Amazon and eBay -- A Bad Choice For Black Friday Shoppers

The e-commerce websites are flooded with counterfeit products, phony reviews and fraudulent deals.

November 19, 2018, Los Angeles, CA – Consumers love a good deal and will flock to the internet for Black Friday deals. However, online shopping may be risky, dangerous, and little, if any, actual value. Last year, one-third of online shoppers received an unexpected surprise - they received a counterfeit product from U.S. and cross-border scam artists.

The Counterfeit Report, an award winning consumer advocate and industry watchdog, has removed over 120 million counterfeit items offered on e-commerce websites, including Amazon and eBay, on behalf of brand owners Still, the problem grows as website brand protection programs are ineffective, dysfunctional or deliberately obstructive. Consumer complaints also include fraudulent transactions, scams and fake reviews.

Amazon (AMZN) and eBay (EBAY) are the perfect free flowing platforms to enable and facilitate distribution of an inexhaustible supply of counterfeit goods, a $1.7 trillion global criminal enterprise. Only eBay reports actual sales figures, which reflect consumer purchases of over 770,000 counterfeit items from just a tiny sample of listings investigated by The Counterfeit Report - who received over 2,300 fakes from eBay sellers.

Alarmingly, the e-commerce giants did not notify buyers they received a fake after the receiving brand owner counterfeit notifications, and have skirted secondary liability for enabling the sale of counterfeits.

Before buying from Amazon or eBay, consumers should consider these facts;

• The advertised bargain may be no bargain at all. A market study found Costco's prices 17% lower than Amazons.
• Search results and product reviews are no indication of authenticity or quality, and may not even be related to the product searched. Worldwide scammers work to outsmart and trick ranking systems with fake reviews and ratings, while websites may remove negative consumer product reviews.
• Amazon is direct retailer of counterfeit goods; "ships from and sold by Amazon.com." Apple® reported that 90% of Apple products it purchased directly from Amazon were counterfeit. Amazon Prime membership, Amazon Warehouse Deals, and the Fulfilled by Amazon ("FBA") offerings are also plagued with counterfeit, fake and replica items. Even the coveted "Amazon's Choice" endorsement may be promoting a counterfeit product.
• eBay has migrated from the auction house of garage sale items to a global "Marketplace" seller model. These unvetted marketplace sellers are about 80% of eBay business and can sell just about anything they want on eBay, including fakes. This is the same marketplace model that landed China's Alibaba (appropriately named after the fable “Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves”) on the U.S. Government's Notorious Markets List -- a designation reserved for the world's most notorious markets for counterfeit goods.
• The U.S. Government Accountability Office ("GAO") recently conducted an undercover investigation of e-commerce counterfeit goods sales. The GAO reported that about 50% of the items it purchased from eBay and Amazon were counterfeit.
• Federal Communications Commission ("FCC") Director Michael O'Rielly sent a letter to Amazon's CEO, Jeff Bezos, and eBay's CEO, Devin Wenig, telling each to knock off the counterfeit electronics.
• Forbes deemed the e-commerce giants a "cesspool of counterfeits and other illegal and potentially dangerous goods."

eBay and Amazon still take a transaction fee for each counterfeit item sold, while skirting secondary liability for the sales. And, while Amazon collects half of every U.S. retail dollar spent online, Amazon didn't pay any federal income taxes after a whopping $5.6 billion in profit in 2017.

Consumers would be better served to shop online with the major authorized retailers (Kroger, Costco, Home Depot, Target, Lowes, Best Buy, etc.) who offer consumers competitive purchase options.