The big seller issued a 500,000 yuan reward! Malicious follow-up sales before the big sale

The recent rampant follow-selling has caused headaches for sellers, but due to frequent brand abuse, sellers dare not complain or drive away the sellers rudely, and dare not speak out. Now a new follow-selling situation has emerged.

Amazon Prime Day in July saw a surge in traffic, and many sellers were gearing up for the big autumn promotion. However, in order to grab traffic, some sellers took advantage of the platform loopholes and began to prank their peers, selling at super low prices to drive down the competition's promotional prices, or even directly kicking the other party out of the promotion. After a big seller in Guangdong was pranked, he issued a 500,000 yuan reward overnight to find the prank seller.

Guangdong Dama issued a reward order to catch malicious copycat companies

Yesterday, Amazon officially announced that the Prime membership promotion will be held in 19 countries including the United States and the United Kingdom from October 10th to 11th , and the event time in Japan will be from the 14th to the 15th local time.

Items that participate in Prime exclusive discounts must meet requirements such as star rating and discount strength. One of the requirements is that " Prime members' exclusive discount price must be lower than the lowest price of the ASIN in the past 30 days. The lowest price in the past 30 days refers to the lowest order price among all flash sale prices, promotional prices, and sales prices offered by all sellers for the ASIN during this period. "

When seeing the submission requirements, some sellers highlighted this special clause. As expected, some sellers seized this loophole and began to maliciously lower the activity price of competitors by following the sales. Last night, a big seller in Guangdong posted a message offering a high reward for malicious follow-selling:

"We are offering a reward of 500,000 yuan to find this malicious follow-up company. This rubbish used a US zombie account to maliciously follow-up before the Autumn Member Day in order to lower our flash sale prices. If you provide clues and they are proven to be true and valid, our company will provide 500,000 yuan in cash as a reward. Everyone is welcome to participate."

It is understood that the seller is a big seller in the category on Amazon. Last year, the brand's omni-channel sales reached more than ten billion. This year, the performance has soared, and the sales may reach about 2 billion.

An informed seller analyzed: “The flash sale price of a big sale will refer to the lowest price in the recent period. The other party is eyeing this loophole and maliciously uses cannon fodder accounts to follow the sale at a low price, bringing down the price to affect the flash sale price of the big seller, and even making it impossible for the seller to participate in the flash sale.

The price he deliberately set was very low, and he would definitely not ship the product. This cannon fodder account is dead, but the person being copied is a big seller with annual sales of 2 billion. After being screwed, he may miss the autumn promotion. He just used an account worth one or two thousand yuan to cause others to lose tens of millions. "

Although the sellers are angry, they cannot directly ban the copycats. Recently, brand abuse has been frequently judged, and banning copycats can easily be judged as brand abuse. Many anxious sellers seek help from service providers at high prices, but service providers charge tens of thousands of yuan, and sellers will not reduce the price even if they think it is too expensive, and they still have to wait in line.

The price submission requirements for events set by Amazon were originally intended to provide buyers with cheaper products. However, it is unexpected that unscrupulous sellers have discovered loopholes and developed a new idea to prank their peers.

Selling by followers is rampant, and sellers who follow the followers are punished for violating regulations

Recently, there have been many reports about rampant follow-selling, and sellers are afraid to stop following the lead for fear of problems with their brands. If they fail to do so properly, it may lead to brand abuse and brand removal, or it may backfire and they may receive a violation warning.

A seller complained, "What is Amazon doing? Hijacking is rampant. It is easy to get a complaint from the hijackers if you try to stop them, but complaints from brands can easily be considered abuse. What can we do? Isn't Amazon encouraging everyone to engage in hijacking?" The seller's complaint against hijacking was unsuccessful, so he looked for a service provider to stop it, but was complained about by the other party instead. Amazon claimed that the service provider had harmed the interests of other sellers and directly blocked the account. In the end, the account was unable to appeal and the seller lost hundreds of thousands.

Sellers feel the same way. "One of my accounts was blocked in April for copycat sales, and it has not been restored yet. Recently, there are a lot of copycat sales, which makes me so angry."

A seller shared his experience of being warned and appealing after chasing follow-up sales. A few days ago, the seller received a policy violation notice because the seller tried to interfere with other sellers, their product information, ratings, feedback or comments, but the seller did not violate any regulations. Experienced peers told me that this was because the service provider chased follow-up sales and caused penalties.

After figuring out the situation, the seller began to appeal and admitted several questions raised by Amazon:

Are you currently using a third-party service, or have you recently used a third-party service ?

Please provide contact information for any third parties you employ .

How did you find the third-party service ? Please be specific and provide any websites related to their service .

Do you think there is a possibility that abuse may have been committed by a third party or on your behalf ?

What steps have you taken to avoid this happening in the future ?

Two days later, the appeal was approved. The seller was still worried: "I have to be careful when chasing copycats. It's quite risky to chase one copycat at 350 yuan."

If someone is following you, and you can’t report or complain, or use traditional methods to get rid of them, is there any other reliable way to get rid of them? The fact is that the only way Amazon allows to get rid of followers is to participate in the Transparency Program and the Zero Program. Any other way to get rid of followers is considered illegal by Amazon, and if you are caught, they will issue a warning or freeze your store.

Here comes the trick to follow the sales

The sellers were punished for failing to stop the followers , which made them dare not speak out. This situation made the followers more rampant. On some social platforms, there are even public training courses to teach novice sellers how to make "quick money" by following the followers. This kind of operation, which everyone condemned, was unimaginable a few years ago.

Sellers who sell on Amazon are tying their lives to a few links, and stealing links is no different from stealing money. Many new sellers, in particular, are desperate to start a business on Amazon, hoping to make a comeback with these links. If they are unlucky and are targeted by copycats, they may end up losing both their money and their money.

Therefore, most sellers in the industry are very disgusted with the act of following others, and once the conflict between the two sides is irreconcilable, the war will spread offline. Previously, there were sellers who were angered by the following sellers and directly hired people to come to their door, causing violent conflicts.

The number of followers increasing sharply, what is the most effective way to stop them?

One seller said that using service providers to drive away copycat sales, making complaints through the backend, and using the 0 plan are all unsafe. The best way at this stage is the transparent plan, and the cost of participating in the plan is equivalent to paying for protection.

Seller @easyamz cross-border shared a set of methods to get rid of follow-selling :

Case 1: You don’t have an R mark:
1. Write an email to the other party to give them some advice .
2. Finding a service provider is sometimes useful, but it is not recommended because you don’t understand whether the logic of being forced to copy and sell by the service provider violates Amazon’s seller policy .
To summarize the above two points: you have no way to solve the problem of follow-selling, and I hope you can get the R mark soon.

Case 2: You have an R mark
1. Write an email to the other party to give them some advice and tell them that I have an R mark.
2. Finding a service provider is sometimes useful, but it is not recommended because you don’t understand whether the logic of being forced to copy and sell by the service provider violates Amazon’s seller policy .
3. Add the Transparency Program to ASIN . The Transparency Program requires you to have the R mark in hand. You can find a Transparency Program manager .

Case 3: You have an R mark, and the category and product of your brand registration are consistent, and the trademark is in normal status, but the Transparency Plan cannot be enabled for the time being . You can still get rid of the follower sales! As long as the R mark is normal, you can find a qualified service provider to help file a TRO lawsuit. This method is suitable for situations where you cannot enable the Transparency Plan or cannot wait until the ASIN protection is enabled to solve the follower sales problem .