Amazon Japan ordered to pay 35M. yen for allowing listing of fakes
mainichi.jp170 points by resonious 13 days ago
170 points by resonious 13 days ago
I wish this was more common.
I rarely, like once every 6 months, look for some obscure thing on Amazon. First thing I do after finding products, I research which one of the listing has any chance of not being a fake/dud/scam.
I can't imagine buying anything of value on Amazon.
Yeah Amazon is my last stop these days.
Well, I'd probably shop at Amazon before Temu, but yeah, Amazon is the option of last resort. I do wonder how common that sentiment is, probably not very, even if it seems like at least the people around me never really use Amazon anymore.
It varieres from region to region obviously, but here there's no point in ordering from Amazon. Everyone else is cheaper, have faster shipping and don't have a ridicules number of scamming sellers with fake, defective and dangerous products. It seems like Amazon should be failing, but I don't think they are.
The Amazon store really have become an absolute shitshow.
I don’t buy anything over $50, on Amazon. Been burned by fakes and gray-market stuff (sold as legit brand).
Amazon definitely explicitly supports this.
What I do, is go directly to the product Web site (not the Amazon page for the manufacturer), and order from there. Sometimes, the fulfillment is via Amazon, but I know I’m getting the real thing. The difference in price is often smaller than you might think. Amazon prices aren’t that good, anymore.
If the fulfilment is by Amazon, how do you know you aren't getting a fake? Is there a way to see if a seller is using commingled inventory or not?
I make a habit of asking support whether things I’m buying are commingled. First-level support used to be able to tell me pretty quickly (and I got both “yes” and “no” answers), but these days I’ve had to escalate most of the time. Kind of nuts to me that it’s worth ten minutes of support time and twenty minutes of supervisor time for them to sell me a $3 usb cable, but they’re the ones paying, so…
I would think that it would only take one or two incidents, to destroy that whole business model.
Vendors can be flexible, if the malfeasance is under the Amazon imprimatur, but it's a completely different story, if they act as fulfillment for a separate company, and substitute fake stuff.
If the fulfillment is by Amazon, how do you know what you are getting? I thought Amazon commingled all their stock in one bin no matter where it came from.
Vendors using FBA have some control over whether commingling happens but I don't know if consumers have any way to know the current status of whether its commingled or not.
At least with Temu I know I’m getting cheap Chinese crap, and they sometimes slip me $130 in my PayPal account after ordering $200.
Dodgy af. The world needs less cheap plastic throwaway crap and China is happy to oblige as many would be.
Bit we can't help ourselves, I suppose. I'm also guilty of ordering cheap plastic crap.
Amazon is going to ignore this problem until enough people actually stop shopping there.
You wish paltry fines of the equivalent of $250k USD were more common for infractions like this?
Not GP, but yeah, more frequent fines, e.g $250k USD per fake listing would likely motivate Amazon to do something about it.
In the UK the retailer is responsible for refunding you for a dodgy item.
The one time I had a problem with an Amazon item it was immediately refunded.
They are still operating in the UK so can clearly operate profitable under these rules. You shouldn't accept anything less.
Same with France, also applies to warranty, or delivery issue, or... You buy from X you deal with X.
Not only is it much better for the customer, it's also clearly profitable.
It can also act as a differentiator, many retailers here including some big French ones tried to play around that law with the marketplace system, "we are not the seller just an intermediary", and while changes to the law is on its way to stop that it allowed Amazon to easily take over by not making that distinction.
There is still some issue about the difference between shipped by Amazon or not for the warranty request (not refund or fake or... but regular warranty issue), which I hope the law tackles head on.
Untill you notice to late and fake washing machine burns down your house.
There was a wave of fake household appliances sold in the UK.
Amazon is ceaspool and should be shutdown for the betterment of humanity.
I have one use only from amazon. Since basically all books in print are listed there, I use the shopping cart as as a wish list.
Honestly, I'm surprised authorities haven't come down hard on these 'marketplaces' for neglience given how often they seem to completely ignore both safety and IP laws.
I guarantee a smaller company would probably be sued into oblivion if they were as relaxed about what they stocked as Amazon is. Same with an app store that was as willing to stock knockoffs and fakes as the iOS App Store and Google Play.
The fact these companies seem to be able to just stock anything and everything without any sort of oversight or quality control, and can just basically say "buyer beware" boggles the mind, especially compared to traditional retail and offline equivalents.
Less than a quarter million dollars. That might be enough to motivate your local car wash, but Amazon Japan?
Looks like it's damages and not a fine. Also, I don't know the Japanese system but lots of jurisdictions don't have a US-style concept of punitive damages. So the sum is probably what it is because it's intended to compensate those particular plaintiffs for demonstrable damages rather than to deter Amazon.
The companies suing Amazon Japan requested damages of approximately 280M JPY, or approximately 2M USD. Of course, this is not a lot of money given Amazon's scale, but the companies tried to recuperate lost profits.
With that said, the discussion on Yahoo News is mostly in agreement with the opinions shared in this thread: given Amazon's scale, a fine of 35M yen is equivalent to no penalty.
If it continues to happen the Japanese government can force them to cease business for a set number of days.
> Excel Plan reported the situation and requested Amazon take appropriate action, but the page listing the genuine oximeter was deleted and the company was unable to sell it, according to the suit.
How very nice and kind of Amazon.
It's unfortunate that legal systems worldwide haven't figured out a better way to deal with the committing-crime-at-scale mentality we see out of a lot of Big Tech.
35M yen to a brand or two here or there when they lose in court is nothing for them.
Walmart etc big retailers do lots of sketchy stuff, house label products, and squeeze suppliers.. but you don't see blatant counterfeit good sales.
Amazon and other "online marketplace" types want to have it both ways - collecting obscene fees to list, stock and ship your goods.. while taking no responsibility or risk. They have turned the retail model on its head where they win either way as they are just taking fees on 3rd parties taking the risks, inverting the supplier-retailer relationship.
Yes I hated parallel imports so much. Some sellers are open about it but many would include fake receipts along fake products to show they were purchased in USA or whatnot. What’s shocking is in Japan this is pretty new / rare (not Amazon fucking up supply chain /comingling) but generally ordering A and getting a fake itself.
There is a lot of ecomm change happening now in Japan with the rise of Mercari, junk items selling more than new / real (makes no sense) etc.
Pre pandemic, it was a dream to order online in Japan. No fakes, low prices, great quality.
It's not uncommon to see pirated, uncensored anime character dakimakura covers and books being sold on Amazon Japan.
That’s not very much money. It probably cost Amazon more to cut the check.
244 thousand dollars is really nothing though for Amazon JP
I stopped using Amazon around 2015. I don't want to buy goods from AliExpress with extra steps so I just directly buy from there. And if I need something urgently I go to a local store.
I dropped prime this year. Free shipping is over 2 weeks. Aliexpress ships to my door in 10 days. I think US tariffs freed up logistics for shipping RoW. Even less of no brainer.
Amazon is often the most reliable shipping for me though. I just generally never get anything of real value from Amazon.
You spend money on things with no real value?
Where do you buy instead?
There's a ton of online stores that specialize in specific categories of product- the better question is how to discover those stores instead.
Is this a loaded question?
Amazon sells everything. You literally buy things everywhere else.