Amazon Marketplace is a mug's game.

Here’s something you don’t see every day. We don’t mean these mugs, although pure copper Moscow Mule mugs are unusual in a sea of cheapo copper-plated nickel ones. We mean the extraordinary message embedded in the final image on this product’s Amazon page.

“Counterfeit products are often sold on Amazon,” it warns, “and do not offer the same product quality or customer service of authentic products.” Crossing the line between passive-aggressive and aggressive, Alchemade names names in a similar warning in the features list: “Mugs sold by unapproved resellers (like Copper Craft) practice illegitimate distribution.”

What? What’s going on here? Look at the handful of one-star reviews out of the overwhelmingly positive feedback on this product. People complaining about the mugs they received being the wrong size, or obviously nickel-plated, or different from the first time they bought them, or not “ok to use for human consumption”. One reviewer knows why: “Total knock-offs.”

Third-party knockoff outfits have been able to glom onto this sale, take customers’ money who think they’re buying from Alchemade, and send them knockoff crap instead. Even though it says “sold by Alchemade” right there on the product page.

It’s like you went to the supermarket, bought a can of refried beans, discovered it was full of dog food, and complained to the management - only for them to say “Oh, you didn’t buy that from us, you bought it from some random guy we allowed to slip some products on our shelves.”

Amazon would no doubt claim that most Amazon Marketplace resellers are legitimate, that they couldn’t possibly police every transaction in advance, that Amazon Marketplace adds selection and helps keep prices down by forcing different sellers to compete to be the one who gets your order when you click “Add to Cart”.

All of which is beside the point. Amazon could easily stop this problem by adding a “Do not shop Amazon Marketplace” filter. Customers could be sure what they were buying and who they were buying it from. Doesn’t seem like too much to ask for “Earth’s most customer-centric company” (their words, not ours).

But they’ll never do that. Their Amazon Marketplace business is too valuable to jeopardize by taking the side of customers over counterfeiters.

They measure Amazon Marketplace’s success by how many third-party sellers they add. Amazon won’t do anything to scare them away. So customers and legitimate sellers will keep getting screwed.

We can only imagine the pissed-off emails and calls from Alchemade to Amazon, and the infuriating shrug in response. The only recourse available to companies like Alchemade - you know, the ones who bother to make a quality product and attract the customers who get bait-and-switched by crooks with Amazon’s blessing - is to put angry warnings in their images and copy.

Needless to say, we don’t have a “Marketplace”. If you buy this pair of Alchemade Moscow Mule mugs from us, that’s what we’ll send you, at a much lower price than anybody on Amazon. And we won’t blow a lot of smoke up our own asses about how “customer-centric” we are while we’re doing it.