Shopping Amazon Prime May Land You A Counterfeit

Amazon Prime is no protection against fakes and scams.

July 17, 2018 - Los Angeles, CA – Most consumers would be shocked to learn that Amazon's touted (and expensive) Amazon Prime program is no protection against counterfeits and scams.

Most products sold on Amazon.com actually come from “third-party sellers” -- even the products marked with “Prime” and from Amazon’s own warehouse may be simply “Fulfilled by Amazon,” but not inspected or verified to be authentic. Sellers simply send their counterfeit products to Amazon’s warehouse to lend credibility, and Amazon ships them to buyers without examining or authenticating them. Amazon receives a transaction fee for each item sold and profits soar.

Publicly, Amazon claims that counterfeit products are strictly prohibited and sellers may face loss of selling privileges and destruction of their inventory, but that's just not true. Despite repeated infringement notices, counterfeit products and sellers often remain, with Amazon responding "Amazon will not be able to help you with confiscating the [products] as it is a legal process. In this case, I request you to get in touch with your legal advisor and take the necessary actions."

Amazon's online dominance is crushing legitimate retailers and manufacturers who can't afford the damage from a flood of counterfeit merchandise offered on Amazon. Alarmingly, when Amazon learns of the counterfeits, they won't even tell the buyers they received a fake. Warnings from the U.S Government Accountability Office ("GAO") and Federal Communications Commission ("FCC") haven't curtailed the e-commerce giant's counterfeit sales.

The Counterfeit Report®, an award winning counterfeit awareness and consumer advocate, has removed over 35,000 counterfeit items from Amazon and quickly found the counterfeit Amazon Prime items shown below (and many others) during Amazon's Prime Day promotion.

1. Composite Resources, FDA registered Combat Application Tourniquet® (C-A-T®), has been supplied to the U.S. Military, police, first responders and the public worldwide for the past decade. Counterfeits and replica C-A-T tourniquets have catastrophically failed during actual life-saving applications. Amazon inexplicably continues to offer non-FDA registered counterfeit and replica items. View the Amazon Counterfeit.
2. Various manufacturers offer conforming micro SD® memory cards licensed by SD-3C, LLC, the right holder of the microSD® trademark, in many legitimate formats and capacities. This microSDXC® product is not a licensed product and its reliability and performance standards are unknown. View the Amazon Counterfeit.
3. CREE®, a global manufacturer of lighting products, does not make flashlights, yet this counterfeit and many others are sold on Amazon. View the Amazon Counterfeit

Through huge legal loopholes, and virtually immune to prosecution, IP laws and safety standards, Amazon continues to enable and facilitate criminal activity and profit from counterfeit sales which destroy manufacturers and directly impact consumer safety, jobs and public trust.