The top seller attacked the newcomer and lost millions

Just after the new year, a shocking news broke out in the cross-border circle.

A top seller in a certain category attacked a new seller, who reported the case to the police after the confrontation failed . The service provider who "took the task" and gave bad reviews was arrested, and the top seller ended up paying millions in compensation.

Competition on e-commerce platforms such as Amazon is already fierce, and peer attacks are common. In response, some sellers angrily confronted the attackers, while others offered a large reward to catch the perpetrators. However, it is difficult to obtain direct evidence to identify the "murderer", let alone to punish him or compensate him. However, from this case, it can be seen that the seller's choice to call the police after being attacked is a very effective method and is worth learning from.

The seller was attacked and reported the case, and received millions in compensation

There are many categories on Amazon where competition is fierce. According to Allen , an insider , a lawsuit in the industry has just been settled recently, and many peers have seen a counterattack idea after being attacked.

In mid-2022, Xiao Lin, a seller from Shenzhen, had just entered a certain category and had already been doing very well. Many of his products made it into the top 50 of the category, and new products were quickly pushed to 4.7 stars or even higher, with the hope of becoming one of the top sellers.

But soon, many of its products received a large number of negative reviews, and were repeatedly returned and banned words were added. The product ratings dropped below 4 stars, sales plummeted, and some potential new product links were directly suspended. Most of the profiles of these buyers with negative reviews only had one comment, and even the titles of multiple product negative reviews were the same. Xiaolin suspected that he was attacked by his peers. After some investigation, the clues pointed to the top seller H, who was the only seller in competition with all of his products.

At this time, a service provider came to Xiaolin and told him, "A seller asked me to give you a bad review. If you want to delete it, please contact me." The service provider offered to delete the bad review for 750 yuan. In order to increase its credibility, the service provider threw out a series of communication records with a seller, such as "These ASINs each have five bad reviews", "This one has many reviews, add three more bad reviews", etc. The other party spent more than 100,000 yuan to attack Xiaolin.

The service provider did not know who the seller who placed the order was, but after comparing the information, Xiao Lin determined that the other party was seller H. She confronted the boss of the company, who directly denied it and threatened to take legal action if Xiao Lin had evidence.

Although she had made a judgment, Xiaolin had no concrete evidence that the seller H had done anything wrong, so she could only start with the service provider on both ends. She reported the case to the police on the grounds of extortion and submitted relevant evidence to the police.

Afterwards, the service provider was arrested and paid the 30,000 yuan he collected to Xiaolin, who no longer pursued responsibility. However, the service provider has been prosecuted and will face criminal penalties.

In March 2023, the police provided substantial evidence that seller H had attacked through a service provider, and Xiaolin also hired a criminal lawyer to file a lawsuit against seller H for disrupting the company's market operations. According to the latest news, the seller has compensated Xiaolin millions.

In the case of malicious competition, sellers can call the police to get support

For Xiaolin, the outcome of this case may not be ideal. Since there were no similar cases to refer to in the early stage, he had to cross the river by feeling the stones and took many detours.

But this result has encouraged people who are often tripped up by their peers, because in general, when sellers are attacked, they can only guess who the other party is, but it is difficult to get substantial evidence, let alone claim compensation. Now it seems that in addition to face-to-face negotiations or spending huge sums of money to reward suspicious people, sellers also have laws to follow. They can report the case and seek help from the police to quickly obtain substantial evidence of the other party's evil deeds, deter them or obtain compensation.

Will a case be filed after reporting the crime? If you suspect that you have been attacked by a seller, you can collect all the evidence you can get and report the crime. After the police give you a report receipt, they will conduct preliminary investigations based on the information provided by the reporter. If it can be confirmed that a certain impact has been caused, such as the seller has lost hundreds of thousands or even more, and the chain of evidence is relatively complete, the case may be filed for further processing.

Can I call the police if I don’t have evidence? Even if the seller doesn’t have relevant evidence, you can still report it directly. If the police have the intermediary information of the service provider, they can use the service provider to investigate and collect evidence more quickly. For example, WeChat is real-name information, and chat records and transfer records are all available, which can quickly identify suspicious persons.

In addition to Xiaolin's case, more and more sellers choose to take legal action when faced with malicious competition or fraud. Recently, there have been reports of illegal service providers being sentenced. The Yiyang County Public Security Bureau in Shangrao City, Jiangxi Province, reported a cross-border e-commerce order-brushing case, where service providers swiped orders for sellers to improve the ranking and favorable review rate of stores and products. Eleven members of the team were arrested, and the police seized a large number of tools used in the crime, including mobile phones, with the amount involved exceeding 10 million yuan.

Cross-border sellers are becoming more aware of the need to protect their rights in accordance with the law. This path is feasible and can purify the business environment, so it is worth pursuing. However, there is still a long way to go to resist malicious competition.

Top sellers band together to attack newbies, causing concern for the industry ecosystem

Another frightening thing about the Kobayashi incident is that the top sellers formed a group to target new sellers.

According to Xiao Lin, in the months when negative reviews were posted, the company lost nearly 1.2 million yuan in monthly turnover and about 300,000 yuan in profits. But Allen believes that the losses are not limited to this.

"The impact of this incident on the company is estimated to be more than tens of millions. They used to have a strong momentum and might have made it into the first tier, but now they have slipped to the third tier and their status is incomparable to before."

Seller H was originally a big seller in the industry, but was caught in the 2021 category reshuffle, so he had to start all over again. Xiaolin Company was one of its biggest competitors. After this crackdown, seller H went left and Xiaolin went right. The former had already secured the top position in the industry, and the huge gap was regrettable.

Because of Kobayashi's persistence, seller H paid a small price, but his malicious operations are just the tip of the iceberg on Amazon.

Xiao Lin once mentioned that seller H joined an association established by several top sellers in the same category. The parties signed a gentleman's agreement that if a new seller outside the association appeared, they would instigate other sellers to jointly exert pressure and deal a devastating blow to the new seller from all dimensions, including supply chain, products, and operations. It's terrifying to hear about it.

Regarding this type of slander, one seller commented:

“Amazon is a dark forest. Every seller is a hunter with a gun, sneaking through the forest like a ghost, gently pushing aside the branches that block the way, trying not to make any sound with his footsteps, and even breathing must be careful: he must be careful, because there are hunters sneaking like him everywhere in the forest. If he finds other life, there is only one thing he can do: shoot and kill.”

In such an extreme industry ecology, how can sellers develop in the long run?