It's about time! They never should have allowed 3rd-party sellers on the platform until this was in place.

I've been saying for years, Sandisk makes the best Flash cards but never buy them from Amazon, just for this reason. Too many counterfeits out there.

> They never should have allowed 3rd-party sellers on the platform until this was in place.

Exactly. From the modern perspective, it's a function purpose-built to abet counterfeiters.

However, look at their origins as a used book seller. When my sister went off to college, I got most of her books off Amazon for a third the price of the university bookstore, and they were all from third-party sellers promising they had a particular edition and printing of a given book. All the same ISBN regardless of where they came from. It made sense in that context, to consider all sources of a given item to be the same item.

However, at that time (2005), all the books shipped from their individual sellers, there was no opportunity for stock commingling. If one had turned up counterfeit, blame would've been trivial.

So I don't think "3rd-party sellers" is necessarily the cutoff point. I don't think they should've allowed multiple suppliers for the same ASIN to all have their stock *in Amazon warehouses* until individual supplier tracking was in place.

I started buying my flash cards direct from the Sandisk web store. They are more expensive but at least they are genuine products.