Amazon moves to stop fake items being sold on its website

Amazon has announced it will crack down on the sale of counterfeit goods on its Marketplace website.

The online shopping giant offers third-party companies the ability to sell goods on this website. But this has lead in recent years to some people selling fake goods on the website, resulting in numerous complaints from disgruntled customers.

This could potentially damage a brand's reputation, as the cheaper products are usually of very poor quality.

Bloomberg reported that one legitimate seller, Randy Hetrick, had noticed Amazon was selling cheap imitations of his TRX Training System, a piece of exercise equipment.

According to another source who spoke to Bloomberg, Amazon was aware that the problem is getting worse but had kept silent about the problem.

Amazon is now setting up teams in the US and Europe to work directly with some leading brands, in order to prevent imitations of their products from being sold through the site, according to a source familiar with the initiative.

The same source said that Major League Baseball and National Football League wanted to sell merchandise on Amazon but negotiations came to a halt due to what the organisations perceived as Amazon's lack of control over fake products.

Around two million independent sellers compete on Amazon, and the process to sell products on the platform is currently fairly easy with sellers able to flog goods shortly after registering on the site. However, the easy process also helps in allowing less honest sellers flog cheap imitations of goods before vanishing from the website.

Amazon is also setting up a register to make sure that products sold under certain names are real. The firm will make a big push in 2017 to target thousands of companies that may have been reluctant to sell goods on the site over counterfeit issues.

Earlier this month, Amazon filed two lawsuits against merchants it claimed were selling fake goods. The online retail giant also decided to ban paid reviews that run alongside counterfeit goods.