alt Hacker NewsNo, that is not correct or at least it has not been. Amazon was said to intermingle the inventory in the warehouses, mixing third party products with those shipped and sold by Amazon. So that gave you zero protection.
I read that they made internal changes to tag shippings properly to reduce the risk of that behaviour, but am not sure it is true or has been effective.
Has this co-mingling of sold by Amazon ever actually been documented at any scale beyond “extremely rare stock/pick” mistake? I am of course aware of the option for manufacturers to enable this for their registered products on FBA - and it may not have been optional at one point in time.
When I researched this a while ago I was unable to come up with much compelling evidence that it was an actual thing. It certainly has not happened to me over thousands of purchases - or anyone I know for that matter. Of course a fake could have been so good none of us could tell, but I do actually attempt to inspect carefully.
I have found counterfeit items from other web stores not on Amazon so it’s not like my detection skills are zero. Third party marketplace of course is different.
Heck, even Costco sent me an unsolicited refund for a counterfeit item they unknowingly sold me - so supply chain issues are bound to happen.
I don’t want to defend Amazon too much here, but this one is almost at urban legend status to me. Likely happened at limited scale some time ago, but it’s strange everyone says it’s endemic but no one IRL I know across probably tens of thousands of purchases has noticed it.