Amazon Refuses To Act On Counterfeit Product Complaints

Consumer counterfeit protection crumbles.

March 3, 2021 - Los Angeles, CA – When you make a claim, you better make sure it’s true and that you are actually doing what you claim you are doing. When you get caught in a lie or exaggeration, your credibility is destroyed. That has happened to Amazon, now flooded with counterfeit, replica, and fraudulent products, scams and fake reviews, along with allegations of data leaks, anti-trust violations, and employee bribes.

Amazon claims a policy that prohibits counterfeits; "Products offered for sale on Amazon must be authentic. The sale of counterfeit products is strictly prohibited" -- but that is simply not true.

In practice, and as evidenced by a letter from Amazon’s Corporate Counsel, the company acts much differently.

As previously reported, over the past eight years, The Counterfeit Report, a global award-winning consumer advocate and industry watchdog, has identified over 537,000 counterfeit, fraudulent, and replica items on Amazon. 189,678 counterfeits were removed from Amazon at the request of brand-owners. Amazon has refused to take action on complaints for over 45,000 counterfeits that remain listed for sale.

Amazon was also notified of an additional 226,972 fraudulent, dangerous items that are the cause-of-action against Amazon in a federal class-action lawsuit. The obvious fakes remain -- with over 135,000 of the hazardous items sold to consumers.

Amazon Corporate Counsel Annasara Purcell couched its rejection of thousands of counterfeit notifications as an "unacceptable abuse of Amazon's infringement reporting system." Setting their own rules, Amazon claims that a trademark must be registered in each jurisdiction the infringing product is sold, irrespective of the fact that many of the counterfeit items are shipped from or sold by China sellers to deceived U.S. consumers and are destroying U.S. businesses. View a case study.

However, Amazon's distorted rationale doesn't explain why over 132,000 counterfeits identified in over 3,400 complaints from The Counterfeit Report were sold on Amazon in the U.S. (Amazon.com) or why the thousands of fakes remain.

For example:
This Samsung Galaxy Tab below is sold directly by Amazon on Amazon.com for U.S. Buyers, yet the item does not have a U.S. warranty and the listing notes, "Most US carriers will not allow calling feature to work on this device." Over 1,300 have been sold. The device is bundled with a counterfeit 64GB microSDHC memory card. Inexplicably, the product carries the "Amazon's Choice" endorsement, which regularly lands on counterfeit, fraudulent, and replica products. Thousand of similar products are offered on Amazon in the U.S. and on Amazon global websites.

(Amazon Listing ASIN: B07ZJST452)

An astonishing 200,000 brand-owners are fighting Amazon counterfeits because there is no incentive for Amazon to stop -- they make too much money. Amazon paid no federal income tax on $11.2 billion in profit in 2018 and a 1.2% tax rate on a $13.3 billion profit in 2019. This begs the question; what business is CEO Jeff Bezos really running -- an ethical company or a marketplace of scams peddling an inexhaustible supply of China counterfeit, fraudulent, and replica goods?

Amazon went on to notify The Counterfeit Report that "Amazon will no longer accept any notices of infringement that you [The Counterfeit Report] file. Any email that you send to any Amazon email address or submission channel will be automatically blocked by our systems." Hardly a credible, honest, or proactive effort to quell Amazon fakes, and the destructive impact on brand-owners.

The reality is that all The Counterfeit Report’s clients have registered trademarks for their products, which are referenced and included in each infringement complaint, and reported using the very system, format, and email address designated by Amazon.

Most importantly, trademark registration is not a legal requirement for trademark infringement, enforcement, or removal. The claim by Amazon that this is necessary is simply a brazen attempt to avoid doing the right thing; aggressive and persistent action to remove counterfeit merchandise from its websites. Consumers are deceived and manufacturers destroyed, yet Amazon takes a transaction fee for each item sold.

Amazon is sheltering behind its false claim simply to continue facilitating and enabling counterfeit and fraudulent products on its website. If Amazon were genuinely concerned about counterfeit items sold on its website, they would welcome reporting of counterfeits by any party, in any form, and then act to immediately remove those items from their websites, whenever and wherever the items are listed for sale. Instead, Amazon Counsel chose to undermine The Counterfeit Report's efforts to protect consumers and brand-owners -- the real victims of Amazon's counterfeit, fraudulent, and replica laden marketplace.