I don’t buy anything over $50, on Amazon. Been burned by fakes and gray-market stuff (sold as legit brand).
Amazon definitely explicitly supports this.
What I do, is go directly to the product Web site (not the Amazon page for the manufacturer), and order from there. Sometimes, the fulfillment is via Amazon, but I know I’m getting the real thing. The difference in price is often smaller than you might think. Amazon prices aren’t that good, anymore.
If the fulfilment is by Amazon, how do you know you aren't getting a fake? Is there a way to see if a seller is using commingled inventory or not?
I make a habit of asking support whether things I’m buying are commingled. First-level support used to be able to tell me pretty quickly (and I got both “yes” and “no” answers), but these days I’ve had to escalate most of the time. Kind of nuts to me that it’s worth ten minutes of support time and twenty minutes of supervisor time for them to sell me a $3 usb cable, but they’re the ones paying, so…
I would think that it would only take one or two incidents, to destroy that whole business model.
Vendors can be flexible, if the malfeasance is under the Amazon imprimatur, but it's a completely different story, if they act as fulfillment for a separate company, and substitute fake stuff.
If the fulfillment is by Amazon, how do you know what you are getting? I thought Amazon commingled all their stock in one bin no matter where it came from.
Vendors using FBA have some control over whether commingling happens but I don't know if consumers have any way to know the current status of whether its commingled or not.