I’ve finally figured out how to buy non-counterfeit items on Amazon: try selling it yourself and see if Amazon says 3rd party listings are allowed. In the very few cases where you’re not allowed to proceed to create a listing, it is safe to purchase.
I see this type of comment all the time, but I've never purchased anything but legitimate items off of Amazon. What are you buying that you consistently run into fakes / knockoffs?
Memory cards / thumbdrives are the canonical example here, I think. The fakes are plentiful, and comingling ensures that you are playing roulette every single time you purchase one, and the fakes are good enough that they'll stand up to visual scrutiny unless you know exactly what you're looking for, and sometimes not even then.
I would never buy any discreet component of any kind from online marketplaces in general. It's gotten so bad that sometimes you just get packaging with no silicon inside. For some components the prevalence of fraud is nearly 100%. Supply chain integrity is a majorly underappreciated value of traditional vendors.
I mean, the obvious question is how do you know that you’ve only got legitimate items?
Some counterfeiters are of course, shit, so it’s pretty easy for most of us to notice when we order a board game and all the text on the cards is 20% off of centre. But you have to figure that somebody out there is capable of taking a high resolution scan of the materials and printing it without making obvious mistakes like that.
And like... in Apple’s testing over 90% of Apple accessories (chargers, cables, etc) were fake. Obviously they’re outwardly convincing enough that 90% of people aren’t returning them despite dropping $35 on a USB cable that’s worth about $4 from a third party. A lot of the counterfeit chargers are outwardly identical — unless you tear them apart to see where they’ve cut corners and risked burning your house down you’re never going to know.
I've ordered clothes, furniture (desks, chairs), books, supplements, rugs, and probably a few other things. Everything shows up, seems to be exactly as claimed, is functional, and has worked.
So my initial question still stands on what people are complaining is rife with fakes and knock-offs. It seems to be quite niche electronics (huge hard drives, computer components, etc)
And if the knock-offs are so good (in your game example) that the end user can't tell the difference (and no one else can either), what does it matter?
If I'm paying a 500% margin on a product, I want my money to go to the person that actually put the work in to create it so they can make more products, not to a counterfeiter?
But that's just my personal preference.
You've completely skipped over "90% of Apple products are counterfeit". They are not niche, are not easily discernible, and pose a safety hazard.
