6 million pages that hawked suspect goods that month

Amazon counterfeit problem stems from prioritizing selection

Herms's $640 Clic H Bracelet is one of those luxury baubles that's financially out of reach for most shoppers. So how is it that Amazon shoppers could recently search for the Herms piece by name and find a bracelet for just $24.99 on the e commerce giant's website?

The version on Amazon has the same clasp with an Herms "H" logo that flips up to open the bracelet, as well as its name etched on the inside. But Amazon's version, sold by a third party merchant, is fake. If the price isn't a giveaway, the product reviews should be. "People probably can't tell the difference between this and the real one from far away. I must admit they really did a great job for the dupe!" one buyer wrote in September.

Amazon executives have publicly lamented the scourge replica louis vuitton bags from china of counterfeits, saying they have spent hundreds of millions of dollars and hired thousands of workers to police its massive market of third party firms that use the e commerce site to sell their goods. But as the availability of the fake Herms bracelet shows, Amazon's Perfect Quality Louis Vuitton Replica system is failing to stanch the flow of dubious goods even with obvious examples of knockoffs.

[Post Reports: Why Amazon fails to sniff out fakes]

The continued abundance of counterfeit goods on the site is the result of Amazon's decisions to prioritize a broad selection of products and high quality designer replica handbags wholesale cheaper prices over the deployment of aggressive technologies and policies that could further stem the problem, according to former executives and outside consultants.

Amazon relies on brands to let the company know about frauds, but even when the company has custody of counterfeit items, it doesn't always take action. Scads of counterfeit products, including the Herms bracelet, land in Amazon warehouses before they're shipped to consumers. But Amazon very rarely inspects them for authenticity.

The Seattle based e commerce giant keeps a roughly 15 percent cut of the sales of third party sellers regardless of whether the product is counterfeit. But losing out are not just luxury brands many of the counterfeit products include safety items, baby food and cosmetics, according to recent testimony to the Commerce Department, which is probing counterfeit sales online.

When Amazon stepped up efforts to curb its counterfeit problem two years ago, complaints from shoppers fell, one of the former Amazon executives said. But so did the rate at which the company expected its product selection to cheap louis vuitton bags from china grow, the person said.

Discount Replica Louis Vuitton Bags "Because they are allowing so much onto the site, they can't handle the manual follow up these things Discount Replica Louis Vuitton Bags require," said the former executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals. "It tells me they just don't want to find it. They want the selection."

[Amazon sellers say online retail giant is trying to help itself, not consumers]

Amazon goes "well beyond our legal obligations" to snuff out fakes on the site, spokeswoman Cecilia Fan said. In addition to staff that investigates fraud claims, the company has developed algorithms to sift through the more than 5 billion changes to its worldwide catalogue each day, she said. For every case reported, the company blocked or removed over 100 proactively with its systems, she said.

(Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

That means more than 99.9 percent of the time, customers land on pages that haven't received a notice of potential counterfeit infringement, Fan said. Of course, that's what the company has caught. But with 17.6 billion page views replica louis vuitton in October alone, according to web analytics firm SimilarWeb, Amazon's math suggests shoppers landed on about 17.6 million pages that hawked suspect goods that month. Amazon doesn't release traffic data.

Amazon executives often trumpet the company's investments to demonstrate how seriously it takes the matter. In a July filing to the Commerce Department, as part of its probe, Amazon's vice president of public policy, Brian Huseman, noted the company spent $400 million in personnel costs last year to fight fraud and abuse, employing more than 5,000 workers.

Counterfeits are not just an Amazon problem. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of three dozen industrial countries, estimates counterfeit goods account for 3.3 percent of global trade. marketplace in part by opening its website to third party merchants. By adding 2.5 million third party sellers, the company has rapidly expanded its selection to more than 500 million items available, according to estimates by e commerce research firm Marketplace Pulse. That adds massive selection, and the competition tends to drive prices down across the site, luring shoppers in the process.

Letting so many sellers in with few limitations has also created a marketplace for cheap louis vuitton bags from china uk fakes that were more often found on street corners or flea markets. It's easy for sellers to sign up for an account, and they can create listings for products, which Amazon scans with algorithms before they go live.

Allowing all those sellers has also opened a Pandora's box, making it impossible for Amazon to police the site's darkest corners to root out every scammer, said Juozas Kaziuknas, chief executive of Marketplace Pulse.

"It will fundamentally never solve the problem because these issues are caused by scale," Kaziuknas said.

Despite Amazon's algorithms designed to detect fakes, shoppers can type the phrase "YSL dupe" into the site's search bar and find knockoff handbags with Yves Saint Laurent's logo, as well as imitations of bags that use the logos and designs of such luxury brands as Louis Vuitton, Fendi and Gucci. A $10.97 knockoff Louis Vuitton passport holder recently carried the "Amazon's Choice" badge, a label the company uses to recommend products.

Plenty of customers are shopping for fakes on Amazon. Reviews left by consumers sometimes crow about the quality of a knockoff or how much less expensive it is than the real thing. Other times, consumers are duped, springing for products they assumed were authentic, only to get items that are sometimes poorly made or dangerous.

Lawmakers have stepped up criticism of tech giants, including Amazon, in recent months over their inability to control the massive platforms they run. Both Facebook and Twitter have been noted for their use in disinformation campaigns, aaa replica designer handbags while Amazon has been criticized for failing to police dangerous goods.

[How merchants use Facebook to flood Amazon with fake reviews]

Many of the top luxury brands don't sell products directly to Amazon, so the online retailer counts on third party merchants to stock and sell the items. Amazon has built out a global network of warehouses and incentivized third party sellers to let it handle shipping to guarantee speedy Prime delivery. That also means that counterfeit goods are often brought onto its property, handled by warehouse workers and stocked on the company's shelves.

As Amazon has raced to add more and more selection, former executives say the company has come to accept that counterfeit items will find their way onto the site as well.

"Counterfeiting is a problem considered a necessary evil when high quality designer replica handbags wholesale you're going to be selling at this volume," said Chris McCabe, a former Amazon investigator who now consults for sellers on the site.

Brands have also sued Amazon. Daimler, the German automaker and parent company of Mercedes Benz, accused Amazon of allowing the sale of fake designer bags fake Mercedes Benz wheel caps in a November 2017 lawsuit. Amazon said the suit has been resolved, but declined to disclose replica designer handbags details.

[Have you had experiences with counterfeit or unsafe products from Amazon? We want to hear from you.].