Some sellers couldn’t help feeling some Schadenfreude after one of Amazon’s own products was impacted by an alleged fake-review scam. A seller shared screenshots of listings by a seller of “posture correctors” that were displaying reviews that had actually been left for Amazon’s Echo Dot, not for the posture-correcting products.
The discussion board thread heated up with sellers describing tales of their own, and it also caught the attention of Amazon moderators, who indicated they were looking into the problem.
“AMAZON WAKE UP SOMEONE IS RIPPING YOU OFF!” the original poster said. “Who would believe this can happen on Amazon.com in 2021.”
A few sellers explained that when they reported similar issues on their items, Amazon blamed them as this response on the thread describes:
“This just happened to me and I was advised by seller support to report it. I did report it and guess what? I now have to submit a plan of action explaining that I did not violate a listing policy. Not only did they hit my awesome account with a policy violation, but they also deactivated the listing and I have to go through the daunting task of proving I am not the bad actor here.
“The process is broken. One no one should be able to go in and completely change a listing in this fashion without some kind of validation to the changes. Amazon should alert all sellers on a listing when any information has been changed. Amazon should also have a dedicated team for hijacked listings as a specific option to report in the seller support help feature.
“This is very time-consuming process to resolve and I am still trying to resolve it. This has finally happened to Amazon and I wonder if they will implement change to prevent this from happening.”
Some sellers seem convinced that some scams are being committed by or aided by Amazon insiders. You can find the discussion thread on Amazon Seller Central.
