Posted on 01/26/2020 7:32:12 AM PST by ameribbean expat
The US will place more of the burden on e-commerce portals such as Amazon and Walmart.com by holding them liable for fake or illicit products that are sold by third-party sellers on their websites.
"Under current lax interpretations of the law, e-commerce platforms face virtually no liability for their counterfeit trafficking," Mr Peter Navarro, director of the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, said Friday.
Companies like Amazon have generally been exempt from legal liability for products sold by other merchants using their online platforms. However, last year Amazon acknowledged in its annual report that it could face "civil or criminal liability" for unlawful activities by its sellers, flagging it as a potential risk factor for the company.
(Excerpt) Read more at straitstimes.com ...
Amazon needs to get a grip on this for their own sake... I won't buy high quality items on Amazon that I know are easy to fake... and I'm not alone in that assessment...
https://www.google.com/search?q=Death+by+China
Navarro & Autry’s book gives good insight into the administration’s viewpoints on China trade. It should also be noted that where one crime happens, others are often simultaneous. A container of counterfeit goods often also carries other illegal goods and drugs, and often also fuels the human trafficking trade.
China already weaken by the trade war with the US is going to take a hit with this virus.
Just how big a hit remains to be seen.
Is China’s economy strong enough to withstand a disruption of their industries for months? Second part, what happens to the world’s economy if China goes into a depression?
I admit it. I’m a label queen. I like high end designer bags and shoes. Way back when I bought and resold high end on Ebay. Made pretty good money doing it. Then they opened it up to the Chinese and prices fell since no one could tell the difference, or sometimes even cared, between fake and real. I will not purchase any of those things off Ebay or Amazon. Period. Poshmark is another one that has a lot of fake stuff on it. You can get some pretty good deals there but have to be careful. I only buy from places that sell authentic and authenticated stuff now. I might pay a little more but I know the stuff isn’t counterfeit before I buy it and receive it.
Great news. This is LONG OVERDUE. Amazon just doesn’t give a damn if their merchants sell counterfeit merchandise.
I needed a couple of hard drives about a year ago. Found them on Amazon, but a fair number of customers were complaining the merchant was selling counterfeit products or returned products as new. I thought “Nah, people tend to be whiners, it can’t be that bad, Amazon wouldn’t let that happen.”
It happened to me. Ordered two of the same model Seagate drives. Two very different drives arrived in generic packaging — different weights, form factors, shapes. Took photos of the labels through the ESD bags and sent them to Seagate - they confirmed one was legit, one was bogus.
Wrote to Amazon Customer Service about it. Their response? “Give them a bad review.” I kid you not!
Fortunately, I sent both back and got a refund. Bought the same drives in consumer packaging at Best Buy. Paid a bit more, but I was assured of getting legit products.
“I won’t buy high quality items on Amazon that I know are easy to fake... and I’m not alone in that assessment...”
ditto ... and the same for ebay, etsy, and poshmark, actually even more so in those cases ...
Yeah...I’m mulling what to do about our equity investments. My experience has been bad in trying to time major market events and I’ve always gotten out too late and back in too late, missing all the upside bounce after the event passes.
But now I have fewer recovery years left. Major angst now.
i quit buying barebones hard drives long ago, and would only buy hard drives in retail packaging, mainly because of the caviler manner that warehouse pickers would handle barebones drives: “oops, dropped that one on the floor, hmmm, doesn’t seem to have any dents: dust off the dirt and ship it” ... i had WAY too many barebones drives go tits up within days and i had to eat the cost of the drives AND the cost to re-execute bare-metal OS installs for customers ... i learned long ago that one should NEVER scrape for pennies when it came to system drives and one should always buy the best quality possible ...
now of course i don’t buy anything but Samsung EVO 860 SSDs in retail packaging from Amazon LLC themselves, so no more worries about barebones or counterfeits ...
“I learned long ago that one should NEVER scrape for pennies when it came to system drives and one should always buy the best quality possible”
Yep, that’s the lesson I learned. Fortunately, it was for my home NAS audio/video server and not a mission-critical system at work. And, also fortunately, I got my money back, but not my lost time.
Are you SURE that Amazon itself never has shady practices?
“Are you SURE that Amazon itself never has shady practices?”
i think the liability and reputation damages would be too great for Amazon LLC to knowingly sell counterfeit goods ...
Amazon may be respectable, yet they do NOTHING to stop it among their many merchants. Telling me to “post a bad review” was utterly ridiculous. My respect and trust of Amazon (which had been VERY high prior to that incident) fell a LOT.
Just the other day I needed a charging cable for my phone. Checked on Amazon and they were all listed as “OEM” by 3rd party sells for about 8 bucks. Probably all Chinese knockoffs.
In the end, I went to the ATT store to buy it. Probably paid more but I cannot trust Amazon.
Ditto for flash memory.
eBay recently got an award for combating counterfeits. I found that pretty amusing considering their system for customers to report counterfeits. You have to choose from their pre-programmed lists of violations. i don’t think they give a damn about counterfeits as long as they get their 10% cut.
If Amazon gets the ‘lowlife scammers at a flea market’ reputation they’ll lose it all. Lots of things I won’t buy from Amazon - which is a shame because it’s so much easier.
Amazon needs to stop dealers from being able to censor comments they don’t like. I got a ‘knockoff’ once and tried to post a comment to that effect. Each time I would get a message that ‘obscene comments’ were not allowed. There was NOTHING obscene in my comment. That would be a start. Also Amazon could write a program that picks up on phrases that might be tip-offs’ like, “I’ve bought this product before and it was so much better than now...” etc.
Free Traitors™ are deeply concerned.
Would you like to share the names and/or links of some of those places? Your call....
Maybe brick and mortar stores should hang in there for a few more years... The 'promise' of Amazon was 'same products with the convenience of home delivery'.
“what happens to the world’s economy if China goes into a depression?”
It will be a drag on the global economy, but less so, than if the USA went into depression.
China is substantially isolated from Global financial networks - the great bulk of their bad debt is in their local currency, from domestic Chinese banks.
The bulk of what they buy from outside are commodities, like oil, gas, metals and food. A drop in Chinese demand lowers prices for such basic inputs for the rest of the world, so there some mitigating benefit.
Also, some fraction of the inputs that China currently imports, would instead go to whoever takes over making the things for export, that China used to.
Bottom Line: A Chinese crash will measurably slow the global economy, but by itself would probably not drive the USA into recession.
Because the Chinese communists have printed money and engaged in the biggest financial fraud in history, their bubble has to burst (or deflate for a lost decade or two, like Japan did) at some point.
In the long run, the sooner the better, before the dollar value is even higher, and Western banks even more exposed. In the short run, it is better that companies have time (and incentives) to reduce their risk in China, and prepare alternatives.
There is a pause in tariff rollouts (probably through the election), but strategic de-coupling with the Chinese economy continues on many fronts.
People who have sold out to the ChiComs are being purged from high tech, in what seems to me to be a deliberate campaign of some sort.
Other (non-tariff) systematic advantages that Chinese producers have enjoyed are also being eliminated, like the favorable shipping rates they got under International Postal Union rules.
Although tariffs are the really big lever, many other levers are continuing to work.
therealreal.com is a great place to buy used authenticated luxury items. I’ve bought quite a few things there. They have new and used.
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