Prime Day, Prime Risk: Why Scams Surge and What Your Brand Can Do

Amazon Prime Day has become a retail juggernaut, transforming from a 24-hour flash sale into a multi-day global event that draws hundreds of millions of shoppers. In 2025, Prime Day will span four full days (the longest to date), generating a powerful spike in traffic, visibility, and opportunity.

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But as legitimate brands ramp up with discounts, campaigns, and influencer-driven promotions, bad actors are preparing too. Prime Day routinely triggers a surge of unauthorized sellers, fake listings, and brand impersonation scams, many of which operate undetected. As brands pour resources into the event, these scammers quietly take advantage, copying product pages, conducting elaborate phishing schemes, and inserting knockoff goods into consumer shopping carts.

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For brands, the risks are significant, spanning financial loss, reputational harm, and legal exposure. Therefore, understanding why counterfeit activity surges during Prime Day and how to proactively prevent it is essential in order to successfully compete in today’s digital-first marketplace.

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Why Scammers Love Prime Day

The same dynamics that make Prime Day attractive to consumers – urgency, deep discounts, limited-time offers – make it equally appealing to scammers. The event’s massive scale creates fertile ground for deception: shoppers are primed to move fast without thinking, platforms are overwhelmed with listings, and enforcement systems lag behind real-time activity.

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According to the Federal Trade Commission, consumers reported losing nearly $10 billion to fraud in 2023. Online shopping scams were the second most-reported type of fraud, and large-scale sales events like Prime Day are well-documented triggers. Scammers know that during Prime Day, even the most cautious shopper may let their guard down in the race to secure a deal. They use this to their advantage, launching low-cost alternatives at prices that undercut legitimate sellers. In some cases, they mimic entire storefronts, spoofing logos, brand names, and even packaging details.

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Furthermore, a recent Forbes investigation found that Prime Day scams rose 80% year over year, with impersonation attempts more than doubling. Many of these scams posed as Amazon support, warning customers of fake order issues or account suspensions to trick them into clicking malicious links or surrendering personal information.

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These scams often begin weeks before Prime Day, targeting consumers as anticipation builds. The moment when customer trust and purchase intent are at their peak is also when the marketplace becomes most vulnerable.

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The Impact on Brands

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The consequences of counterfeit activity during Prime Day are far-reaching, and they rarely end with a single lost sale.

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At the most basic level, brands lose revenue to unauthorized resellers and counterfeits. These illegitimate sellers divert traffic and transactions away from official channels, often by undercutting prices or falsely advertising legitimacy. But the financial hit is only the tip of the iceberg.

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Counterfeit goods almost always come with a trail of damage: increased product complaints, higher return rates, and a spike in negative reviews. These outcomes don’t just affect the customer experience: they directly influence your product visibility. On marketplaces like Amazon, poor reviews and performance issues can drag down your listing rank, make it harder to win the Buy Box, and diminish your overall discoverability. In a marketplace where algorithmic visibility is everything, this can have a cascading effect on future sales.

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The reputational toll is even more concerning. Counterfeit listings and impersonation scams pose serious legal and regulatory risks, especially in sensitive categories like supplements, cosmetics, and electronics. When a third-party seller mimics your storefront or sends phishing emails pretending to be your brand, the damage isn't limited to that one transaction. It creates a trust gap that can take months or even years to repair. Customers who fall victim to fake listings often blame the brand, not the marketplace. Even if your company had nothing to do with the scam, your name is what they remember when the product doesn’t work, arrives broken, or causes harm.

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Then there’s the impact on your pricing strategy. Unauthorized sellers routinely undercut official pricing, whether through retail arbitrage or by offering lower-quality knockoffs at discounted rates. This creates tension with your authorized retail partners, who may struggle to compete or meet agreed-upon pricing thresholds. It also erodes your brand’s perceived value. During Prime Day, when consumers are especially price-sensitive, even minor deviations can lead shoppers to view your product as overpriced or inconsistent, going with a cheaper knockoff instead.

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All of this undermines the hard work brands put into cultivating loyalty, trust, and recognition. Prime Day may be a major sales opportunity, but it also requires an equally strong brand protection strategy to ensure that growth doesn’t come at the cost of credibility.

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What Brands Can Do to Stay Protected

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Defending your brand during Prime Day and other high-traffic events requires a layered, proactive approach.

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1. Start with visibility. Monitor your listings, ASINs, and top SKUs leading up to Prime Day. Look for unusual price drops, sudden shifts in Buy Box ownership, or unexpected spikes in sales, all of which can indicate unauthorized selling activity. Use test buys to validate suspicious listings and confirm whether third-party sellers are distributing genuine products.
2. Leverage platform tools. Enroll in Amazon Brand Registry to gain access to enforcement capabilities like Project Zero, which allows self-service takedowns, and Transparency, which lets you tag individual units with scannable authenticity codes. These tools can help automate protection, but they only work if you regularly maintain and monitor them.
3. Educate your customers. Empower shoppers to identify and report counterfeit products by sharing clear, accessible guidance. Encourage them to check for authenticity markers like tamper-proof seals, lot numbers, and trusted certifications. Remind them to purchase only from your verified Amazon storefront or authorized resellers – and to be wary of deals that seem too good to be true.
4. Don’t neglect post-event audits. After Prime Day ends, review your performance data. Look at returns, reviews, customer service tickets, and sales attribution. If you notice inconsistencies, investigate further. You may discover that counterfeits were in circulation without your knowledge.

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And finally, if you do find evidence of fraud or brand misuse, report it. Amazon offers a direct email, reportascam@amazon.com, where you or your customers can flag suspicious listings or communications. You can also escalate through Brand Registry and partner with legal counsel to pursue takedowns and trademark enforcement where needed.

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Final Thoughts

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Amazon Prime Day presents massive opportunity, but also massive exposure. As platforms grow more complex and counterfeiters grow more sophisticated, brand protection is no longer a back-office function. It’s a frontline business imperative.

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The brands that win during Prime Day aren’t just the ones with the best discounts or influencer campaigns. They’re the ones who protect their authenticity, preserve pricing integrity, and defend their customers from harmful knockoffs.

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Want to ensure your products – and your reputation – stay protected on Prime Day and beyond? Book a demo with MarqVision now.

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