Chinese Amazon sellers Sunvalley and VanTop were recently blocked on Amazon, after Amazon rectified the click farms of Chinese sellers such as Aukey, Outad, Tomtop in May. Amazon once again dealt with sellers who violated its rules and asked for reviews and has once again attracted industry attention.
Under the cusp of the storm, Amazon issued a statement again, “In 2020, we have blocked more than 200 million suspected false reviews before customers saw them, and more than 99% of them were discovered and removed by our active monitoring. Prevent accounts that post false reviews from continuing to submit reviews, and take measures against seller accounts that gain commercial benefits through false reviews.”
Under Amazon’s drastic measures, changes came immediately. A cross-border E-commerce seller in Shenzhen clearly felt that “everyone is afraid to do this recently.”
On June 13, Amazon sellers included a card with the package and asked for good reviews. “Unspoken rules” in the industry attracted the attention of The Wall Street Journal. According to the report, RAVPower, the brand suspected of requesting evaluation in violation of regulations, is owned by Sunvalley, a large cross-border seller based in Shenzhen.
Sunvalley is quite well-known in the industry. In 2018, it was acquired by SACA Precision, a listed company in Guangdong, China.
The “Wall Street Journal” report seems to have caused a chain reaction. Just a few days later, Sunvalley’s stores operating various consumer electronics RAVPower, TaoTronics, HooToo, Uspicy, VAVA, and Anjou were successively blocked by Amazon. According to industry insiders, many Chinese sellers who are not as large as Sunvalley were also banned.
According to the report, in Sunvalley’s product packaging, there is an orange card. It reads: Congratulations on becoming our lucky customer, you will receive a $35 Amazon gift card. On the back of the gift card, there is an explanation of the entire gift card redemption method: contact us by email, attach a screenshot of your order ID, and then complete the review after the review URL to receive a $35 gift card.
In order to obtain reviews on Amazon, Sunvalley has invested a lot. RAVPower’s independent website shows that the product is priced at 54.99 US dollars, and buyers only need to complete the evaluation to receive a refund of 35 US dollars.
But this action clearly violated the rules within the Amazon platform. On June 17, Sunvalley’s parent company SACA Precision (the full name “Guangdong SACA Precision Manufacturing Co., Ltd”) issued an announcement acknowledging that “the reason may be that some products are given gift cards and are suspected of violating Amazon platform rules.”
According to the announcement, some stores involved in Sunvalley’s RAVPower, Taotronics, and VAVA brands were suspended from sales on the Amazon platform on June 16, 2021. At present, the company has established an emergency team and hired a lawyer to assist in communicating with the Amazon platform, actively coordinate and appeal, and strive to resume sales in related brand stores on Amazon as soon as possible.
On the same day, Amazon also issued a statement to respond to the banning of the big sellers that has received constant attention, “Regardless of the scale of the business of these bad actors, or where in the world, we will take action to prevent false reviews. At the same time, we want to emphasize that Amazon will not make the decision to cancel the sales authority lightly, and will also work hard to ensure high accuracy in identifying false reviews.”
In order to control the situation of false comments on the site, Amazon has also invested a lot of resources. According to the American e-commerce company, the company innovates, deploys and upgrades its leading technology based on machine learning on the site, supplemented by expert investigators. Through both technical and manual methods, Amazon takes the initiative to prevent customers from seeing false reviews in Amazon’s stores. In 2020, more than 200 million suspected false reviews were blocked before customers saw them, and more than 99% of them were discovered and removed by the company’s active monitoring. In addition to removal, accounts that posted false reviews will be prevented from continuing to submit reviews, and measures will be taken against seller accounts that obtain commercial benefits through false reviews.
And off-site, Amazon regularly communicates with social media companies about bad behaviors that occur on its platform. In the first three months of 2020, it provided clues to more than 300 bad groups to social media, and took an average of 45 days for social media companies to close these groups on their platforms. In the first three months of this year, it provided social media companies with clues to more than 1,000 bad groups, and social media companies took an average of 5 days to close these groups.
In addition, Amazon has also filed lawsuits against bad actors who purchase reviews and service providers who provide convenience to them, and will continue to track down bad actors through legal channels.
Many Chinese-based Amazon sellers know that, although there are also many sellers in the industry who do not perform click farming or request product reviews at all, click farms and requesting reviews are still a common phenomenon. However, under the heavy blow of Amazon, the change came immediately. A cross-border E-commerce seller in Shenzhen clearly felt that as Amazon is increasingly cracking down on click farms, false reviews, and other violations, “No one dared to do anything recently. That’s it.”
On Amazon, reviews are crucial. Product reviews mean more exposure and traffic, which can reach more consumers to generate sales. Under this mechanism, reviews are very important for sellers.
In fact, Amazon is not completely opposed to sellers asking for reviews, but it is also very difficult to obtain reviews. In 2019, Amazon launched the “request a review” one-click function to request reviews in the background. Through this feature, Amazon will send an email to the customer requesting the order’s products and seller reviews.
Some Amazon sellers calculate that “it would be good to get a review for one order out of a hundred orders.” For this reason, sellers often try their best, such as providing additional services in addition to the product, “you have to make them happy, so it is possible to have a comment.”
However, Wang Hai (pseudonym), who has been an Amazon seller for two years, has carefully studied the relevant policies and found that Amazon’s criteria for requesting reviews are also quite strict. “For example, ‘if you are happy, leave us a review’, this won’t work. Because the words say that if you are happy and there are inducements, what Amazon wants is an objective evaluation.”
The problems committed by Chinese sellers like Sunvalley are even more serious. A number of Chinese Amazon sellers pointed out that the ban was due to profit-induced incentives, that is, positive feedback, which is Sunvalley’s behavior of exchanging $35 for reviews.
The competition among cross-border sellers is becoming increasingly fierce on Amazon. The above-mentioned Chinese seller explained, “For most sellers, they are just selling general goods. In many cases, it is really impossible to survive without false reviews.” In contrast, another development route is to design the supply chain with the factory and make a ‘vertical extension’ around the products, but “when your product comes to the fore, it’s going to be a big seller.”
However, once faced with similar competition, many Chinese sellers have no countermeasures. Wang Hai has repeatedly complained to Amazon’s customer service about vicious peers ‘merging zombie listings’, but all the complaints were ultimately fruitless. This question is also testing Amazon as to how to ensure a level playing field on the platform.
Source: Zhixiang