I just received the following from Amazon.
“As part of our ongoing efforts to ensure that you can shop with confidence in Amazon’s stores, we recently learned the product you received from a third-party seller is likely not an authentic ZEISS product.”
I checked mine and they do not match the ones I bought locally.
The ones i got at the camera shop were clearer in the printing on the box and looked just higher quality. I didn’t think anything about it until i got the email and refund from amazon,
Glad they are following up on some fakes at least–when I worked at Philips Oral Healthcare (Sonicare), there was always issues trying to get action against those selling countefeit brush heads. Has been a couple years since I placed my order of Zeiss wipes, so will take a look–no email from Amazon, so maybe my seller was legit…
Unfortunately this doesn’t guarantee that you’re actually getting something directly from Amazon. If Amazon stocks something and a third-party seller has the same item in Amazon’s warehouse (via the Fulfilled by Amazon program) then Amazon sometimes mixes them all together. In that case you may end up with the third-party product when you buy something listed as “Ships from and sold by Amazon.com” or vice-versa. They’ll ship whatever happens to be in the warehouse that’s closest to you.
A more in-depth article in how and why this happens: Register to read | Financial Times
(tl;dr: it saves Amazon money and allows them to get stuff to you faster.)