Amazon’s new Brand Protection Report offers details on what kind of eyes the company has on the growing number of bad actors who try to infiltrate Amazon’s product listing with millions of counterfeit products.
The company says that thanks to its continued investment in advanced machine learning techniques, it was able to stop 800,000 attempts by bad actors in 2022. In 2020, counterfeiters made 6 million infiltration attempts.
“We take pride in the progress our organization has made this past year, specifically further evolving our technology to stay ahead of bad actors and doubling down on our criminal referral and litigation efforts,” said Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon’s vice president of Worldwide Selling Partner Services. “We’re appreciative of the growing industry-wide collaboration in this space, and look forward to continuing to innovate and work together to drive counterfeits to zero.”
Holding bad actors accountable and a guarantee for customers
In addition to the proactive controls and tools Amazon has put into its supply chain and brands, its two other big investments are holding bad actors accountable and protecting customers.
Of course, Amazon’s not the FBI, but the lengths it’s going to keep counterfeiters from abusing its store certainly shows it's that serious about crime. In 2022, Amazon’s Counterfeit Crimes Unit sued or referred for investigation over 1,300 criminals in the U.S., UK, EU, and China.
The company said this year it’s going further upstream from the counterfeit signals it detected to identify, seize, and appropriately dispose of the millions of counterfeit products trying to worm their way into its supply chain.
The company’s new report also reemphasizes its A-Z Customer Guarantee, that makes certain that customers are covered and eligible for a full refund for any item they purchase if the customer isn’t happy with the condition or timely delivery of that product.
“This protects customers whether they bought the item from Amazon or an independent selling partner,” the company said.
“Over the last few years, we went even further. Even if a customer doesn’t contact us, if we identify a customer purchased a counterfeit product, Amazon proactively contacts the customer, informs them they purchased a counterfeit product and fully refunds their purchase. No customer action is necessary.”