I am wondering if anyone has any theories on why Amazon doesn’t crack down on the brand hijacking that is rampant on the U.S. site (and probably others)?
My original theory was that the platform had a loophole that couldn’t be plugged without removing some critical part of the Amazon infrastructure.
Now I am starting to wonder if it is by choice…I believe China has privacy laws that allow them to continue criming. I feel like Amazon can’t track bad actors from China because they can’t track any identifiable info about Chinese citizens and therefore they can’t ban anyone from China.
If Amazon REALLY wanted to address this, they could shut down listings and withhold FBA inventory of these bad actors until it is either recalled or disposed of…I would think that would curb the behavior, but of course, all I see are repeated violations, from the same scam sellers, over and over again.
Right now, brand ‘soikoi’ is hijacking listings left and right, they have FBA inventory at Amazon, and this has been going on for at least 4 months according to SS postings over at Amazon…Amazon seems uninterested in removing them from the platform.
So I feel like they knew/know the Chinese can get away with murder, at the expense of US ‘partners’, but since Amazon makes money off of them, they don’t care…
Any other theories out there? I really don’t get why this is a continued problem that Amazon doesn’t address, except for their very limited whack-a-mole responses when a U.S. seller presistently complains…
There was an FBM chinese counterfeit seller who I bought a bunch of inventory from (on an unassociated buyer account) to get them off a listing faster, and apparently they have A-Z claims disabled somehow. I guess I’m going to have to do a chargeback on this, and by the time that goes through the seller will probably have cashed out so Amazon will get stuck with the bill. At least Amazon deserves it for protecting these guys.
I’ve seen a massive uptick in counterfeit sellers lately, and 99.999% of the problem comes from overseas
I agree with this, or Amazon simply does not have people who understand the core code anymore to plug said issue.
China has no privacy laws, ZERO.
They would have to spend money on something that isn’t bothering Amazon core and is only an issue for 3ps. It would take intelligent humans to actually manage said cleanup, not bots.
Yeah that’s not in the budget!
Flat file upload. Has nothing to do with China, It all is about the flat file upload baby!
I would submit that that particular paradigm is the actual crux of the matter, when it comes to understanding the primary reasonNote 1 behind Amazon’s obvious ineffectuality on the ASIN/Brand-hijacking front.
Once you sell your soul to this or that devil, there will always entail a comeuppance.
Note 1
The most-significant secondary reason, of course, is the profit motive itself.
As one who has had listings brand hijacked, there was an attempt to create a method of resolving brand hijacked items about 2 years ago. The gem event that got a lot of attention was the great “Generic” hijacking that was massive. The two things that came out of that has been 1) the “Generic” listing protection of no one else can be on a “Generic” listing other than the creator and 2) the tighter rules and process to get a brand through brand registry. But neither has stopped the overall hijacking process as the bad actors just adapt and find another way.
To complicate things, the bots are changing things so it is hard to tell when it is a hijacking or an Amazon bot messing with a listing.
In an attempt to make listings “perfect” for the consumer, Amazon has created a “perfect” mess when it comes to controlling listing content.
For much of the last ten or twelve years, Amazon has launched a variety of siloed-teams-initiated Initiatives purportedly designed to rein in the Reign Of Error which - continuously - increases @ a heady pace in its Global Catalog.
Few and far between are the incontestable examples of those efforts providing proper ROI, as far as I can tell.
There’s a reason - MORE than a singular one, in point of fact - why some of us in the 3P Seller Community have come to consider it quite-evident, over recent years’ experience, that Amazon has morphed into a sociopathic greed machine.
Brand hijacking happens because there is no actual “brand protection”.
If brand gating worked, a brand-registered ASIN could never be hijacked, as the brand owner would have to approve each seller.
GTIN/UPC level protection seems to be the best tool, as Amazon seems unable to ever change a link between an SKU/ASIN/GTIN, and GTINs can be linked by a 3rd party (GS1) to the brand name.
But Amazon simply does not provide employees with tools to edit certain fields, and calls that “security”. The shenanigans seem to require skills with and access to “the backend”, but there is more than one “backend”. It is not at all clear how many disconnected copies of the “catalog” there are, but getting a change copied or replicated to the same ASIN in other country’s “markets” is very hit-or-miss. Most often, one must hand edit multiple SKUs under the same ASIN oneself to get a change applied to all SKUs.
Its a joke, and a mess. I think the only effective way to deal with Amazon is to try to fix a problem simply to create a case log, and then write a demand letter to Amazon legal, referencing that case, and reminding them that Trademark Law is not suspended on their “platform” simply because they make up their own scheme to “simplify” trademark disputes.
China does have privacy laws on the books regarding how entities can use personal data (it’s not about the government’s use). The reason that came to mind is because I remember on ebay, German users had their feedback hidden automatically, due to their privacy laws.
Also, my understanding was that the hijacking procedure was done through Vender Central accounts, not just file uploads.
