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That is mostly true. The deal is, Amazon is expert at efficiency. They make money from being efficient, and make money for being inefficient. By being efficient they make money by less waste (space) or wasted time. (time is money) They charge sellers for inefficiency, or more boutique services.

So in a nutshell, as a seller, you get a better deal from Amazon for co-mingling your product a number of ways. Seller’s don’t have to co-mingle, but they are charged higher seller’s fees for shelf space if they don’t. Shelf space is sq footage. Square footage is warehouse space. Larger warehouse space means bigger building, more realestate, more utilities, etc… And when you are dealing with millions of products, shelf space is premium, and is the rental space of the building, which is Amazon’s original business model.

There are many unique products that can’t be co-mingled, such as the Orbtronic batteries spinynorman mentioned above. But expensive partially because of high fees. (and that orbtronic batteries are expensive anyway)

The biggest problem for a legit seller of Samsung 30Q’s who co-mingles to save money, is returns. And returns are costly to a seller. Like you mentioned, there is no way a seller knows if it was his product that was actually defective or a fake. The return goes to whomever the customer purchased from. This is how and why sellers of fakes prefer to co-mingle their product, and sellers that won’t co-mingle have a tougher time making a profit because of fees. There is also no way for the consumer to know which sellers don’t co-mingle their product, other than sellers who don’t use FBA (fulfillment by amazon). Another tactic Amazon uses to encourage sellers to co-mingle is outrageous shelf space rental fees if your product sits on the shelf too long. And they just substantially raised those rates last month.

Basically, Amazon’s business model encourages or attracts counterfeits. There isn’t a single person working at any of those huge warehouses that could tell a fake from an authentic 30Q, nor would they take the time to find out, since the seller pays for the return. In other words, Amazon doesn’t care. It’s a numbers game with the sellers.

sorry for the long winded reply