If I could get back every block of 15 minutes I've spent on Amazon scrolling through the endless amount of options in order to avoid buying some crappy Chinese knock-off version, I'd be happy.

For home decor it is kind of amazing. Some of the higher quality knock off brands have become good products in their own right.

My floor lamp is a knock off of a famous designer lamp. The particular knock off I have is rather desirable, to the point that other companies are making inferior knock offs of it!

Searching through the gunk is incredibly time consuming though.

If you don't mind waiting for shipping... Aliexpress is your friend for knockoffs at a better price. Buyer beware though, since you are dealing with Chinese sellers.

Like you are not already dealing with them on Amazon and Ebay?

I always pick the sellers that ship within the USA. It costs a few dollars more, but easier refunds and faster arrival.

And don't forget resellers stealthily jacking up the price of commodities.

I used to buy indiscriminately from Amazon. If Amazon had it, it was the best price. Why bother shopping around?

I've been bitten multiple times now with ordering something only to realize some reseller has jacked up the price and I didn't notice.

(e.g. buy baby wipes for $10, later re-order same baby wipes and think "hm, $18.50 seems higher than I remembered. Oh well, I need baby wipes!")

So now I shop around for everything. Since Amazon is "forcing me" to shop around, I've started to exclude them out of spite.

I get it, it's capitalism. If some Amazon reseller (including the "fulfilled by Amazon!" resellers) dupes me, I'm the sucker. Amazon's not to blame for capitalism. But... I still blame them. :)

There are a few browser extensions that automatically compare prices from some major retailers based on whether they ship to you.

Give one of them a try, sometimes they find you nicer prices.

I like the idea, but the privacy implications scare me away. My Amazon activity and data says everything personal about me, including medical conditions.

Amazon keeps constantly increasing fees in their marketplaces or warehouses, then there is a brutal competition on price via algorithmic repricers, so resellers try to compensate wherever they could. Increased price could be also a consequence of Amazon kicking out cheaper sellers and the remaining ones without doing anything by using a repricer would set a higher price, not mentioning some advanced repricers using game theory to find equilibrium as well.

A friend of ours gave us a painting of Cú Chulain for our wedding. That painting was her specialty that went through many prototypes. She put prints of it on Amazon and within a few weeks hand made copies were being sold from far eastern sellers. She spent two year battling to get those sales taken down. In the end it only stopped because the sellers moved onto other pictures and not because Amazon took any action.

Or razor blades. Bought some Gillette Fusion 5 blades on Amazon a few years ago for a good price.

Didn't take long to realize that no way were they the real thing. First shave was horrible and it was downhill fast from there.

So has the dept of commerce, or homeland security, or whoever is responsible in gov't for suppressing counterfeit goods ever raided an Amazon warehouse? Does there need to be complaint by the manufacturer first?

For stuff being sold domestic you go through the FBI, for stuff being imported you go through CBP and the USITC. For intellectual property it's OIPR. (I clear international freight through Customs for a living)

I would imagine Mr. Bezos figured out how to navigate Washington successfully long ago.

Do any independent websites sell counterfeit? If so, then we're just comparing isolated cases on a large ecommerce site with what?

Independent (non-aggregator) web sites generally have some control over what suppliers they draw from. So of course there are counterfeits out there, but they’re the exception, unless selling counterfeits was the seller’s intention. You can generally judge based on how reputable the seller is.

Amazon sources indiscriminately, because they’re not a seller in the traditional sense; they’re basically a flea market with warehousing and logistics. So you have no guarantees one way or another whether the thing they’re selling is genuine or not.

How do you know the quality is acceptable on something like test strips? I don't know anything about the specific here, but I would have thought that you especially would care about brand for single-use test supplies, because you just have to trust the manufacturer regarding their false positive/negative rates.

(this sounds more combative than I mean because internet text is hard - i'm genuinely curious)

There is a solution of known "sweetness" you can put on test strips. If the result comes up in a set range, they're acceptable. Basically my assumption is that if a random strip or 2 from a container is good, they're all good. Also, knowing blood sugar EXACTLY isn't really something I'm interested in. I want to know trends and where I'm roughly at.

I don't think I ever got a counterfeit item on Amazon. The fact that there are news stories about specific counterfeit items (and not the problem in general), indicates to me that it's not as widespread.

I utterly loathe the horrible photocopied books which sometimes turn up in place of proper printed editions. Have become better at spotting them, but it's a really unpleasant situation which dissuades proper publishers from reissuing out-of-print public domain works.

More often than not, electronics stuff I've bought on Amazon have been unsatisfactory in some way, such as: counterfeit, was obviously returned by someone else, parts missing, obviously broken, etc.

Their return policy helps with this, but I don't have anywhere near this level of problem at Best Buy or Newegg. So I don't buy electronics on Amazon anymore, even if they're cheaper.

I can't understate how disappointed I am that NewEgg is offering 3rd party sellers access now...

I've gotten counterfeits of other products (for example, I once got a counterfeit DVD boxed set), and a lot of products I look at will have reviews noting that they received a counterfeit and what to look for to make sure you're actually getting the product listed. It seems to be reasonably common.

I've never seen an avalanche. The fact that people talk about specific mountains where avalanches happen (and not the avalanches in general), indicates to me that it's not as widespread.

This is what your argument looks like when put through reductio ab asurdum. It's certainly fine for you to be weary of these claims since your experience has been different, but to say this is indicative of anything when it's your 1 anecdote vs all of the other anecdotes is a claim with little force behind it

Based on the number of reactions I was completely wrong, but my point was: You are not going to see a news article about avalanches. News is always about infrequent events.

>I don't think I ever got a counterfeit item on Amazon.

Well you wouldn't, if the counterfeit's were any good.

> Fair point, but if I can't tell that the good is fake, even after using it, I don't care that much.

Heavy metal poisoning may take years to show effects.

Shoddily made laptop chargers may be a fire/shock hazard that kill in 100/1,000,000 instead of 1/1,000,000 cases.

Not every dangerous counterfeit is immediately obvious as such.

If you're slathering it all over your body but you have no idea where or how it was made, do you suppose that you might suffer from deferred regret at some point in the future?

(cf. today's talcum powder news item)