Fakes and fake orders are terrible! Can Amazon's new team enforce the law across borders? !

The last time Amazon sellers surrounded the Amazon office in Shenzhen, there were some speculations that service providers were behind the push. Afterwards there was even news that "several service providers were arrested by Amazon and law enforcement agencies."

Regardless of whether this news is true or not, many service providers do provide services that skirt the line, some violate platform regulations, and some are even illegal. Due to the many problems of cross-border law enforcement, Amazon cannot reach domestic companies and service providers, and can only block one of these operations if it discovers one.

Recently, Amazon announced on its official website that it will set up a new team to specifically connect with government law enforcement agencies around the world to crack down on sellers of counterfeit and knockoff products.

Does this mean that Amazon can directly hold domestic sellers and service providers accountable for violations?

First of all, not all violations will be subject to transnational enforcement by Amazon. Only sellers who violate both Amazon rules and local regulations are likely to be targeted, such as selling counterfeit goods and fake orders. If there are no relevant local regulations and the seller only violates the platform policy (such as abuse of variants, pricing fraud, etc.), the most they will do is to close the store.

Because many sellers have their own skills in store registration, it is generally difficult to find the correct store manager from the registration information. So Amazon added some explosive stuff to this new team - third-party service providers.

That is to say, Amazon will not only use its own data, but also combine it with the data provided by third-party service providers to jointly locate sellers of counterfeit goods. Although some sellers cannot be located from their registration information, no one will safely entrust their funds to a stranger or a friend they don’t know very well, so the sellers’ payment accounts are most likely their own , or at least registered with their relatives’ information.

It can be said that as long as Amazon gets the data of third-party payment institutions, it can easily find the real information of sellers. Moreover, there are data provided by other third-party service providers. If we sellers can really get this data, we will have no privacy in front of Amazon.

Amazon did not disclose which third-party service providers are cooperating with this plan, because disclosing their names is not a good thing for these service providers who cooperate with Amazon.

Third-party payment institutions do have very comprehensive and authentic seller information, but providing their own user data to partner companies like Amazon is actually a violation of business ethics and may even be illegal.

There was a case like this in China some time ago: a brokerage company and its artist went to court, and the brokerage company directly presented the artist's bank account statement as evidence. However, under legal conditions, only the artist himself and the law enforcement agency (with complete relevant materials) can view the bank account information. The bank in question allowed the brokerage company to view the artist's bank account because it had a cooperation relationship with the brokerage company. In the end, the bank publicly apologized and dismissed the branch president in question. Isn't it very similar to the situation in Amazon's new policy?

If a third-party agency is found to have violated regulations by providing user privacy to Amazon, it will be denounced and abandoned by users in a matter of minutes. Therefore, if Amazon wants to obtain this data, it must go through law enforcement agencies.

As for whether the cooperation between Amazon and our law enforcement agencies will be smooth, I would definitely say it would be difficult in the past. However, in January this year, we reached a first-phase trade agreement with the United States. One of the important items in this agreement is to crack down on counterfeit sales on e-commerce platforms .

Therefore, Amazon's global anti-counterfeiting team is not groundless, but a long-planned policy and is likely to be targeted at Chinese sellers. Sellers who may be affected should pay more attention recently, and it is best to transform and eliminate risky products.