Here is one (plus the story of a defective product lawsuit behind it).
A water slide. The type that bolts down into concrete for use with pools. If the first thing in your mind is...isn’t that something from the 70’s/80’s...yes it is.
So the counterfeiter must have molded the entire slide (complete with the company logo that was embossed into the slide itself) thing is that company was dissolved back in the 80’s.
So purchaser’s kid cuts their leg open on the slide and they sue for defective product. Of course the investigation leads to suing this Dissolved manufacturer. As I recall the dissolved entity actually defended (sort of rare from a dissolved Corp that dissolved so long ago) and it was only during expensive phase of discovery they learned they didn’t manufacture the slide In question, and that it was completely counterfeited.
One day Amazon is going to get smacked with such a lawsuit resulting in billions in punitive damages, then and only then will you see real effort on their part to curb this behavior.
> One day Amazon is going to get smacked with such a lawsuit resulting in billions in punitive damages, then and only then will you see real effort on their part to curb this behavior.
IIRC at least one person (probably more) has died already from counterfeits on Amazon. I read one where I guy died in a motorcycle crash, it was found that his helmet (which he bought off Amazon) was a fraud and wasn't/didn't meet DOT standards, even though it had the DOT sticker.
There is all sorts of generic rock climbing gear on Amazon that is genuinely dangerous. Climbing forums have plenty of people recommending never to buy gear on Amazon, but I can’t help thinking of the thousands of people buying these things who have no idea.
The negative reviews for some of the cheap climbing harnesses on Amazon are frightening...stitching coming undone, buckles that don’t work, obviously fake safety certification labels, and more. These are critical life safety devices that are impossible for individuals to evaluate for effectiveness on their own. To sell (or to allow to be sold on your platform) these kinds of products to which people trust their lives, with forged safety certifications, is unconscionable.
> These are critical life safety devices that are impossible for individuals to evaluate for effectiveness on their own.
Well, that's not quite true. Just take a big fall where you really need your harness not to break and see what happens. You (or the person who scrapes you off the ground) will quickly find out whether your harness is effective.
This testing procedure is prohibitively expensive and best avoided.
I recall stories of counterfeit child car seats that failed safety standards (don’t think there was a lawsuit) just “undercover purchases” and actual safety testing of the fakes.
As I understand it Amazon isn’t liable which to me makes no sense as it relates to defective products (everyone in the supply chain of a defective product should be jointly and severely liable).
I don’t care if it’s a 3rd party seller, Amazon should be liable as it hosts the product for sale, connects buyer/seller, processes payments, typically stores (and commingled) the products, and probably delivers the product.
The thing about punitive damages is they are a punishment, so eventually there will be a case where The jury hears how Amazon knowingly and willfully continued selling 3rd party items it knew were fake and dangerous (Fake DOT helmets; expired baby formula; fake baby car seats; exploding electronics; etc...)and the jury is going to drop the hammer. Even billions In punitive damages wouldn’t be a surprise, Amazon will appeal and it will come down to 10’s or 100’s of millions, but that’s when they will take real action to stop this. But it’s going to take time for this to happen.
The Alternative is going back to eCommerce where individual shops put up their own web site, market their own website and are liable for their own website (and have control over their supply chain)
Today since the build of consumers are on Amazon if you are a retailer you need to be one Amazon, and if you want access to Prime Customer you need to use Fulfillment by amazon, Where now you loose control over your supply chain due to co-mingled inventory
So even if I have a stellar reputation as A+AcmeMerchant, and customers look for my store on amazon they are not guaranteed to get the product that I sent to amazon, no they could get JoeBobScammers Product even though it was sold "by me" and fulfilled by amazon
So I will not go as far as to say amazon should be liable for ALL sales, but I do agree that any Sale that is shipped from an Amazon Warehouse they should be liable for. They choose to comingle all of their inventory they should face the liability
The online marketplace have more accountability. You know who you are buying from. Buy from name brand and you get name brand. Buy from nane brand (did you notice the n not M?) and you get from nane brand. This gives name brands lawyers someone to send their lawyers after and traceability if there is fraud. With Amazon cominguled good you don't know where the counterfeit came from so you can't play wack-a-mole with fraud. It just keeps happening.
The issue is Amazon doesn't know. All they have to go on is whatever UPC/SKU you enter to tell them which bin to put something in and that's it. That is the extent of their inventory management. This is why you should not utilize FBA if your major concern is people actually getting the product you are selling.
I believe I've heard of electrical fires from counterfeit electronics that had fake UL and/or CE stickers on it.
Amazon is being promiscuous. They don't appear to care where the product came from, as long as its cheap. There are almost no categories where a 'too good to be true' price doesn't mean something illegal was going on. Either those aren't real products, they were stolen (how is it we never talk about that scenario), or someone made a huge mistake and is reselling them at a loss.
Only one of those is good for news for consumers, and it's still predatory.
In fairness, I think it was a just crappy. It never occurred to me that anyone would sell a ladder that could catastrophically fail, so I wasn't on the lookout for that.
> One day Amazon is going to get smacked with such a lawsuit resulting in billions in punitive damages, then and only then will you see real effort on their part to curb this behavior.
I can’t wait for that day. What they’re doing is criminal in my opinion.
But unwind hold my breath. The story about electric Skateboards burning someone’s house down resulted in amazon being „only a reseller“ with „no responsibility“ wrt the resulting property damage from them selling a battery powered scooter that didn’t meet safety standards.
Here, the issue was whether the defendant manufacturer could amend their pleading to deny manufacturing the defective water slide after they had initially admitted it. The court found that they could. Subsequently, a special jury found that the defendant did not manufacture the water slide and the judge granted summary judgment for the defendant.
If I recall correctly, it was the installer that had gone out of business or was otherwise unreachable and the water slide was unmarked as to the true manufacturer, which left the plaintiffs (or their insurers) out of luck.
No that I believe is an aquaslide case from the 70’s. I was looking myself for the case I am referencing and kept getting this case too (and some inflatable slide cases).
Very similar factually...someone bought a aquaslide, slide was delivered and installed (but what was delivered wasn’t an aquaslide, but unlike the case I reference the aquaslide and actually delivered slide had no markings/branding. IIRC in that case multiple insurers examined the slide and as you say admitted the slide was an aquaslide, but after being examined by an aquaslide employee they reversed course.
The details are slim, but I have a feeling the slide actually wasn’t theirs as confirmed by testing the plastic (but this I really don’t know).
> One day Amazon is going to get smacked with such a lawsuit resulting in billions in punitive damages, then and only then will you see real effort on their part to curb this behavior.
Amazon has been sued many times over similar things. The precedent is very strong. They win every case because they are not the seller. Unless the law changes, there is little hope of this happening like you expect.
How is Amazon not obviously guilty of aiding and abetting, willful negligence, or at the very least reckless endangerment? In an individual case I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Yet the bodies keep piling up under Bezos.
Amazon is a direct beneficiary though. I’m not sure why they are not the seller. In that case can’t they just setup shell companies to sell shoddy, fake, or illegal items, take 99% of the profit, and claim they are not the seller?
No. The primary beneficiary is the seller. If you want to sue somebody you have to sue the seller. That’s what precedent says, anyway.
Yes, Amazon could setup shell corporations, but if they got tracked back to Amazon, that would be the end of the company. Why not just setup a bunch of side businesses producing and selling legal things (like their batteries, clothes, etc. brands) and collect all the profit there, while allowing others to setup shell corporations and sell the illegal things? That way they collect some profit from the latter, but without any risk to the company. And, in fact, that’s what they do.
[Hypothetical] If I buy a legitimate product from a legitimate seller, and end up with a counterfeit due to commingling, I don't see any reasonable story for how anyone but Amazon should be liable for that. They substituted the product I ordered with an inferior one.
And then, of course, Amazon should turn around and sue whoever provided them the counterfeit product. But the first level of culpability is still with Amazon.
It's like if I'm driving, waiting at a red light, and someone rear-ends me, causing me to rear-end the car in front of me. The person I hit sues me, wins, and I turn around and sue the person behind me for both the damage to my car and whatever I lost in the first lawsuit (probably all via insurance).
I guess that latter situation is my point. Even if they are not the primary beneficiary they are a large beneficiary of all these illicit products. I'd imagine that they are probably not a minor beneficiary either since they probably get a huge chunk of the sale off these mostly commodity products. For each cheap plastic widget they sell probably the majority goes to advertising + Amazon Prime + warehousing + shipping + customer support, and I'd imagine the actual a manufacturer gets the short end of that stick.
Doing profitable activities illegal if done by ____, by saying “we do not consider ourselves to be ____” is the core of the business model for companies like Amazon or Uber
New angle for the next trial: Amazon started taking double digits percentages of every sale and doing FBA in the past few years.
For physical products (consider thin margins after manufacturing costs), that means Amazon earns more money than the seller, thus they are the primary beneficiary of the sale.
Edit: theory probably doesn't work, see comments below
> So the counterfeiter must have molded the entire slide (complete with the company logo that was embossed into the slide itself) thing is that company was dissolved back in the 80’s.
I have a simpler explanation for that. Someone bought the tooling (injection moulds?), in an auction maybe, didn't bother to change the brand and is out there manufacturing slides.
It's not "counterfeit" per se they just didn't give a f. (to use the technical term) and are selling it. Maybe outside branding is theirs but not the plastic one.
> I have a simpler explanation for that. Someone bought the tooling (injection moulds?), in an auction maybe
But the company never sold them, so even they from the beginning reasonably believed they had in fact manufactured the slide. Had they sold the molds (which I don’t think a company would do bearing their mark without selling the actual mark as well) it would have actually helped their defense and helped them consider/discover they were not the manufacturer of this particular slide.
It’s somewhat common for worn out molds to be sold as scrap metal, then someone buys them from the scrap dealer and starts making counterfeits. This is why quite a few places will deface old molds before scrapping so it would be cheaper for the counterfeiter to make a new mold than repair the genuine one.
The slide probably cut someone because it didn't fit together quite right or there was a sharp parting line because the tooling used to make it was worn out (hence why the cost was low enough that the segment of the market that doesn't give a F was able to buy it).
Impossible. Congress has given amazon a get-out-of-jail-free-card in rye form of an arbitration clause with no stare decisis and no public access to the harm or outcome.
Amazon strategically places their offices where most important Senators reside, creating thousands of jobs in process and getting simple leverage - either you do what Mr. Bezos says, or we will move our warehouse to another state. And then good luck during next election cycle, but don't run on "master of job creations" when you just caused your state 25,000 amazon jobs.
Aren’t they just going to use the same defence that google, Facebook and others do, that they are just a platform and not responsible for the content users put on there?
I realise this may sound critical, but I’m not American and I’m genuinely interested to know if this defence wouldn’t work for Amazon.
> Aren’t they just going to use the same defence that google, Facebook and others do, that they are just a platform and not responsible for the content users put on there?
That defense could have worked if counterfeit products were a minority and they tried to fight them off, however as time is passing by, I see more and more Amazon as a marketplace almost primarily dedicated to counterfeit products due to their very high share on the platform... Search for basically everything and there's guaranteed counterfeit on the top (and that's only what you can see, I wonder what's the real share of counterfeit there...)
It’s a jurisdictional question so it really depends (I couldn’t tell you in this case, I didn’t work on it personally).
In my opinion it’s even more odd they defended (in at least some jurisdictions a dissolved entity has no standing to bring or defend lawsuits), but even if you could defend, why, time, costs, no ability to pay/collect. Something I always wondered to myself but literally as I wrote the last sentence it hit me...I’m guessing they were insured At the time they were in business selling the slides, so if the plaintiff sued and got a default then they could in theory move to join the insurer and collect against the insurer, so likely it was the insurer behind the scenes paying to represent the dissolved company.
On the flip side I had another colleague work on the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill case at the time it finally ended, let’s just estimate the litigation being over 10 years. During the litigation many of the damaged businesses were dissolved while the litigation was pending and apparently many of those that were dissolved may not have been able to collect as a result.
Not sure that level of snark is appropriate for HN. Not that I explicitly disagree with you, of course. It's just we gotta have a higher bar around here.
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Comments should be more thoughtful and substantive, not less.
> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That destroys the curiosity this site exists for.
A water slide. The type that bolts down into concrete for use with pools. If the first thing in your mind is...isn’t that something from the 70’s/80’s...yes it is.
So the counterfeiter must have molded the entire slide (complete with the company logo that was embossed into the slide itself) thing is that company was dissolved back in the 80’s.
So purchaser’s kid cuts their leg open on the slide and they sue for defective product. Of course the investigation leads to suing this Dissolved manufacturer. As I recall the dissolved entity actually defended (sort of rare from a dissolved Corp that dissolved so long ago) and it was only during expensive phase of discovery they learned they didn’t manufacture the slide In question, and that it was completely counterfeited.
One day Amazon is going to get smacked with such a lawsuit resulting in billions in punitive damages, then and only then will you see real effort on their part to curb this behavior.