No, it is not true, just a common myth.

In the seller documentation they say they can track the source of commingled inventory - they achieve this by never putting them on the same physical shelf location.

Also mentioned by Amazon spokesman in e.g. this article: https://archive.is/ra6RT

> Amazon can also track the original seller of each unit

We know that they would not provide such tracking for those conducting fraud investigations. You can believe they intentionally didn't track the source or that they intentionally refused to share the information to root out fraud; either one is a very bad look for Amazon.

I'm glad to see this change.

That’s a worse situation then because Amazon would then be intentionally withholding data in counterfeiting investigations.

Russia has a working system that tracks retail sales of individual cans of beer, bottles of milk and such. Initially it was introduced to track things like shoes and furs that were massively counterfeited, but then expanded to include other goods. So now in a grocery store you use it, for example, for all milk products (milk, cheese, ice cream, etc.), vegetable oil, beer, mineral water. Technically you just scan a different barcode (QR code). There's also an app you can use to scan the thing and get more information, such as the exact producer. The general idea was to fight counterfeit goods, but as a side effect it also enforces shelf life rules or may help to find a drugstore that has a specific drug.

So it is possible and not that expensive even as a country-wide system for goods that cost around $1 (a typical can of beer).

They didn’t need to actually track things internally, add a sticker or even have someone stamp the vender code to the item listing the vendor when you’re adding the item to the bins and if the customer complains you can likely use that sticker to track who added the item after the fact. Critically you don’t need some 6 digit number for vender code, every new vender for a given item gets a number for that item, software can remember the relevant mapping.

If some vender is adding fraudulent items to the system based on some thresholds you set, charge the vendor to manually sort those specific products out.

Odds are they would make up the ~5 cents per item just dealing with less fraud. However, you don’t need to track every item rack the first few thousand items from a vender and you can scale back tracking as they prove themselves. At scale this could be almost arbitrarily cheap.

> or you have to physically segregate inventory by vendor, which is not practical.

The headline seems to indicate that the geniuses in logistics at Amazon have figured out how to make it practical!

Amazon has many requirements for vendors. Having them tag SKUs with a vendor id would be minor.

I stopped buying from "fullfilled by Amazon" as the level of fraud was just insane.

This always confused me. You have a bottle of glue sold by company X. Then you have 87 different people "buying" the glue in bulk, having it sent to Amazon, and selling it on Amazon as if it comes from their store:

Buying option 1: Company X glue from store A. Buying option 2: Company X glue from store B. Buying option 3: Company X glue from store C. ...etc.

But then Amazon says, "actually, these are all the exact same bottles of glue, so we'll thrown them all into the same bin, and no matter what "store" the people buy them from, we'll just grab them out and send them to the customer.

Now even without counterfeits, this is weird. What exactly is the point of store A, B, C, etc.? Company X sends the bottles to Amazon, they get put in one big pile, you buy them on Amazon, and Amazon takes them out of that one big pile and sends them to you.

The only thing purpose of the "stores" when you co-mingle inventory seems to be:

1. Plausible deniability for counterfeits. Hey, they told us they bought it from company X, we had no way of knowing they didn't.

2. Getting money from people trying to get rich quick in the marketplace. Some people will try all sorts of cuts to boost their Amazon sales in the hope that it will pay off later.

> Certainly not worth it for $10-20 item.

Really? Adding a unique ID at the point of entry costs that much?

Its co-mingled, so you may not your stuff back, you just get similar stuff back. That is if you pay to get it back. It’s usually cheaper to let them flog it off cheap on prime day

I don't mean to say that I don't believe it happens. It seems quite plausible to me. I'm just wondering whether it's a regional issue.

Or buying, for example, electric toothbrush heads at half the cost they are in the supermarket and then being surprised when they turn out to be counterfeit.

But that's the other aspect to commingling, I guess - you might pay full price for the real deal and get a fake, due to bad actors' stock being commingled, but on the flipside a punter who's paid an unrealistically low obviously-fake price might actually get the real deal, adding an air of legitimacy to the bad actor.

There’s definitely counterfeit stuff, but it’s much more common in some categories than others. USB cables and chargers, SD cards, USB flash drives for example are commonly counterfeited (e.g advertised as made by Apple or SanDisk but actually being ‘cheap no brand Chinese garbage’). Many wouldn’t even realize it because the products usually still work, but have major defects like less capacity than advertised or being built much worse.

No, I know loads of people having bought SD cards from reputable brands at full price, only to receive a fake one in the mail. You don't notice until you're using the card and your gopro writes too fast to it. I don't like the victim blaming of your post.

The solution is a regulator who buys random goods, thoroughly checks them, then fines Amazon for products found to be unsafe/illegal.

Amazon could then persue the manufacturer for sending bad goods.

Did you escalate? I've found that sometimes CS first response is not always satisfactory but escalating and reminding them of the laws does work.

That seems like illegal fraud on the part of Amazon. They sold something they claimed was new and it wasn't. They have to give you a full refund if you return it.

They are quick to refund/replace because most of the items sold are returnable and "replace" is just a second order. Basically you have the ability to self service this. So it's a quick way for a CSR to satisfy a customer without doing anything special.