Sounding Off

Amazon Responds to Our Fuse Chicken Story (see page 10)

While it’s Amazon’s policy not to comment specifically on matters under ongoing litigation, they did respond when queried about certain issues raised in our Fuse Chicken story. Here is that response from an Amazon Spokesperson:

The new Amazon fulfillment center in North Randall, Ohio, has over 2 million square feet under roof.

Our customers trust that when they make a purchase through Amazon’s store—either directly from Amazon or from one of its millions of third-party sellers—they will receive authentic products, and we take any claims that endanger that trust seriously. We strictly prohibit the sale of counterfeit products and invest heavily—both funds and company energy—to ensure our policy against the sale of such products is followed. Our global team is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to respond to and take action on reported violations and notices of potential infringement.

In order to detect bad actors and potentially counterfeit products, we make significant investments in machine learning and automated systems. We employ dedicated teams of software engineers, research scientists, program managers and investigators to operate and continually refine our anti-counterfeiting program. When a business registers to sell products through Amazon’s Marketplace, Amazon’s systems scan information for signals that the business might be a bad actor, and Amazon blocks identified bad actors before they can offer any products for sale. Amazon’s systems also automatically and continuously scan numerous data points related to sellers, products, brands and offers to detect activity that indicates products offered might be counterfeit. Over 99.9 percent of all Amazon page views by our customers landed on pages that did not receive a notice of potential infringement.

We also work closely with vendors, sellers and rights owners to strengthen protections for their brands on Amazon. Any rights owner can enroll in Amazon’s Brand Registry to manage and protect their brand and intellectual property rights on our store.

More than 100,000 brands are enrolled in Brand Registry and are using our free service to better protect their brand and control product information displayed on Amazon—this means brands can ensure their information is accurate and customers can make confident, informed purchasing decisions on Amazon.

We encourage rights owners who have product authenticity concerns to notify us; we investigate all claims thoroughly. We remove suspected counterfeit items as we become aware of them, and we permanently remove bad actors from selling on Amazon. Amazon investigated and took action on 95 percent of all notices of potential infringement received from Brand Registry within eight hours. With our proactive innovations that learn from the information in Brand Registry, brands in Brand Registry on average are finding and reporting 99 percent fewer suspected infringements than before the launch of Brand Registry. We have also successfully taken legal action against bad actors and will continue to pursue litigation and work with law enforcement where appropriate.

Customers are always protected by our A-to-z Guarantee, whether they make a purchase from Amazon or a third-party seller. If the product doesn’t arrive or isn’t as advertised, customers can contact our customer support for a full refund of their order.

Customers trust that they will receive authentic goods when they shop on Amazon and anything that diminishes that trust is unacceptable. Counterfeit is an age-old problem, but one that we will continue to fight and innovate on to protect customers, brands and sellers.