Amazon sellers are frequently blackmailed until they are paid 550,000 yuan

"The link I was selling was suddenly given a series of negative reviews. When I contacted them to have the reviews deleted, the review writer suddenly came up to me and brought out a set of "professional ethics" theories: in order to be responsible to the customer, the sale cannot be stopped before the order is completed, and if the reviews that have already been posted are to be deleted, they need to pay."

"A link that was generating good sales was suddenly removed from the shelves. After checking, I found that someone had maliciously complained about trademark infringement. If they wanted the other party to withdraw the complaint, they had to pay. After a tug-of-war between appeals and complaints, the sellers, exhausted from dealing with the situation, had no choice but to compromise and pay the money to settle the matter."

"Someone placed 200 orders at once, and then returned them one by one. Later I found out that someone had the service provider post fake order tasks on social media, and then returned the goods after the orders were placed."

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Many cross-border e-commerce sellers must have encountered these troubles, and the black and gray industry chain is the "black hand behind all this". With the development of cross-border e-commerce, cross-border e-commerce black and gray services such as "giving bad reviews to competitors", "maliciously complaining about infringement", "brushing orders and reviews", and "making fun of peers" have continued to grow, greatly hindering the healthy development of the cross-border e-commerce industry. For example, links to high-quality products with good sales are often removed due to malicious complaints.

In the process of conquering overseas markets, sellers have suffered enough losses from the black and gray industries and are suffering. And according to feedback, these black and gray services have become more active since this year.

The seller is frequently blackmailed by "trademark hooligans" for asking 550,000 yuan

Among all the black and gray industries, it is not uncommon to register trademarks, repeatedly complain about sellers' infringements, and then demand money when the sellers can no longer bear the torture.

Recently, seller Li An (pseudonym) broke the news to Yien.com that six of his links were complained of trademark infringement and all of them were removed by Amazon. "The complainant registered trademarks in categories 9/10/11 in Germany and France , while ours is a European Union trademark in category 11 (lighting)."

After the incident, Li An immediately realized that he was being targeted by a "trademark rogue": "If it was a competitor, he would definitely cause you the greatest damage right from the start. Besides, our category is relatively peaceful, and there have been no fights in the past few years. But this one obviously registered the trademark first, but did not put it into use on Amazon. When they saw a seller using this trademark, they complained about the other party's infringement."

Ang Lee's trademark was certified in 2018, while the complainant's trademark was only submitted at the beginning of this year. According to the fastest certification time in Europe, they have only received the certificate not long ago. In addition, observing the trademarks of both parties, it can be seen that the complainant has obviously taken advantage of a loophole. The trademarks of both parties use the same letters, but there is a difference in capitalization. The first letter of Ang Lee's trademark is a capital letter, and the rest are all lowercase letters, while the other party's trademark uses all capital letters.

"If the review is not strict, in theory, all these trademarks can be applied for." Li An said helplessly: "After the trademark is approved, they will complain about which link sells well on the platform."

Li An's products are sold in several major European countries. The removal of the link has interrupted their sales, but fortunately, the main link is not the one that was complained about. Some of the links that have been complained about are seasonal products that have passed the season, and some have just arrived. On the other hand, France is not their main site, so the sales amount affected is within the range of one or two thousand euros.

Although the emails he sent did not receive a reply, and the other party did not state their purpose, Li An knew that their ultimate goal was to blackmail him. "After we filed a complaint, he complained again. This is how he keeps disgusting us, hoping that we will give in and negotiate with them." Li An said that "trademark hooligans" take advantage of the sellers' mentality of "not being able to afford to waste time" to commit crimes. "Now that their trademark has been registered, he can stop our business by simply filing a complaint."

Li An plans to find a lawyer to invalidate the other party's trademark. During the tug-of-war with the complainant, he said helplessly: "This year is too difficult. Not only is it difficult to do business, but I also encountered such a bad thing. I didn't have any gray hair before, but now I have grown it."

Li An's experience is not an isolated case. Not long ago, a senior Amazon operator also exposed his similar experience in an industry forum. The operator said angrily and helplessly that someone had registered the same trademark of their product accessories in Germany and filed an infringement complaint on the detail page on Amazon, and the link was directly removed.

Unlike the same category complaint that Li An encountered, this is a cross-category complaint. The operator said that their trademark has been registered in the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom, and has been filed on Amazon. The product is in the trademark category, but the accessories are not, and the accessories and products do not belong to the same category. Unexpectedly, this allowed "trademark hooligans" to take advantage of the loophole and register the same trademark for the accessories in Germany. Then they filed it on Amazon and filed an infringement complaint.

Although the link can be appealed by submitting a trademark certificate, the other party arrogantly stated that they can not only complain about infringement of the detail page, but also complain about counterfeit products and trademarks on the product packaging, so that the link will be repeatedly removed from the shelves. They can even spend 1,000 euros to let a lawyer issue a German quick temporary injunction to freeze the seller's account for up to 28-45 days, during which time all links in the account will be removed from the shelves.

They once tried to invalidate the trademark like Ang Lee did. However, according to the operator, their lawyer replied that it would take at least half a year from the beginning of collecting evidence to requesting Amazon to invalidate the other party's brand and to stop making further complaints.

Sellers simply cannot afford to have sales interrupted for half a year. During this period, they contacted service providers, Amazon investment managers, and even called the police, but were unable to find an effective solution.

In the end, the operating company was forced to compromise and trade the trademark, and the other party demanded an extortion amount of 80,000 euros (approximately 557,000 yuan based on yesterday's exchange rate).

The link that you have worked so hard to build is destroyed so easily. Only those who have experienced it can understand the feeling. In the cross-border e-commerce industry, it is not only the trademark registration and infringement complaints, but also many black and gray industry services that can destroy the links that sellers have worked hard to build, such as negative reviews.

Entrepreneurship encounters "cross-border bad reviewers", a former senior executive of a big seller is not calm

Zhang Lin (pseudonym), who is currently in the start-up phase, is a former senior executive of a listed company. He had never been exposed to cross-border black and gray market services before, but had only heard of them. He was mentally prepared before starting his own business, but when he actually encountered them, he still couldn't remain completely calm.

Not long ago, Zhang Lin revealed to Yien.com that one of his products had been receiving negative reviews for a period of time. At that time, he suspected that it was a prank by a competitor, but did not take any action because there was no direct evidence.

One day, Zhang Lin suddenly received a letter from an intermediary. The order showed as a refund. After adding WeChat, he found that the other party was actually a service provider, and it was obviously a spoof intermediary. "At that time, I thought the order was a refund and gave a lot of bad reviews. Thinking about my previous experience, I tried to ask if he did it. As a result, he admitted it and said that someone paid him to do it." Zhang Lin was very surprised that he accidentally contacted the service provider who gave bad reviews to his products.

But sometimes coincidences may be carefully arranged by someone with ulterior motives. After contacting the service provider, Zhang Lin tried to ask the other party to stop posting negative reviews, but the other party said that other people's orders had not been completed and he would not receive the money if he stopped. However, if Zhang Lin wanted to delete the negative reviews that had been posted, he could pay to help delete them. "What he meant at the time was that he provided services if others paid, but he also sympathized with our situation and could help delete the negative reviews for a fee."

Later, Zhang Lin confirmed that the service provider was playing both sides. It first collected other people's money to give sellers bad reviews. After completing the process, it contacted the sellers who had received bad reviews and said that it could collect money to delete the bad reviews.

Zhang Lin explained: "Later, many orders received messages from this service provider. Through these orders, he left messages saying that someone was playing a prank on us and that if we wanted to delete the negative reviews, we should contact him. Other sellers also reported that they had spent money to delete most of the negative reviews, but still received other orders. In the messages in these orders, they also gave the same excuse."

"This behavior is tantamount to extortion and we don't want to give him money." Zhang Lin said they have called the police.

But because of these negative reviews, Zhang Lin's product rating dropped from 4.8 stars to 4.2. In order to eliminate the impact of these negative reviews and raise the rating again, more orders are needed, so Zhang Lin needs to invest more in advertising and after-sales service. "So we lost about 100,000 yuan."

Encountering such things during the start-up period did not undermine Zhang Lin's confidence, nor did she think that the industry was bad. Instead, it strengthened her development strategy of standardized and compliant operations. For example, before putting products on the shelves for sale, she first registered and applied for trademarks and patents to avoid being preempted by others and then complained about infringement or even blackmailed as mentioned above.

However, the black and gray market services have not decreased due to the sellers' compliance operations. Instead, they have shown an increasing trend this year.

Rising costs and involution have fueled the development of black and gray industries

Many sellers have reported that since this year, the frequency of blackmail by "trademark hooligans" and negative reviews by competitors has increased. This is because the increasingly serious internal environment and rising costs have provided fertile ground for the development of black and gray industry services.

Data shows that Amazon has increased fulfillment fees by more than 30% since 2020. In addition to Amazon, many third-party logistics providers have also increased their fees. For example, USPS, FedEx, and UPS have all increased their fees and introduced peak holiday surcharges in the past two years. Not only have logistics costs risen, but sellers are also spending more on costs such as advertising fees.

On the other hand, the number of sellers is increasing. Marketplace pulse data shows that there were 6 million sellers on Amazon in 2020, and Jougle Scount predicts that 1.5 million new sellers will join Amazon in 2021. Such a large number of sellers gathered on Amazon has made competition for similar products increasingly fierce. In many cases, searching for a certain keyword can result in dozens of pages of product results.

In this case, in order to make their products seen by consumers, sellers will seek black and gray industry services, and these services may be used on themselves or on competitors.

For example, when it comes to fake reviews, people have the inherent impression that sellers will give themselves fake reviews in order to improve their rankings and increase sales. However, as Amazon has stepped up its crackdown on fake reviews, many sellers have realized that the most effective competitive strategy is not to give themselves fake reviews, but to give them fake reviews for their competitors.

Zach Plansky, a seller from the United States, has experienced this. A product he sold on Amazon received 16 five-star reviews overnight, when usually the product only had one review a day, and these reviews seemed to be directly cut and pasted from other places.

Confused, Zack reported the matter to Amazon just in case. Most of the reviews disappeared after a few days, and he returned to work, thinking the problem had been solved.

However, what was unexpected was that two weeks later, he received an email from Amazon, which showed that Zack had manipulated the product reviews on the website, violated Amazon's policies, and the products he sold had been removed from the shelves.

Later, Zach learned that this was because his competitor had purchased five-star reviews for his products from a service provider. Because of this operation by his competitor, Zach’s account funds were blocked and his link was removed from the shelves. If he wanted to appeal to get the store back, it would take several weeks. The competitive landscape of sellers on Amazon is changing rapidly. It is conceivable that when Zach’s link resumes sales, it may no longer be in the same position as before.

For sellers, it is not only necessary to monitor negative reviews, but also to be vigilant about positive reviews. However, the application scenarios of black and gray industries are not limited to this, but also include deleting unfavorable reviews, maliciously diverting traffic, and fake orders.

For example, some sellers will purchase competing products through service providers multiple times, and then ask them to return the products and give bad reviews. As an Amazon seller, you need to ensure that your account has certain indicators. If there are too many returns or too many bad reviews in a short period of time, the product or account will be at risk of being delisted and frozen.

In this gray and black industrial chain, service providers will cooperate with some internal Amazon employees to help sellers delete negative reviews, spoof competitors, restore removed links, etc.

Earlier this year, foreign media reported that two New York residents who were part of a team that provided illegal gray market services to third-party Amazon sellers admitted that they were involved in a multi-million dollar scheme to manipulate the Amazon market: by bribing Amazon employees and contractors so that they could use their unique authority to obtain improper benefits for some sellers.

Such as obtaining Amazon’s confidential business information; reinstating suspended third-party sellers and product listings on the marketplace; circumventing Amazon’s restrictions on certain products; obtaining access to restricted product categories by misrepresenting the origin of goods; manipulating customer reviews; and monitoring and attacking other merchants and product listings.

Amazon vigorously regulates and targets "cross-border black and gray industries"

Black and gray industries have undermined fair competition among sellers, damaged the platform's reputation and image, and disrupted order. In recent years, Amazon has been stepping up its efforts to crack down on these services and build a fair and healthy business environment.

Earlier this year, Amazon issued a notice stating that since 2019, Amazon has assisted and cooperated with the public security organs of Shanghai, Henan, and Shanxi to complete multiple investigations into cross-border e-commerce gray industry organizations and illegal sellers. The illegal acts involved in the cases include illegal buying and selling of citizens' personal identity information and company business licenses in an attempt to register sellers' stores on Amazon's overseas sites and profit from them, creating malicious reviews, and faking orders and reputation.

Among the several cases reported by Amazon, in 2021, Amazon assisted the public security organs of Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province in completing an investigation into a case in which a Chinese seller engaged in export cross-border e-commerce business on Amazon maliciously attacked other Chinese sellers. In this case, a seller hired relevant service providers to deliberately give bad reviews to the victim seller's store products, maliciously purchased a large number of products from the victim seller's store and then returned them in batches, etc., resulting in the victim seller's store being blocked.

I believe many people still remember that in 2020, there was a frequent news of "illegal service providers being arrested" in the industry. At that time, there was news that the service provider industry suffered a major reshuffle, many illegal Amazon service providers were arrested and disappeared, and the sellers' accounts were also implicated and blocked. Someone also broke the news in WeChat Moments that a service provider who deleted negative reviews had been arrested and detained for dozens of days.

Although the news was widely circulated, it gradually died down because no specific incident was exposed. However, after Amazon officially issued a notice this year, looking back on the incident, we realized that it was not groundless.

In the process of Amazon's fight against the black and gray industrial chain, the sellers may feel the most deeply about its crackdown on "fake reviews". Last year, many big sellers fell into it. Amazon said that in 2020 alone, it used machine learning models and a dedicated team of employees to block more than 200 million suspicious fake reviews.

Meanwhile, in 2021, Amazon also filed lawsuits against two of the largest fake order agencies, AppSally and Rebatest. Just last month, it filed separate lawsuits in King County Superior Court in Seattle against six websites: virtualexperts.net ; auctionsentinel.com ; amzonbulkreviews.com ; accfarm.com ; climbazon.com ; and tahoevine.com . The reason is that these websites enable merchants to pay for fake product reviews on Amazon.

According to an analysis by e-commerce consultant Pattern, a one-star increase in product reviews sold on Amazon can increase sales by up to 26%, which is why "brushing" services exist and are repeatedly banned. According to data from fraudulent review detection service Fakespot , about 42% of the 720 million Amazon reviews evaluated in 2020 were fake.

Money is the key to success, and it is not difficult to understand why black and gray market services exist. However, Amazon has also stated their attitude, which is "zero tolerance" for these behaviors.

In the 2021 Brand Protection Report, Amazon pointed out that last year, Amazon blocked more than 2.5 million abnormal seller account registrations through effective measures; blocked 4 billion bad product listings from being listed on its website, and removed more than 3 million counterfeit products.

These data are enough to prove Amazon's determination to crack down on cross-border black and gray industries.

Trademark registration