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On top of new of Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos not paying federal taxes, the company is also doing a piss poor job when it comes to battling the sale of counterfeit products according to Elevation Lab founder Casey Hopkins.
The tech giant promised they would they would tackle counterfeiting on their platform back in 2017, but in a blog post, Hopkins says lax policies are still hurting small companies and inventors. Hopkins points out that a Chinese manufacturer ripped off Elevation Lab’s under-desk headphone stand, “The Anchor” and selling it for very cheap and pocketing all of the sales. He also claims Amazon is allowing this to happen and they can easily stop the counterfeiters from prospering.
Here is Hopkins’ break down on the how the counterfeiters are making bootleg versions of his product:
“They literally reverse engineered it, made steel compression molds, made the logo wrong, used fake 3M adhesive that’s very thin and was die-cut smaller than the top (measure once, cut twice), they use a lower durometer silicone so it flexes more, it has huge mold parting lines, and the packaging is literally photocopied then reprinted (you can tell by the lack of image contrast). And they had to apply a big sticker to cover our SKU with theirs. But to the untrained eye, it would pass.”
He also doesn’t blame the counterfeiters for making the fakes and blames Amazon.
“I can’t blame the Chinese counterfeiters for doing it. They are getting paid, they remain anonymous, they know they will face no legal recourse, and the worst that could happen to them is to have their listing removed and counterfeit inventory returned (not destroyed). Amazon’s policies promote this.”
Since the post, Amazon seemed to have taken action Hopkins shared this update:
“Thank you for all the responses and making this get noticed.Thank you, Jon Gruber, Engadget, C|net, TechCrunch, HypeBeast, and more for writing about it. Amazon just took down the counterfeit sellers after 5 days of owning the listing (like they’ve done multiple times before in the past month), fingers crossed another one won’t pop up again next week. “
We shall see if this wasn’t a one-time thing with Amazon and that they will continue to fight bootlegs being sold on their platform.
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Photo by Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images
