Many BS products have had fake reviews for nearly two years, but Amazon didn’t notice it?

As we all know, Amazon has been cracking down on fake orders and reviews for a long time. Last year, the industry was shaken by the large-scale blocking of accounts due to non-compliance and other reasons. For sellers, the pain is still lingering.

However, there are still popular stores that ask consumers for positive reviews. For nearly two years, positive review cards have frequently appeared in the review sections of many products in the store, but Amazon didn't notice it?

Many products are on BS, and "Free" cards are popping up in the comment section

Recently, Yien.com received a tip that "a suspected US Amazon seller (it is not yet possible to verify where the seller is from) has been fake orders and positive reviews for a long time, causing many products in his store to become Amazon Best Sellers ."

According to the leaked information, the store V*** (hereinafter referred to as "V Store") is registered in the United States. It currently sells products from 9 brands, including kitchen utensils and home appliances such as knives, bread machines, coffee machines, as well as household products such as mattresses, lotions, protein powder, toys and other categories. The categories involved are quite broad.

In terms of specific products, the store has a total of 83 sub-products for sale, 10 of which have long dominated the Amazon Best Seller list, and the majority of the products are from the M**A** brand (hereinafter referred to as the "M brand"). It is worth noting that the M brand ear thermometers in the store have only 76 reviews since they were put on the shelves in February this year, but they have made it to Amazon's BS list.

It is understood that the M brand is also from an American company. During the search, the editor also found another store USA** (hereinafter referred to as "U store") with a high duplication rate of products with this store. U store has a total of 11 brands of products on sale, of which 9 brands of products completely overlap with those of V store.

Through the rating of V stores, we can see that the positive review rate of this store has reached 100% in the past year . The number of reviews for a single hot-selling product is nearly 18,000, and the number of reviews for other products is basically in the thousands, with many products having nearly 10,000 reviews. Among the reviews of these hot-selling products, many openly reveal the "Free" card.

Tracing back the store’s “cash back for positive reviews” behavior, the “Free” card information was first revealed in the comments in January 2021. For more than a year, Amazon did not notice this non-compliant behavior.

As we all know, since last year, Amazon has launched a large-scale crackdown on non-compliant behaviors such as posting fake product reviews and fake orders. Many Chinese sellers have had their stores closed and their funds frozen as a result. However, this store actually escaped this disaster, which is incredible.

What’s interesting is that U Store’s positive review rate has also been 100% in the past year, and multiple brands and multiple products overlap.

In this regard, the whistleblower and the sellers interviewed by the editor speculated that these might be VC accounts. ( Vendor Central is a system launched by Amazon for suppliers . VC accounts can obtain more sales data on the Amazon platform in the background . )

The shocking operation of brushing reviews

According to the buyer, he purchased M brand kitchen products from an Amazon store . After receiving the goods, he found a "Free Card" mixed in the products. If the buyer participated in the positive review cashback activity, he would receive a refund of US$30 after leaving a review.

The card information of the "Free Card" includes a QR code, etc. After scanning the QR code, you will be redirected to a new web page with a chat mode interface, and the buyer needs to follow the instructions of the robot in the interface.

After opening the page, fill in key information such as name and email address according to the robot's instructions. The robot will then guide the visitor to fill in the specific order number to confirm the visitor's identity.

Fill in the form according to the order number provided by the whistleblower. After the robot confirms the order status, the visitor needs to fill in the address and other conditions.

After completing the above information, the page pops up with three prize options, namely a paring knife, a dishcloth, and an Amazon gift card. However, no matter which one you choose, it will not affect the final refund.

After confirming the gift, the robot invites visitors to rate it from 1 to 5 stars based on quality, price, and willingness to recommend it to others. Each evaluation criterion is separate, and the next criterion will not pop up until the first one is reviewed.

The editor noticed that each evaluation criterion must be rated at least 3 stars before it can automatically jump to the next one. If it is less than 3 stars, the robot will directly jump out of the "Suggestions for the Product" box and will no longer ask for a rating.

If all ratings are 4 stars or above (all criteria must be met), the robot page will guide visitors to post positive reviews on the Amazon product page they purchased and receive corresponding rebate discounts. The specific content is:

"In addition to your free gift, we have a new $30 gift card promotion with your purchase!"

All you have to do is:

1. Post photos, videos or simply write about your experience with this product on Amazon

2. Share with us a screenshot of the content you just published on Amazon

After the visitor confirms, the robot will publish the specific shooting or positive review operation process. After clicking to confirm again, the robot will provide a link that can directly connect to the Amazon user login interface. Buyers only need to log in and perform operations to receive gifts and refunds.

The entire review-brushing process is simple to operate and offers generous rewards, guiding buyers step by step to give positive reviews of 4 stars or above. If a certain link has only 3 stars or less, a suggestion box will pop up immediately.

Amazon and "non-compliance": a life-and-death battle

With the growing development of cross-border e-commerce, compliance requirements in this field are becoming more and more stringent. Take the industry giant Amazon as an example. It has always cracked down on "fakes", including counterfeit and shoddy products, as well as false data such as brushing reviews and orders.

In order to curb sellers from obtaining good sales data through informal means, Amazon has long worked with local law enforcement agencies to sue a number of service companies involved in brushing orders on e-commerce platforms.

Just this year, Amazon has sued several large-scale fake order /review agencies so far.

In January, Amazon and law enforcement agencies successively sued companies registered under the name AMZ in Malta and Spain.   Tigers, Testers   Three fake order agencies that carried out activities in the name of Job .

In April, Amazon sued Extreme Rebate, a Hong Kong-based company.

In August, Amazon sued a Greek resident and his two companies , Auction Sentinel and Sentinel Solutions .

All of the above companies have been sued by Amazon for data falsification. Amazon believes that these companies provide sellers with positive reviews , fake orders, and reviews to help sellers improve product rankings and conversion rates , and their accounts are huge in scale.

AMZ​   Take Tigers as an example. It has more than 20,000 review accounts in the UK alone and a total of 62,000 review accounts worldwide, covering multiple Amazon sites including the United States, Europe and Japan.

Previously, Amazon said it had deleted more than 200 million suspected fake reviews worldwide in 2020 alone .

This year, through the " Amazon 2021 Brand Protection Report", we can see that last year Amazon blocked the creation of more than 2.5 million fake accounts , the listing of 4 billion bad product listings , and removed more than 3 million counterfeit products.

In addition, in 2021 , Amazon also invested more than US$900 million in hiring technical experts and building software security to combat fraud on the website and strictly investigate non-compliant behavior of sellers at various sites around the world.

It is not difficult to find that Amazon is now increasing its crackdown on compliance, which seems to be a fight to the death .

But what is strange is that through this revelation, Yien.com found that there are still brands and sellers "committing crimes" in this trend. What is even more surprising is that the store started its non-compliant behavior long before the massive Amazon account blocking wave last year, and it was lucky enough to escape Amazon's "eyes", which is really unbelievable.

Amazon

Brush reviews