A few months ago we wondered if user reviews on Amazon are reliable , all at the rate of a couple of articles in which important flaws were collected in the platform’s comment system that questioned its reliability and, therefore , Its utility. It was not an isolated incident, but repeated incidents and continued over time.
The main problem, however, was not due to the malfunction of Amazon’s review system, which like everything in life is susceptible to failure, but to the shamelessness of sellers and buyers : the former, for offering discount coupons and even Free products in exchange for positive comments and ratings even if the product was not worth them, and the seconds for accepting it for your sole benefit, of course.
How did you find out about these tactics, when the two parties are in cahoots? Because not everyone who was tempted entered the rag and, unlucky for these companies, one of the people who rejected and denounced the plots was a journalist from a well-known American technology medium. Amazon took action on the matter , expelling several companies from the platform.
Now, if for a brand that expels three or four appear applying the same practices, it is evident that the measures are not as forceful as they would be. In all fairness, Amazon cannot be asked to act a priori, trying to anticipate each doubtful movement to the detriment of the seller before it occurs.
What you can ask is that you do not let any junk product that someone wants to sell in your store go through and, of course, be firm when you catch companies violating their policies with impunity. And it does. It did not take long for the company to contact us to disclose data such as that in 2020 it stopped more than 200 million reviews suspected of being false before being published.
Another striking data that is linked to the news at hand, is that in 2020 and 2021 hundreds of groups dedicated to promoting the publication of illicit reviews in exchange for discounts were detected and tracked, and now we learn that the company has banned the sale on its platform to more than 600 Chinese brands distributed in 3,000 seller accounts for incidents related to fraud in the reviews.
Ah, it does not fail: the vast majority of these brands are supposed to be sellers of technological accessories of all kinds, so if you see that for a while now items within this category have disappeared on Amazon, you know what it can do be due. However, researchers specialized in these matters are quite certain that the game of cat and mouse is far from over: heads keep coming out of the hydra and Amazon has to cut them down if it wants its platform to remain safe and reliable for the user.