Chiming in here as well; I always trust Amazon to refund me if something is missing or broken without any hassle. A lot of other retailers always gives you a hard time even though they are at fault.
They have a huge problem with counterfeit but again always easy to get your money back.
I never had a problem with counterfeit goods until I received a fake board game - took me a while to realise it was fake (horrible quality) - when I did they refunded and I got another one that was real - fine.
Since then though I won’t use Amazon for anything remotely safety related, think child car seat - nope, some equipment for rewiring house, nope.
This also makes me think about higher end purchases, whereas before I was like 100% Amazon, they have lost the trust I had for them and doubt they will get that back.
My main issue is that by the time I realised it was fake the game had been stopped and seller removed so they probably knew the game they sent me was fake (because of other complaints) but they made zero attempt to put it right. It seems if customers report fakes, customers who potentially also received fakes are not alerted and that is a real problem for me.
This is the most bad thing I’ll say about amazon is that the counterfeits are becoming an issue. I saw one person who, perhaps wisely, said they won’t buy anything to eat or drink on amazon because one bad counterfeit could be catastrophic. Your point about safety equipment is a similarly good point.
> It seems if customers report fakes, customers who potentially also received fakes are not alerted and that is a real problem for me.
Amazon doesn't even bother to collect that data. If you want to make a return because you received a counterfeit, you need to lie about the reason for your return, because "I received/believe I received a counterfeit product" isn't a choice they let you choose from when filing a return.
At best, this sounds like a euphemism to me, and at worst, it seems like Amazon doesn't want to log such information. If Amazon cared to keep track of counterfeit returns, they'd make it an explicit option.
Honestly, it feels like Amazon is intentionally not keeping explicit records of the counterfeits they sell because of their potential liability and the fact that such records would make Amazon look bad in depositions.
That doesn't distinguish between "I ordered a book and got a plant mister" and "I ordered a book and got a stapled photocopy with greasy fingerprints."
