I've said this before: they should look at how the finance industry deals / has been dealing with bad actors for decades before they engage in a business relationship with a client.
Assign every vendor some risk category based on their profile, for example: projected annual revenue, country of incorporation, products sold.
A mom-and-pop store located somewhere in Iowa selling pillow cases would probably be low-risk, there's not much you need to do.
A vendor selling USB cables out of China is probably very-high-risk. These need deep vetting. As in: show up in an office, bring along your lawyer, show us documentation on the working conditions in your factory, sign an agreement to let us audit your factory, etc.
Now, banks don't do this (at least, as far as I'm aware), but to play the devil's advocate: just imagine if Amazon asked very-high-risk vendors to post collateral before selling. If they get caught, the collateral is used to compensate victims.
That would take out the incentive to sell counterfeits in the first place.
> Now, banks don't do this (at least, as far as I'm aware), but to play the devil's advocate: just imagine if Amazon asked very-high-risk vendors to post collateral before selling. If they get caught, the collateral is used to compensate victims.
Requiring merchants to be bonded for entry into high-risk categories sounds like a great idea! I know they already have hurdles for entry into protected categories like vitamins but adding a financial hurdle seems sensible for certain categories or volume.
In theory I think requiring a cash bond could improve many distribution systems, but the reality is that these big tech companies are so terrible at moderation and curation that we'd end up with tons of people having their bonds seized for no reason. Then, since there's actual money involved, those people might actually have some recourse, so it'll never happen IMO.
Funny thing is, these two stereotypes tend to be less and less representative in my opinion.
Mom and pop store perhaps care less about what they sell on the internet ? Amazon was blocked in France during shelter in place and we had to go through other vendors. We got a surprising amount of mislabelled, slightly unfit (ex: wrong size, wrong color) or completely different stuff sent from small european vendors.
In comparison AliExpress is relatively accurate on descriptions, if color is random you know it at purchase, packaging was piss poor but we always got exactly what we ordered, and we had one issue for 40+ orders.
I would have better faith in a chinese vendor to send me the right USB cable than a Mom and Pop store to send the right size and color of pillow cases.
Speaking of incentives, why would Amazon want to place such onerous restrictions on their suppliers? Are consumers supposed to demand this? Would regulation require it?
Amazon's success at being "the everything store" is fundamentally opposed to vetting their suppliers like this.
> Certainly, Amazon is also fundamentally opposed to customers becoming victims of counterfeiters on a platform they provide them with.
You can't even select "This item is a counterfeit/I suspect this item is a counterfeit" when filing for a return.
Surely if they cared about their customers becoming victims of counterfeiters, they'd give the customers who did become victims of counterfeiters on Amazon's marketplace the ability to return and report such items accordingly.
During my last return of a counterfeit item, I had to lie about the reason for the return during the return process. I had to choose between the vaguely related, but Amazon-approved, platitudes of "Wrong item was sent", "Inaccurate website description" or "Item defective or doesn't work".
I agree. Because of Amazon's scale selling counterfeit items is good for business. Only a minority of customers will notice the fake and return it, which they've streamlined so that it's no big deal.
Counterfeit items likely get Amazon more customers than it loses. The cheapness of counterfeit is attractive to new customers, and the ease of returns retains customers. Besides, everybody can't be a conesieur in everything they buy, so it's feasible to still be successful at high rates of counterfeit goods on the site. Some econ student could probably share some good studies on this kind of economy for us.
Maybe Amazon can try the pirate Bay argument that they just host the content they're not responsible for it respecting copyright?
Assign every vendor some risk category based on their profile, for example: projected annual revenue, country of incorporation, products sold.
A mom-and-pop store located somewhere in Iowa selling pillow cases would probably be low-risk, there's not much you need to do.
A vendor selling USB cables out of China is probably very-high-risk. These need deep vetting. As in: show up in an office, bring along your lawyer, show us documentation on the working conditions in your factory, sign an agreement to let us audit your factory, etc.
Now, banks don't do this (at least, as far as I'm aware), but to play the devil's advocate: just imagine if Amazon asked very-high-risk vendors to post collateral before selling. If they get caught, the collateral is used to compensate victims.
That would take out the incentive to sell counterfeits in the first place.