Walmart made the conscious decision to allow Chinese sellers to enter the marketplace, lured by all the cash Amazon was raking in with the same in March of 2021.
Their enforcement sucks compared to Amazon and their support team is exponentially worse, if that’s even possible.
I wrote about just one example of the fraud here
That seller knocked off the trade dress of 25 brands with formulas / forms that didn’t even match what they were supposedly selling.
We reported it directly to 2 “executive” contacts we had there who agreed and promised to look into it. Never heard back. For some reason those 2 sellers (there were 2, probably the same person / group), didn’t knock our trade dress off. I find it hard to believe that the other brands (some bigger than ours) didn’t report the issue themselves or in concert with their lawyers.
This first started in March of this year. I wrote about it in June. I’ve been watching it closely. Finally, this week, they were taken down. Here’s the kicker - I think they got taken out by the feedback / reviews left by the poor suckers that fell for their BS. Product that took 6 weeks to get to them in bottles without labels, lot codes, or expiration dates in a form that wasn’t advertised (got tablets instead of capsules, etc.)
It all comes down to not properly vetting anyone on these marketplaces and giving favor to those in far away places for profit. Amazon and Walmart pretend to care about their customers, but they don’t. They only care about $, and more specifically, Ad $.
It’s almost impossible to sell something in even a mildly saturated category on Walmart without PPC. First 8 of 10 listings ranked are sponsored. Amazon used to be top 2 sponsored and then the top 5 Organic listings. That’s been cut down quite a bit, depending on the device / sign in. It’s all about the $. Pretty soon it will be hard to sell something that isn’t a reorder without paying for it on either marketplace.
Afterall, Amazon makes more money on their advertising than anything else for their entire retail operation.