Do you buy stuff from Amazon?
Amazon has become like a superstore where you can shop for anything and everything. The idea of having your order delivered straight to your doorstep is definitely one of the reasons why so many people choose to buy from Amazon. Even better, pay for the Prime membership, and you’ll often get this service for free.
Now, the giant retailer has some hard-to-beat services, but this doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have some weak spots too. For instance, Amazon can be a counterfeiter’s dream. One of the things that makes the Amazon ecosystem tick so well is its huge network of third-party sellers.
Basically, having so many sellers makes it pretty difficult, if not impossible, for Amazon to keep watch on all of them. As a result, many unwitting consumers ended up buying shoddy or even dangerous items.
How do you make sure you won’t be one of them? Let’s look at some ways you can easily spot fake Amazon products!
1. You Don’t Recognize the Seller
As mentioned above, there are plenty of third-party sellers that use Amazon’s huge platform to sell their products, taking advantage of the millions of clients that flock to the site. This can be both a blessing and a curse.
A great way to avoid receiving fake Amazon products is to ensure the seller is reliable. When the seller’s name isn’t one that you recognize on the spot, it could indicate that it’s a smaller store, and most probably one that’s not located nearby. Or, even worse, it could also mean that the seller is just a form for selling fake stuff via the Amazon platform.
How to Avoid
It’s important to research every seller, especially if you find something on the page that seems suspicious or shady. Odds are good that a previous customer has left a complaint in the comments section if they have received fake Amazon products.
Plus, if the seller is legitimate, it shouldn’t be hard to find out more details about them and verify that they’re real.
Another way to avoid being fooled and buying fake Amazon products is to only order stuff that is available with the Prime membership, although it’s not a catch-all.
2. Price Seems Too Good to Be True
“Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” is a great song, but you definitely shouldn’t take the lyrics for granted. In other words, if an item has a really good price—far more affordable than what other retailers offer—it’s often better if you take your eyes off it.
When you see a seller on a street corner selling Louis Vuitton wallets or Rolex watches for just $20, it’s not that difficult to deduce that they’re fakes. Well, the same unwritten rule applies to products on Amazon. When the price is way below market value, there’s a pretty high chance that shoppers are getting fake Amazon products.
How to Avoid
When you see an Amazon product priced at a steep discount, make sure you do your research. This should include looking up the price at a nearby store or other online retailers. When the Amazon-listed product is priced way below any other vendor’s prices, that’s when you should be skeptical.
People don’t usually sell very expensive stuff for far less than other sellers without a reason—one that you should find and confirm. When you simply can’t tell why something is so cheap, the odds are that the vendor is selling fake Amazon products rather than offering a miraculous bargain.
3. The Product Is Familiar But the Brand Isn’t
When you find an item that you already know well but aren’t familiar with the brand that made it, there’s a pretty good chance it could be a fake Amazon product. Counterfeiters will often make cheap versions of easily-copied or popular products that they can see for a much lower price than the legitimate versions.
How to Avoid
When you’re about to buy a common product but have never heard of the brand that sells it, make sure you do a quick search to find any available information about the seller. The Internet is your best friend in this situation—look for any webpage that contains reviews, comments, or anything related to the concerned vendor.
There’s a good chance to find the occasional company that’s recreating the brand-name product without compromising on the quality, and if so, it should leave at least a few satisfied customers in its wake.
In other words, if there are negative reviews about the company or, worse, no reviews at all, consider it a red flag. It’s better to be safe than sorry; you’ve wasted your money on fake Amazon products.
4. Product Photos Aren’t Original
Always check the photos of the Amazon product before buying it! This may sound like an easy thing to do, but there are some things you should keep in mind. For instance, when photos of an item seem just a little too perfect, the odds are pretty good that you’re about to buy fake Amazon products.
Offering customers a chance to examine the details of counterfeit wares is a plan that shady sellers would clearly want to avoid, so they’re more likely to turn to pictures from an existing ad or stock photography.
How to Avoid
If you want to find out if the photo has been previously used elsewhere, simply do a Google reverse image search. Basically, this feature helps you see how many websites have used the same photo.
If the photography comes from another existing ad, the odds are pretty good that the seller “stole” the photo from the internet. This way, they avoid using real photos.
Moreover, the more pictures there are that let you see the product from multiple angles, the better the chance that you’re dealing with a legitimate vendor.
5. The Reviews Seem Odd
If the reviews section only contains excessively positive feedback for a product, it can be a bad sign. Specifically, if every review is five stars or seems to feature suspicious language, it’s pretty possible that someone is writing false reviews with the purpose of deceiving potential shoppers.
How to Avoid
Thankfully, Amazon features a “verified purchase” label that shows that the person who has left the review has actually bought the product. Moreover, you can frequently recognize a fake review by the language used. This may include specific phrases that sound more like a brochure promoting the product than someone leaving an honest opinion about a purchase.
Sometimes intuition can also be a tool for recognizing fake reviews. If something is telling you that something seems off, perhaps it’s better to not buy that Amazon product.
6. Seller Tries to Direct You Off-Site
When the description of an Amazon product is pushing you to leave the website to find better deals on another site or shop elsewhere, you should view it as an obvious red flag.
Now, it’s one thing to say a few words about other products sold by the same vendor or passively advertise a company site. However, pushing hard to make you visit off-Amazon websites is shady at best.
How to Avoid
As you already know, Amazon is a site designed to sell stuff to people, so most legitimate sellers are probably comfortable using it just for this purpose. However, off-Amazon websites may have different intentions. Besides peddling additional fake products, some of these websites may even steal credit card numbers or other types of personal information.
If you want to buy an Amazon product, make sure you don’t leave the retail page to make the purchase, and remember to not reveal personal financial information to shady sellers.
7. The Third-Party Retailer Asks You to Contact Them Before Completing Your Payment
Instead of allowing you to complete your payment on Amazon’s website for the product you’re about to buy, the third-party seller will ask you to text them. Upon texting, you’ll receive emails or texts that ask you to buy an Amazon gift card for the exact amount of your purchase.
Then, you’ll likely be asked to send the seller the card number, but once the seller gets the Amazon gift card number, you’ll definitely never hear from them again.
How to Avoid
Do not order any Amazon products from sellers who ask you to text or otherwise contact them. Moreover, never buy Amazon gift cards to pay for things at a seller’s urging.
You may also want to read Amazon Shopping: Stop Buying These 4 Products.
