[et_bloom_inline optin_id=optin_3]
Chris comes in for suspensions
- We know friends and family are against ToS
- Where does the line get drawn?
Review manipulation
- Amazon are 100% serious about it
- The Product Review Abuse (PRA) team are getting grief about suspensions from internal account managers
- They don’t want anymore complaints or abuse
- Whether it’s friends or family, or product inserts, or 3rd party service providers
- Harder to appeal a suspensions for this now – you are putting the fate of your account in the hands of that 3rd party provide
Friends and Family
- Connection between IP addresses, family connections down the road, surname, etc
- Several ways of joining the dots to flag suspensions
- If they seem to be related to you in some shape or form then you might get a flag
- Buyer history from years ago can still flag
- Their tools make it look like there’s a pattern there
- Amazon want word to spread that they were suspended for XXX to make sure stories spread and stops people doing these things
- The policy-side don’t care what percentage you’re getting away with – they want this practice to stop
- Is the suspension an account-wide suspension, or is it down to the ASIN and a warning?
- Some get reviews stripped but they just lock the ASIN and not the whole account, and it’s locked for a time period
- It’s easier for Amazon to just suspend the account rather than do all the investigation into what you’ve been upto and make you explain what you’ve done and why you won’t do it again
Product Inserts
- Merchant fulfilled that ask for 5 star reviews – Danny still sees this today
- The suspensions don’t specify the language that it’s inserts, they don’t want to tip their hand – they force you to come back to them with what you’ve done
- If you don’t give enough info in your appeal then you get the runaround asking you for lots more info again and again
- Have you seen inserts to drive customers off Amazon to get emails and off-Amazon
- Chris not seen a lot of enforcement on this if not reviewed related
- The diverting warning seems to have gone down in popularity within Amazon but is still policy
- Competitors reporting you to marketplace abuse teams is more common
- You can be ratted out for inserts everyday of the week
Competitors
- A spike in reviews that gets reverse engineered by an investigator can still get you penalised
- Any progress here with competitors setting people up for a fall then reporting them to take them out of the game
- Helping people report competitor abuse in a better way
- Example ASIN variation misuse is a hot trendy suspension right now
- A seller wrote a report to go into Amazon to report a bad seller and Amazon took action on it, the Seller was suspended for ASIN variation abuse
- Some people just outsource the attacks on other Sellers / competitors
- Competitor abuse has become more common, vote up negative reviews, post negative reviews, etc.
- People know the gaps and weaknesses between Amazon policy teams and they use them to attack a competitor rather than compete
Law Firms to Threaten Amazon
- Do Sellers use lawyers to threaten Amazon
- Some firms try to be everything under the Sun – not an effective means to get through to Amazon
- Amazon know the names of the firms and how they work and which give them the biggest headaches
- You might want to check with a law firm if they have or had open issues with Amazon
- Stirring up trouble or not is upto you – will it affect your business?
