Amazon to end commingling after years of complaints from brands and sellers
42 comments
·September 21, 2025codespin
commandar
> they would let random retailers fill the order with fake products
What made this all particularly insidious is that Amazon not only commingled inventory, but actively refused to track where inventory came from.
This meant you only needed one fraudulent seller to poison the entire inventory pool and there was no way know where the bad product came from because Amazon actively avoided being able to track it.
That's the aspect of it that always felt particularly malicious to me.
FredPret
The bad part here is letting “poisoned” inventory in.
Adding vendor tracking adds a layer of ERP difficulty that isn’t practical for bulk, cheap items.
You either have to have serial numbers (unique per item, not just a product identifier barcode) or you have to physically segregate inventory by vendor, which is not practical.
If the vendor doesn’t serialize the item, then Amazon has to add it on receipt. Certainly not worth it for $10-20 item.
Retric
They didn’t need to actually track things internally, add a sticker or even have someone stamp the vender code to the item listing the vendor when you’re adding the item to the bins and if the customer complains you can use that sticker to track who added the item after the fact. Critically you don’t need some 6 digit number for vender code, every new vender for a given item gets a number for that item, software can remember the relevant mapping.
If some vender is adding fraudulent items to the system based on some thresholds you set, charge the vendor to manually sort those specific products out.
Odds are they would make up the ~5 cents per item just dealing with less fraud. However, you don’t need to track every item rack the first few thousand items from a vender and you can scale back tracking as they prove themselves. At scale this could be almost arbitrarily cheap.
diab0lic
> or you have to physically segregate inventory by vendor, which is not practical.
The headline seems to indicate that the geniuses in logistics at Amazon have figured out how to make it practical!
josefx
> Certainly not worth it for $10-20 item.
Really? Adding a unique ID at the point of entry costs that much?
lyrrad
I don't think ending commingling will stop that from happening, since Subscribe & Save is set to switch to a different seller with a lower price by default.
In the US, when Subscribe & Save is set up, it is set by default to receive orders from "Amazon.com and other top rated sellers". If you want to change it, you need to go into the Subscribe & Save page and change it to "Amazon.com only".
I've had an order where I initially placed a new subscription sold by Amazon.com, but a 3rd party seller would lower their price by a few cents, and Amazon would change the seller and I would receive grey market goods.
I haven't found a way to change the default for new subscriptions to always use the same seller that I set up the subscription with, so I need to manually change it for every single new subscription.
floating-io
Thanks for this. I had no idea this was even a thing, and it explains some discrepancies I've seen with my one subscription.
They really don't make it obvious where to change it, either...
sillysaurusx
It’s weird, every time I’ve talked to Amazon support they’ve always done well. Did they refuse to refund you or let you return it?
Someone1234
That's neither here nor there.
Amazon regularly commingling legitimate and counterfeit goods, means that customers are left with the job of trying to verify that the goods they ordered are legitimate. For every customer that complaints & refunds, there might be three or more who don't.
Some of these counterfeit products have legitimate safety concerns, for example lead paint usage, battery fire risks, PPE that misstates its effectiveness, or USB chargers with poor AC DC electrical isolation.
This is a huge trust problem, and "the customer needs to detect counterfeits and refund," isn't actually a solution to THAT problem.
a2128
I bought an electronic item brand new, sold by Amazon, and they sent me a used one that already had its digital bundle redeemed by someone else and 5 out of 12 manufacturer warranty months used. I contacted Amazon support about this within a week and they told me replacement is not possible in my situation, I can return it but a full refund is not guaranteed
nenenejej
What if the product causes harm? Fire for example or poisoning.
kwanbix
Yeah, same for me. I don't like commingling either, but I could always solve it with Amazon's support.
kylec
I’m astounded, this has been a problem for 10+ years and I just assumed they didn’t care and would never change it. Better late than never, but why the sudden change?
SoftTalker
I guess it's one thing to say you are going to do it and another thing to actually do it. Is anyone going to be verifying this? How would you? Mark your products and ask customers to check for the mark?
notatoad
yeah, this has been obviously a bad thing for so long, and they've been so stubborn, it's hard to believe anything has actually changed in the "economics" of it.
it smells like the sort of policy change that happens when an exec gets personally impacted by it.
mbreese
It smells to me like the sort of policy change that happens when Amazon starts to worry about it affecting their bottom line and relationships with suppliers. It used to be enough to solve the problem with support/email. I do wonder what changed…
thepryz
This. Amazon made a number of changes to the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) program related to lost and damaged inventory among other things. The changes risked increasing the costs and also required Amazon to be provided information that they really shouldn’t need, such as as the cost to source that inventory.
My assumption is that the decision to stop commingling is more to support these changes to the FBA program and allow them to extract more money via fees.
https://www.ecommercebytes.com/2024/12/22/amazon-drops-bombs...
SpicyLemonZest
I feel like this is one of the things where the most parsimonious explanation by far is to take their stated explanation at face value. It makes perfect sense that Amazon would insist on commingling when it's necessary to achieve fast shipping speeds, and end it if their logistics network is so good that it's no longer necessary. (Anecdotally, I just got an Amazon order to my doorstep in four hours yesterday - their logistics really are mindbogglingly fast now.)
JBlue42
>but why the sudden change?
Tariffs maybe?
dataflow
> During Wednesday’s presentation in Seattle, Amazon executives said the economics of commingling no longer worked. With the company’s logistics network now capable of storing products closer to customers, the speed advantage of pooled inventory has diminished.
Sounds more like they were losing market to other retailers.
freshtake
This. Amazon buyer metrics have been tanking for a while. In general if I don't care about the quality I have better and cheaper places to shop. When I know the brand I want, and want predictable quality, I order from the company directly. Price, service, quality, and delivery time are equal or better than Amazon.
redserk
I don’t think I’ve had a counterfeit good come in, but the number of times I’ve heard about it led me to start going to other retailers for things I wanted guarantees on: cleaning products, personal hygiene items, and expensive electronics/accessories.
Amusingly after that, I saw I could get nearly everything else off AliExpress for cheaper. My usage of Amazon practically evaporated.
freshtake
A good move, even if many years late. It's a bilateral trustbuster when the same platform that allows commingling and knockoffs then begins tagging legit items as "frequently returned" in the feed.
Can we also get the ability to filter by seller entity country of origin?
Amazon also needs to offer far better tools for buyers to effectively find and attach to brands.
neilv
As a consumer, this is great.
If Amazon can also ensure that every "Sold by Amazon" unit is legitimate (that they aren't sometimes sourcing badly), then it's 10x great.
(That I didn't feel comfortable enough trusting Amazon for some kinds of items is usually the only reason I've been buying direct-to-consumer from the brands' Web sites. I've had even Samsung and Crucial do DTC poorly in the last couple years.)
(Also, if I felt I could trust Amazon for genuine brand-name monthly OTC allergy products, that would mean no more hassling with the pharmacy chains. And maybe no more Walmart, though I don't recall a recent problem in their execution, and have been trusting them a little more than Amazon recently.)
ddavis
Literally dealing with this right now. My wife got what appears to be a (very expensive) counterfeit item that is technically non-returnable (not laying down without a fight). Kind of cathartic to see this pop up.
woodruffw
A serious question for the people in this thread who have bitten by this: why do you keep giving Amazon your business? Is it worth it despite these experiences?
akhleung
I once was the victim of an empty box scam when I purchased an expensive item off Amazon a few years ago (luckily I got a refund), and since then I've used Amazon much less, and only for inexpensive things. Maybe enough people have reduced their spending such that Amazon has been forced to take notice.
thepryz
I largely stopped buying from Amazon after receiving three counterfeit or defective products in one month. The only reason I buy from them now is due to a particularly low sale price or things I can’t easily source elsewhere. Otherwise, if ai can buy local or buy elsewhere I do.
GeekyBear
The hassle of returning fraudulent or broken products has already driven me back to brick and mortar retail stores for items of any real value.
ViscountPenguin
Just got hit by a counterfeit good 2 days ago. Thank god it's finally ending.
buckle8017
I literally do not believe they will do this.
paulryanrogers
Amazing they weren't prosecuted for it.
Someone1234
Yeah, "shipped and sold by Amazon.com" was essentially selling and shipping millions of dollars of fully counterfeit products under this program for years. If a small vendor does something like this, they'd have the fed kicking down their door after tens of thousands.
I personally received counterfeit and tampered products "shipped and sold by Amazon.com" on half a dozen occasions. Even as recently as the last two months.
Barbing
>[…] Jeff Bezos received your email and asked me to respond on his behalf. […]
>If an item is shipped and sold by Amazon[dot]com it will not be commingled with any other inventory.
>Best regards, […]
>Executive Customer Relations
-Amazon, 2015
Was this a lie or did it change?
SoftTalker
I have and I quit Amazon years ago. Probably have not used my account in nearly a decade.
consumer451
I had always thought they must be the biggest distributor of counterfeit products in the history of the country.
It was one of those things that I couldn’t explain, and just wrote off before it broke my brain.
dboreham
Rather suspicious this comes out a couple days after the articles about Walmart having issues with sellers shipping fake products.
I received counterfeit goods multiple times due to this. I set up a subscribe and save order and they would let random retailers fill the order with fake products. Amazon collected the money and just did not care, they need to be held accountable for these things.