulse buyers but, that's it.
So in this case Manufacturers = Sellers.
 
Speaking of fake, I just threw away a box of 100% Natural Pure Therapeutic Grade essence oil from Radha after discovering they are not real essence oil, those are synthetic, they have been exposed by some lab tester with lab equipment and the results published online. Out of curiosity I did a simple myself, just add a drop of the Radha "essence" oil on a sheet of printer paper, after it evaporates, it left an oily mark on the paper, while the real essence oil would just disappear leaving no marks.

God knows how many people inhaled those "plastic" into their bodies.

And yet Amazon still selling them as Best Seller, Recommended Product......
 
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