Stories like this are why I only ever buy items on Amazon that are sold by and shipped from Amazon. (In case it's relevant, this is in the UK.) I've been buying from Amazon for 20 years and have only ever had issues on the rare occasions when I strayed from this rule.
That might not be enough since Amazon commingles their inventory with potentially fake inventory from their 3rd party sellers. You have to check the other sellers page and look for other sellers who are Primed enabled, meaning they store their inventory in Amazon warehouses and use Amazon shipping. It gets tiring having to check that list, but it definitely prevents impulse buying.
Can confirm. I bought a charging cable allegedly "sold by Amazon" and I got a reboxed broken item with a customs stamp signifying it had once been imported into Brazil. Quite a world traveler!
Go on Amazon UK and search for books by "Anett Muller", no umlaut. A couple of dozen listings, everything shipped and sold by Amazon, everything an obvious fake. I reported the listings when they appeared, almost a year ago, and Amazon did nothing.
Judging by how a dozen titles were dumped onto the store on a single day, and the highly specific yet disparate subject matter there are probably thousands of 'authors' like this. Some have hundreds of five-star reviews. In a few minutes I I identified a whole bunch of them: "Chillout Note Books", "Kim Karandash", "Steve Oneli", "Karolina Mendez", "Kai Halson", "TKH Team Publisher", "Dwayn Clarkes", "FỌRT-NITE Coloring"
Some look like they're using homoglyph attacks to evade detection, which is pretty sad given how trivial that should be to bypass. Given how many obvious fakes I could find in a short time with no special tools, it's also probable that there's even more less-obvious fakes out there.
So yeah, "sold and shipped by Amazon" is essentially meaningless as a badge of authenticity.
> Go on Amazon UK and search for books by "Anett Muller", no umlaut. A couple of dozen listings, everything shipped and sold by Amazon, everything an obvious fake
How are they obvious fakes? What is there in the product pages to indicate they are fake?
I see they're dispatched and sold by Amazon and I got no other information to tell those are fake. How do you know?
Did you even read the listing? This is the fakest fake that ever faked. Why does this "independently published" Berserk colouring book make no reference to the original author, the Japanese publisher of the original or the English publisher? The description reads like a totally generic description of a children's colouring book, and makes multiple references to "relaxation" and "stress reduction", and being for "kids" with "small hands". This is a Berserk colouring book. You know, the manga series notorious for featuring extreme violence, psychological horror and sexual content. Nothing in it is relaxing or remotely suitable for children.
The pattern continues with the other listings, why does a Fortnite colouring book spell "Fortnite" wrong? Twice, and differently each time using an unlikely homoglyph? Why isn't it being listed on the Epic Games Amazon store with the other Fortnite books? All of which mention being "official" when this one doesn't. Why does the description claim "unique" and "hand drawn" art yet the preview show clearly automatically vectorised screenshots or key visuals? And I don't even play Fortnite, so this isn't even some deep insider knowledge.
Someone clearly has a script to pull images of trending IPs from a search engine, vectorise them and then sell them as 'colouring books' on Amazon through PoD with generic descriptions. There's similar rackets with notebooks, t-shirts, mouse mats and mugs through other PoD services.
Weird, the only item I've ever bought on AMZN is a physical out-of-print book which I thought was the one thing left over from their startup phase where they got book stores behind and which they got right.
Your reasoning sounds weird but Amazon actually is a good source for out-of-print books. Another good source is a abebooks, which is also owned by Amazon, unfortunately.
My experiences buying books from Amazon have been basically positive apart from the generally poor state of on demand printing. As far as I'm concerned they do get it right.
Cynical programmers don't write about OK experiences.
Same here in France. I've never gotten a counterfeit (that i know of), and sometimes I've gotten lower quality than expected stuff, but returns take care of that. Across electronics (multiple switches and ethernet cables, batteries, usb cables), clothing, random small stuff (like a trash bag holder or laser meter).
