HOW TO SHOP SAFELY ON AMAZON
With over half of all product listings on Amazon.com now being listed by third-party sellers, it's important to do a little extra research to ensure you are getting the best price and the best quality. Here's some tips we've put together for our readers.
We LOVE shopping on Amazon and we know you do too! You can find fabulous products there that are difficult to find anywhere else. And as always, we want our readers to be informed and most of all, safe.
When buying anything, especially health, beauty, and skincare products from Amazon, we encourage you to take certain steps to protect yourself. Unfortunately, it's still sometimes hard to tell through a cursory glance at a product listing who is actually selling it and where it came from.
We've received counterfeit and fake products and have seen a rise in sketchy-looking listings within the last few years. While Amazon is aggressively trying to tackle the problem, it still pays to be cautious and slow down before hitting the buy button.
Here are some tips:
- Only buy products that are only "shipped from" Amazon, and are "sold by" Amazon or the third party who actually makes/distributes these products. You can verify the identity of the third-party seller by clicking on the Sold By link. Do they appear to be the same corporate identity who makes the product or an authorized seller with a high percentage of positive feedback? Are they listed as a verified seller by the brand?
- When searching in Amazon, unfortunately, "featured" products often list first, and these are often irrelevant, not the right brand, or sold by sketchy third parties. After doing a search, filter your results:
- Look for the button on the top right side that drops down search and filtering options, and choose "Avg. Customer Review."
- Use options on the left sidebar to filter by brand, Prime shipping options, and customer reviews. We prefer only to see items that have a 4 star or more average.
- If you think you received a counterfeit item, do not use it! Initiate a return immediately and if it is not returnable through the return system, follow the process laid out in Amazon's A-to-Z guarantee.
What's a Third-party Seller? What if they are the only ones selling the product I want?
Amazon.com sells and ships items, but increasingly has grown on its Marketplace. This is how Amazon also fulfills orders for other sellers who list their items alongside Amazon’s items. As more sellers have flooded the Amazon Marketplace, there is a higher chance for an item to actually cost more on Amazon than elsewhere. Gone are the days when you could quickly just surf to Amazon knowing you were almost certain to get the lowest possible price.... somewhere, that store clerk in Target who tried to take my phone away when I was scanning barcodes to look up on Amazon all those years ago is laughing at me.
We want to make it abundantly clear that we are not opposed to third-party sellers on Amazon. Many of them are legitimate businesses and individuals, who want the exposure and audience that Amazon offers. A little bit of digging can help you discern between a legitimate business and a non-legitimate.
Even if a third-party item has Prime shipping, it may still be sold at a considerable markup. Prime shipping does not always denote the lowest price, it just means the third party seller has sent their items to an Amazon warehouse to be shipped by Amazon when you buy them.
On Evaluated.com, we try to pass on helpful information and if we've verified a third-party seller of a product we think you should consider, we will pass that on.
As an example, we recommend Sonos Disinfecting Wipes as our top choice in this category. There were (especially during the pandemic) many sellers who went to the Sonos website, bought up large quantities of their products and dumped them on Amazon. We've been buying these for years for when we travel, so we knew what was happening these insane prices started showing up. Sonos and many healthcare companies worked hard combating the gouging as well on Amazon and on other marketplaces.
Here's how we'd check out the third party information when buying these wipes from Sonos. These are the travel packs of wipes I buy any time I even think I might be on an airplane or train or anywhere I'd feel the need to disinfect my surroundings.
Check out the product listing: you can see that Sonos is shipped from Amazon, but sold by Sonos Supply, and when you click on the Sonos Supply link, it takes you to their "Storefront." This is what their storefront looks like. If you were to buy the same product shipped from and sold by Sonos Supply, it costs a little more because you will then be paying for that seller to ship directly from their warehouse to you vs. Amazon's warehouse.
Now that things have settled down and Amazon is doing a much better job at addressing and shutting down the price gouging sellers, we don't see an item that costs $16.99 listed for $75.99 as often, but there are still third-party sellers out there we would not recommend you buy from.
Still apprehensive? We didn't mean to scare you. But if you really have to have this product, and can't seem to find a seller on Amazon you trust, consider this: many third-party sellers have their own retail operation online and may also offer free shipping and other incentives when you buy products from their website instead of Amazon.
So if it’s another online retailer you like and trust, it might be worth it to take a quick peek at their website.
fighting fraud and counterfeit products on amazon:
- Some (not all!!) third-party sellers of beauty and personal care items on Amazon sell stolen, counterfeit, or expired products.
- 56% of products on Amazon are listed by third-party sellers, as of the fourth quarter of 2021
- In 2020, Amazon invested more than $700 million and employed over 10,000 people to tackle the problem of fraud and abuse.
- The Amazon verification system prevented over 6 million attempts to create new selling accounts, with only 6% of attempted seller account registrations actually being verified and allowed to list products for sale.
- Over 2 million products that were counterfeit were destroyed in Amazon warehouses and over 10 billion suspicious listings were blocked.
What to Look Out for when Buying from a Third-Party Seller on Amazon:
We love the business opportunities the internet has opened up for so many people! So we reiterate that we are not opposed to third-party sellers on Amazon and other big marketplaces. Rather, we are opposed to the sellers who take advantage of these opportunities to rip off consumers.
Counterfeiting can be a real problem online, as well as price gouging, or underselling.
And some of these sellers are price gouging big time. We saw it surge as a problem during the pandemic, and it is an issue that's here to stay.
Understand that some third-party sellers sell their own products- a manufacturer lists their items on Amazon, and they are the third-party seller, selling their own product. Their prices on Amazon may be higher than on their own websites because Amazon charges a percentage of every sale a seller makes, and some business owners pass along that expense in the price of their products. We totally get that, but just know you may pay more for the convenience of buying something on Amazon and having it delivered along with your toothpaste and new ear buds. If you feel strongly enough about it, you can always buy directly from a manufacturer. Some small businesses will thank you for it!
But let's say you aren't buying from the third-party seller that manufactured it. Maybe you're looking at a seller who is selling your favorite baby formula at a rock bottom price even your coupon-stacking mother-in-law couldn't get on Black Friday.
That's where we urge caution with third-party sellers: how and where they source their products. So maybe they aren't all dumpster-diving entrepreneurs you see on the news who find discarded products in the dumpster behind Ulta or Sephora and sell their treasures online. Still, you may want to consider other supply-chain issues. Some products may be stolen, expired, or otherwise unsuitable for sale. There's an individual we Googled who buys up inventory from businesses whose inventory was written off due to flood damage or other natural disasters. It wasn't hard to also locate his storefronts and he is doing an excellent job "recycling" what's for the most part perfectly good products that would otherwise go to the landfill. Would I buy a can of baby formula off him? Absolutely not- and he wasn't selling any. Would I buy a set of plastic deck chairs from him? Absolutely.
The surge in organized crime hitting retail stores should be of concern to everyone who buys things online. Those thieves you saw on the evening news are not really going to wear every single bottle of Gucci perfume or drink every bottle of cough syrup they are stuffing into bags (well, maybe the cough syrup). Law enforcement is increasingly discovering that these are targeted thefts helping to stock warehouses of sellers who then flood online marketplaces with their stolen goods. Because their bottom line is much lower than a legitimate merchant's, the prices are often competitive or lower than even the manufacturer of the product. If it looks too good to be true, it may very well be. Consider what your money might be funding. Theft often funds even worse crimes such as trafficking, or even terrorism.
We're geeks, so we thought we'd dig up some examples for you. Our team looked up some random third-party sellers, some we've bought from before, and some with what appeared to be suspect listings. Remember: their storefront (accessed through "SOLD BY" link on the product listing) will show their business information.
Do a little digging and you might be surprised! We were! I found that one of the third-party sellers I bought my new favorite Swedish shampoo from is a little hair supply boutique in California where a cousin of mine shops- the owner sells on Amazon so her customers staying home due to the pandemic can still get their products. Brilliant! I also found a storefront for some products with an address that didn't actually exist, and one with the same address and information as a business that had been shut down multiple times for some pretty heinous criminal activity and registered to a guy with quite the profile on Mugshots.com.
(TL;DR)
too long; didn't read
- For perishables, beauty, health, and other items that could be unsafe if they went through a sketchy supply chain? Stick with products that are sold and shipped by Amazon.com or sold by the actual manufacturer themselves using Amazon's Prime shipping.
- Be wary of third-party sellers who may be selling stolen, expired, or otherwise unsuitable goods at either rock-bottom or inflated prices. If it seems too good to be true it probably is.
- It only takes seconds to do a quick perusal of a seller's storefront and business profile. Use your spidey senses and make sure you aren't buying from criminals.
- If it's something you just gotta have, and nobody else seems to have it other than sketchy third-party sellers consider buying directly from the manufacturer.