It seems like every week there’s another article about companies pulling the wool over the eyes of customers, spinning tales, and performing questionable activities.
On today’s episode of “The Lies Continue”, we’re talking about Amazon product reviews. Specifically, how some smaller, low-price, no-name products on Amazon end up with thousands of positive reviews. Fox Business recently took a deep dive into sellers who are reaching out to unhappy buyers to revise or delete their negative reviews, offering them refunds, gift cards, money, or free gifts. And, if customers are not bowing down to the seller and accepting the bribes, the sellers continue to reach out and harass customers until they get their way. The question to ask yourself: can you REALLY trust product reviews?
Here are the hard, cold facts: sellers who sell and ship products on Amazon are NOT supposed to reach out to customers outside of Amazon’s official channel. Let alone stalk customers and offer bribes in exchange for deleting negative reviews. It’s a violation of the terms sellers agree to on the platform.
Other Amazon seller terms:
- Sellers cannot offer refunds or gift cards in exchange for reviews.
- Sellers cannot reach out to customers outside of Amazon’s official channel.
- Sellers cannot request that a customer remove a negative review or post a positive one.
- Amazon does NOT share customer e-mail addresses with third-party sellers.
- Offering “free gifts” is a violation of company policy.
- Using third-party tools to take customers’ shipping information and match it to known email addresses violates Amazon’s rules.
As a result of these “bad actors” on Amazon, it’s hard to trust the authenticity of reviews sometimes. After reading the Fox Business article detailing the harassment and abuse of customers by some Amazon sellers, you might think twice before trusting the reviews under the product you’ve got your eye on. When in doubt, we recommend calling the brand’s customer service to ask any questions, or purchasing through a vendor’s secure website directly (likeAntennas Direct).