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This year's peak season is still plagued by problems: system bugs, sudden increases in advertising costs, reduced inventory capacity and other problems have come one after another, causing cross-border sellers' performance to repeatedly encounter bottlenecks. At the same time, vicious competition among peers is also emerging in an endless stream. In addition to ultra-low prices, there are even sellers who use unfair means to obtain orders and make fun of other sellers. We have learned that some sellers have recently taken an unconventional approach to gain traffic during the peak season at the end of the year. Sellers get BS marks by misplacing categories
It is learned that according to foreign media reports, some sellers on Amazon are obtaining the Best Seller logo by placing products in the wrong categories. It is reported that these sellers placed some popular products in slow-selling categories to deceive Amazon's algorithm to obtain the Best Seller logo, mainly including auto parts such as car dashboards, mobile phone cases and smartphone holders for USB drives. For example, in the "replacement axle shafts" category, a seller placed a car phone holder in it, making the product the best-selling product in the category.
▲ Image from Bloomberg The report said that more than 25 examples of smartphone holders have been found, and the sellers selling these holders are all from China. According to a former Amazon product category manager, these products are technically auto parts and will not trigger warnings even if they are placed in unrelated auto parts categories. Industry insiders said that after obtaining the Best Seller badge through illegal means, these sellers’ sales can even jump by 50% . It is learned that this is not the first time that sellers have violated the rules by placing products in the wrong categories on Amazon. During the previous epidemic, some sellers also placed mask products in categories such as books or video games to circumvent Amazon's safety testing of products related to the new coronavirus. Although the two have different purposes for misplacing categories, they are ultimately both illegal operations that exploit loopholes to make profits . At present, it is unclear how many sellers have adopted this illegal behavior to obtain the Best Seller logo, but it is certain that compliant sellers in the relevant categories have been affected. Related sellers are troubled by misplaced categories
It was learned that due to the illegal operation of the seller in the auto parts category to place the wrong category, not only the ranking of the compliant sellers in the same category was depressed, but the sellers whose products were copied also suffered a drop in sales due to the tampering of the category, resulting in losses of hundreds of thousands of dollars. According to the report, a mobile phone accessories seller who was copied said that the illegal operation caused the monthly sales of his products to plummet by 50% during the peak season. For this reason, the seller submitted hundreds of reports to Amazon in the past month to complain, but the response he received was mixed. The seller mentioned that Amazon sometimes responds to their complaints and deletes the follow-up products in the wrong category, but after a few days, new follow-up products appear in another wrong category. When they complain to Amazon at this time, they sometimes get an invalid response that "we cannot take action on this report because no violations were found." Prior to this, an Amazon spokesperson said that sellers who place products in the wrong categories will generally receive warnings, and repeat offenders may be suspended from selling on the platform. We learned that some sellers’ products were previously classified as incorrect due to being placed in the wrong category, which resulted in a reduction in weight and a decline in sales. Some sellers even had their products removed from the shelves as a result. An Amazon spokesperson also mentioned that Amazon has no room for fraud and will continue to take all measures to protect sellers' stores and hold bad actors accountable. It can be seen that after feedback from multiple sellers, Amazon is likely to tighten detection of the violation of misplacing categories in the future. We would also like to remind all sellers that it is not advisable to use the wrong category to obtain the Best Seller status . Compared with misplacing products in unpopular and slow-selling categories, accurate categories bring more effective traffic. At the moment when regulatory policies are tightened, only compliance as a prerequisite can help us find a solution.
I wonder if the above situation has occurred in the categories of your sellers? Welcome to discuss in the comment area~
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