Unnatural positive reviews suddenly increase, Amazon sellers’ products are “fake orders”

The approaching peak season is a good thing for sellers, but Amazon's account sweeps and competitors' pranks before the peak season every year catch sellers off guard. There are many cases of account closures and frozen funds. Many sellers believe that the supervision of the industry and platforms and the self-discipline of sellers are obviously not enough.

Just recently, another seller discovered that he had been pranked, his store was closed, and his links were removed.

The seller's products were placed on fake order websites, causing the store to be closed

Recently, some sellers reported that their products were maliciously placed on a foreign order-brushing website. Within a few days, the number of positive reviews for their products suddenly increased. The platform determined that the seller had engaged in order-brushing and closed his store.

The seller said that he had indeed engaged in fake orders last year and received a warning letter. He then submitted a detailed explanation to the platform and the warning disappeared. As for the store closure due to fake orders, the seller said that he knew nothing about it. He finally received an email from Amazon and learned that one of his products had appeared on a fake order website abroad.

The seller said that in fact, since he was warned last year and almost closed his store, his company has not engaged in fake orders and has stopped cooperating with related intermediaries. As for the fake order website mentioned in the email, he has never had any contact with it. The seller also checked the information of the fake order website and found that the website domain name was registered after his products were sold, and no one answered the contact information provided by the website. The seller said that he was in a dilemma and could not contact the fake order website, could not find the real fake order person, and could not provide definite evidence to the platform.

After the incident, the seller submitted several letters of complaint to Amazon but received no response.

Most people believe that this is due to malicious competition from rivals. One seller said that he had also encountered a similar situation: first, the number of positive reviews increased abnormally, and then so-called "consumers" placed orders continuously and then collectively canceled them. Soon after, the seller received a warning letter from the platform. Fortunately, the seller's store was not blocked.

A seller said: "It is obvious that this is a human prank, probably done by a competitor. After a series of processes, it will be difficult to unblock the store. There is no way to prove that it is not you who brushed the orders, nor can you prove that it is someone else who brushed the orders." Some sellers who have had the same experience admitted that it is indeed extremely difficult to appeal in such a situation.

Some sellers are more concerned about the fake order websites mentioned in the incident. They are worried about this: if there are a large number of similar unsupervised fake order websites overseas, they may be the next to be on the list.

In fact, although sellers are used to pranks, such behavior before the peak season really makes many people angry. As one seller said: "If the store closure problem cannot be properly resolved before the peak season, there will be no hope for the peak season."

Based on the situation in recent years, this type of bad behavior is still concentrated in deliberate complaints, follow-selling and other behaviors.

"Once or twice is fine, but this has happened 5 or 6 times and it's still not over! " said a seller. As a new seller (hereinafter referred to as "A " ), he has also encountered troubles recently. His store has been complained about many times in a row, and the links have been removed, saying that his products infringe copyright. In fact, A said that the infringement alleged by the complainant was just a common method used to suppress new competitors.

After being complained about many times, A found the relevant information of the complainant and discovered that he was a seller of similar products with a longer experience. A found that it was not just him, but several other companies selling the same products were also complained about. The common point of the complained sellers was that they were new to the industry and had good sales. After contacting the complainant, the other party said that he would not withdraw the lawsuit.

This also caused dissatisfaction among the sellers who were complained about like A. They said they were communicating with the platform to restore the link and would not rule out countermeasures in the future. For similar spoofs in the same industry, many sellers would choose to fight back while expressing their anger and trying to save themselves.

However, many times due to the platform's policies, the result is often that everyone suffers.

Seller: We can eat meat and drink soup, why upset this "pot"?

The cross-border e-commerce industry has experienced a period of rise, rapid growth, and a gradual decline in dividends after the peak period, and has returned to a period of steady growth. While benefiting a large number of sellers, it has also spawned some internal problems in the industry.

At first, due to the imperfect supervision of most platforms, there were omissions in product quality and seller competition behavior norms. As the industry matures, the platform supervision system is gradually improving.

Amazon, AliExpress, S hopee and many other e-commerce platforms have also announced a number of relevant policies in the past two years. For example, Amazon has made it clear in its seller code of conduct : sellers are required to act fairly and any form of manipulation of sales rankings is prohibited ... Sellers are responsible for the behavior of their accounts, including the activities of third-party service providers. In addition, it has also taken severe punishment measures against sellers who violate the rules. Last year, many Amazon sellers were banned for fake orders, involving about 3,000 accounts . This year, many sellers were banned due to association issues, which once again sounded the alarm for sellers.

In addition, other e-commerce platforms have also issued similar notices, stating that they will prohibit any fake order behavior, otherwise they will take measures such as banning sellers from certain system functions and lowering store rankings.

It is worth noting that in addition to the platforms, some provinces and cities have also issued relevant documents this year to regulate the development of the cross-border e-commerce industry. For example, Guangzhou issued relevant guiding documents at a relevant meeting in September this year , clarifying that cross-border e-commerce companies are not allowed to engage in behaviors such as "pushing orders, brushing orders, and false reporting."

The implementation of a number of policies has indeed brought about changes in the industry, but many sellers admit that although the platform's supervision has become stricter, the sellers' self-discipline is not satisfactory. Most people want a relatively fair competition environment, but it is difficult to resist the bad behavior of a few bad people. This is also a problem that needs to be solved urgently.

"Originally, everyone in the industry gets to share the spoils, but if they get involved, the big pot will become unstable," said an industry insider . It can be seen that only the joint efforts of multiple parties can achieve long-term and healthy development of the entire industry.

In fact, such pranks by competitors in the industry are staged every year, but in addition to pranks, some sellers themselves also have some problems. They know that some behaviors are not compliant, but still play by the rules . Obviously, under the industry compliance and market fair competition mechanism, such sellers will not last long.

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