YouTube's 'Linus Tech Tips' Exposes Fake Products Sold On Amazon; Ecommerce Giant Responds To Benzinga

Ever bought a piece of junk from Amazon.com Inc. AMZN that has “prominent positions in search results?” Tech experts and enthusiasts might not make this mistake, but unsuspecting consumers are easy targets for such fraudsters. 

What Happened: “Linus Tech Tips,” a popular tech channel hosted by Linus Gabriel Sebastian on Alphabet Inc.’s GOOG GOOGL YouTube, with 15.3 million followers on the platform, shared a video titled “Amazon… more like SCAMazon.” 

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The video doesn’t directly accuse Amazon but talks about how some threat actors use the e-commerce giant’s platform to sell “fake” products with many positive reviews and good search listings. 

In the caption, the YouTube channel says, “At one point, Amazon was game-changing and felt like the best place to shop online. Don’t have to worry about the scams and crappy quality on eBay and Alibaba. But then something changed. Suddenly all you can find on the website is cheap garbage, or worse, complete scams.” 

At the time of writing, the video had been viewed 885K times.

Watch the video here: 

Amazon's Response: An Amazon spokesperson told Benzinga that the ecommerce giant "strictly prohibits counterfeit products in our store. We know that trust is hard to earn, and easy to lose, which is why we are so focused on creating a trustworthy shopping experience each and every day."

The spokesperson said that in 2021, Amazon invested more than $900 million and employed more than 12,000 people to protect its store from counterfeit, fraud, and other forms of abuse. They pointed out that in the "rare case" that a customer purchases an item that Amazon detects to be counterfeit, "we proactively contact the customer, inform them that they purchased a counterfeit product and we fully refund their purchase – without the need for the customer to take any action at all."

Additionally, customers are protected by Amazon's A-to-z Guarantee, which ensures that if a product doesn’t arrive or isn’t as advertised, customers can contact the company's customer support team for a full refund of their order.

Why It’s Important: Linus Tech Tips did not immediately respond to Benzinga's request for comments. Although in the video, Sebastian said that the reason why Amazon “can’t stop it” is because the scammers use “gibberish” trademark names. So, when they get banned, they change one letter of the trademark name or use an equally unpronounceable name to file another trademark and resume the scam. 

“The cost of going after these hundreds or thousands of individually small-scale scammers” would almost certainly be greater than the return. This is why Amazon has decided that the cost of compensating the victims is lower than preventing the scams in the first place, even if that makes their platform turn into a “hellscape,” he said in the video.

Check out more of Benzinga’s Consumer Tech coverage by following this link.

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