Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/02/25/wirecutter-compares-popular-pr.html
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If the glove is fake, you must not bake!
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Funny. Amazon is the biggest counterfeit goods marketplace now. It’s like Canal Street used to be. I just assume anything on Amazon that could be fake, is fake.
If I want genuine products, I buy them direct.
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For reals - Amazon is a dollar store. Stay away!
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Don’t buy from Amazon, period.
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I hate Amazon, oh the door bell, my Amazon order is here.
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Hope that’s an Amazon doorbell…
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Dammit, mine are fake too!
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Link links to English site:
Id love to see an analyst do a deep dive into the economics of offshoring a variety of products to china, only to have lost sales due to the same factory selling the “counterfeit” branded merch off the same assembly line on the likes of amazon.
Even if you have a company representative monitoring the assembly line, its not like company management couldn’t have his brother-in-law duplicate the assembly line 2 doors down.
My first employer was a 2nd generation family owned medtech company that kept most of their IP as proprietary trade secret manufacturing techniques. And they were almost convinced to set up a line in China to increase margin. thankfully, for my former coworkers, they came to their senses.
When I was in silicon valley, my company’s primary product was PCR diagnostic cartridges, and even counterfeits of those things were turning up - extremely complex molded part designs, lyophilized PCR reagents & optical markers, etc - and our VP of engineering held a forum to figure out how to prevent a grey market from gaining traction. That was an interesting room - software engineers, electrical engineers, microbiologists, automation engineers, physicists, and oddballs like me.
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I’ve got a pair of fake Ove gloves too. They work, just make sure your hands are dry because any liquid soaking through will turn to steam and go right through the material and burn you. I learned that the hard way.
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I have no idea whether mine are “fake,” or “real” but I do really like them. Significantly more dexterity than mittens, although as Anthonyl pointed out, they stop working when they are wet.
Where it gets really dangerous is with electric items like phone chargers. Most counterfeits are shoddily made and every single safety feature is a corner that is cut. You are literally taking your life into your own hands by using these:
Amazon is shamefully dodging responsibility for its failure to police its marketplace:
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The provided link to the Amazon sales page for the Ove Glove appears quite authentic, right down to the notation that to avoid counterfeits you should only purchase from Amazon or Joseph Enterprises, Inc. (Joseph Ent). However, when you go to purchase the one being officially sold by Amazon, the seller isn’t divulged, unless you click a certain link which takes you to a list of every vendor selling that particular SKU, and then click on a “See more” dropdown for the Amazon-sold ite wherein you learn that the one being officially sold by Amazon is actually from a 3rd party seller (JZJD Deals) who isn’t “Joseph Ent”.
Jimminy Fracking Chipsteaks, Amazon… way to obscure your own malfeasance…
Edit: 30 minutes later and the Amazon link now (for me) shows the legitmate Joseph Ent seller as the feeder for the Fulfilled by Amazon “official” Ove Glove. This makes me wonder if that was retailored to my user instance because I re-searched through the Joseph Ent storefront before returning to the item page, or if we just witnessed a real-time re-correction of the item page.
How legitimate sellers are supposed wade through this crap just to sell their widgets is baffling… how they can even trust that Amazon itself is standing behind them is equally baffling when we can see just how easy it is to launder counterfeits through the system.
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A major counterfeiting problem on Amazon has been its own doing, which is that Amazon commingled stock with the same SKUs between different sellers whose orders are fulfilled by Amazon, thus introducing counterfeits into orders sold by legit retailers and Amazon itself. I don’t know to what degree Amazon has finally stopped commingling stock.
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BWA-HA-ha-ha-ha! At least Amazon has a good sense of humor.
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The Wirecutter has a companion article on how to ensure (or at least make it more likely) that you are getting the real thing:
One of the key steps is to make sure who the seller is on amazon, as @Thermironic notes above. It’s more work, but it’s absolutely worth it if you want the real deal.
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You and I have a different definition of “they work” I think. I generally use oven mitts to PREVENT my hands from burning.
The vendors who use ‘fulfilled by Amazon’ or whatever they call it these days, have made a deal with the devil.
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