Breaking news! The ratings of a batch of seller accounts have been downgraded to 0

In August, Amazon gave sellers a warning about the impact of their account status ratings: "One serious violation may reduce the score to zero", and now some sellers have tasted the consequences. Amazon has never relaxed its crackdown on illegal manipulation of reviews and other behaviors.

A group of sellers received serious warning emails and their account ratings were reduced to 0

Recently, some sellers have been reporting that they suddenly received serious warning emails from Amazon, their account ratings were reduced to 0, and their accounts were at risk of being deactivated, which was more serious than before.

In the email sent by Amazon to sellers, we can see that " Based on your account rating, your account is at risk of being deactivated. We have found that you are suspected of communicating with buyers to influence their reviews of one or more of your products, which is a serious violation. We will discuss this with you in accordance with the fund withholding policy. During this period, the funds will not be transferred to you, but will remain in your account. "

Amazon has determined that the seller has manipulated reviews and has imposed relevant penalties on the seller's store, including downgrading the account rating to 0 and withholding funds. If the seller ignores the issues mentioned in the email, Amazon will close the seller's store.

According to the content of Amazon's email, the policies violated by sellers mainly include the following ↓

Ask for positive reviews from buyers. After buyers leave reviews, sellers provide refunds or compensation to buyers through Amazon, direct contact, third-party services, etc.

Requesting the reviewer to change or remove the review. The seller offering the reviewer a refund or other compensation.

Modify negative reviews. Modify negative reviews on Amazon to positive ones through other feedback mechanisms.  

Amazon's sudden warning letter has chilled many sellers. Those who have been affected are worried about how to deal with it, and those who have not been affected are terrified. According to feedback, there are quite a few sellers who have been affected, and the scope of the impact is quite wide. If the sellers fail to deal with it in time, their accounts will be blocked.

Looking at the cross-border e-commerce market, most sellers use relatively consistent methods to manipulate reviews, mostly using positive review cards, coupons, service providers to brush reviews, and deleting negative reviews. Even though Amazon continues to crack down hard, they still try to break the law with a fluke mentality, hoping to manipulate reviews.

However, Amazon will never go easy on these sellers. As long as it finds any trace of sellers manipulating reviews, it will immediately take measures to warn or even directly punish the sellers for this violation. Previously, a small number of sellers also received emails with "serious warnings, account ratings reduced to 0, and store closures", but the last time was when sellers were suspected of offering some form of compensation (such as gift cards, free products, or discounts) in exchange for buyers' reviews of products.

It is not difficult to see that Amazon's judgment on this round of review manipulation is more serious.

If a serious violation occurs once, the seller's account rating will be reset to 0

In fact, Amazon has already reminded sellers about the issue of account ratings. In August, Amazon issued an announcement about account ratings, which mentioned various factors that may cause account violations and also warned sellers.

If a serious violation occurs once, the seller's account health score will be reset to 0 and their store will be at risk of being blocked. Examples of serious violations include: confirming that the product is counterfeit or pirated through test purchases, soliciting product reviews or including non-compliant inserts, attempting to harm or insult other sellers, and manipulating search results or sales rankings.

However, Amazon has also given a 72-hour grace period to sellers who encounter such situations. Sellers need to appeal and resolve such violations within this period to avoid having their accounts deactivated.

Taking sellers who manipulate reviews as an example, sellers have two options: one is to admit the violation. Sellers need to focus on explaining the entire process and method of manipulating reviews, with detailed information including order ID, review link, and screenshots and attachments of the ASIN involved; if the violation involves a third party, all the third party’s information, such as name, email address, screenshots of transfer records, etc., the more detailed the better; effective and practical preventive measures to avoid the same violation from happening again.

On the contrary, if the seller does not admit the violation, the seller needs to provide substantial evidence, such as key image information such as screenshots, not just text summaries; and provide a formal way to obtain buyer reviews, such as reviews posted by invited buyers in the Amazon Vine program.

However, sellers should also note that as long as the seller receives the email, Amazon is likely to have sufficient evidence, so sellers should make in-depth considerations before making a decision. Since this year, Amazon has continued to increase penalties for manipulating reviews, which is enough to show how much it attaches importance to compliance issues.

Amazon sues fake order companies one after another, cracking down on review manipulation

Amazon has been committed to cracking down on review manipulation, but it has continued to occur despite repeated bans. This may be related to the extremely high conversion rate of reviews on the Amazon platform.

Buzzfeed data shows that reviews on the Amazon platform can increase conversion rates, with positive reviews increasing conversion rates by 190% and 380% for low-priced products and high-priced products respectively. On average, every 1-star increase in product ratings can lead to a 26% increase in sales, which may be one of the important reasons why a large number of sellers manipulate reviews.

The founder and CEO of FakeSpot has also analyzed the correlation between fake reviews and sales, and found that every $1,000 spent on fake reviews will lead to a 50-fold increase in sales. In the face of huge sales, some sellers continue to rush in, while others are forced to engage in vicious competition. Therefore, fake orders continue to occur despite repeated bans.

In order to crack down on sellers who manipulate reviews, Amazon not only strictly investigates sellers on the platform, but also sets its sights on companies that fake orders, to eliminate review manipulation incidents from happening at the source.

Some time ago, Amazon filed lawsuits against two fake order companies, PMNLWeb and ProAmazonService. In June, Amazon filed lawsuits against four fake order companies, and in May, it filed lawsuits against several fake order companies in Italy and Spain. As of the end of July, Amazon has taken legal action against 120 fake order companies around the world.

Not only that, Amazon has also invested a lot of resources to prevent fake reviews from entering users' fields of vision through machine learning models and expert investigators. AI is also one of Amazon's means of cracking down on manipulation of reviews. In the future, Amazon will further develop detection tools to combat fake reviews, so sellers are advised to operate in compliance.

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