Amazon Review ratings may be rectified, are local gangs making fun of Chinese sellers?

Under the influence of unfavorable macro factors, cross-border people have experienced ups and downs since 2022, from soaring costs and shrinking orders to a sluggish peak season and cold membership days. Every hurdle is difficult to overcome.

Now, the annual Black Friday sale has finally arrived, and it also coincides with the quadrennial World Cup carnival. Many sellers hope that the double buff will strongly boost consumption.

As sellers are rushing to prepare for Black Friday, Amazon has also been making frequent moves recently. In addition to launching an account security plan and raising FBA delivery fees, it has also been testing a review rating system. What impact will this change have on sellers?

It is learned that recently some sellers searched for keywords such as "earbuds", "wireless earbuds for android", "wireless earbuds noise cancelling" on the front desk and found that the star rating of the product link was also directly displayed on the search interface.

▲ The picture comes from Zhiwubuyan

In addition to the 3C category, some sellers have found that the same situation has occurred in red ocean categories such as beauty and toys, including Amazon's own Apple products, which have begun to display star ratings.

Not only that, some newly launched or unrated products even show zero-star ratings. This means that the difficulty of promoting new products is likely to be even higher.

▲ The picture comes from Zhiwubuyan

Before this, when buyers searched for products, they could only see the review star rating, and they had to click on the listing details page to get the specific rating. However, now the rating is directly presented on the search results interface, so buyers are naturally more inclined to click on products with higher ratings.

Many sellers have reported this situation, and some sellers' orders have even fluctuated:

"There were some yesterday, and then the orders increased a bit; then there were none today, and the orders fell back."

"Yesterday, some categories were arranged horizontally, but today they have changed back to vertical arrangement."

“It seems like all products on the mobile client have started to display ratings.”

Sellers have mixed reviews on this change at Amazon.

On the one hand, old products have more reviews and it is relatively more difficult to improve their ratings. On the other hand, new products have a smaller number of reviews and it is easier to improve their star ratings in the early stages.

On the other hand, it may also lead to more serious product monopoly. When the ratings are clear at a glance, buyers can easily choose top products with higher star ratings and better reviews.

It is not difficult to see that Amazon is intentionally pushing platform merchants to return to the products themselves, return to the polishing of the supply chain, and support high-quality merchants and products.

Of course, not all category search pages display star ratings, and some categories appear and disappear from time to time, and Amazon has not yet issued an official notice. In other words, this adjustment is still in the internal testing stage, and it is still unknown whether it will be officially launched in the future.

However, with multiple policy changes on the eve of Black Friday, sellers inevitably wonder what signals Amazon is sending.

Last week, the European site took the lead in launching Black Friday, and the US site will also kick off this Thursday. However, judging from the current sales situation of the European site, it seems that there has not been a big surge in orders. While some sellers on the US site were anxiously waiting for the arrival of Black Friday, they were once caught in the dilemma of soaring advertising bids, rising ACOS, and halving sales.

Not only that, some sellers on European sites were even maliciously attacked by local sellers on the eve of the big sale and were forced to miss Black Friday.

The seller reported that his top link was removed from Amazon the day before Black Friday in Europe. Due to a complaint from a competitor, the product sold by the seller was found to be in violation of product safety laws, i.e. the name and contact address of the manufacturer, authorized representative or importer were missing. According to Amazon's email notification, other buyers also had their products removed due to complaints.

The seller said that his products are not CE products, so the backend EU responsible module did not require him to submit EU representative information, and the address was not marked on the product packaging.

As the seller dug deeper, he found a website. After the investment manager pointed out, he learned that someone took a photo of the product packaging after placing an order on the seller's store, and then filed a complaint with Amazon through a third-party platform for violating §6 ProdSG of the federal government.

The seller found out from the website description that this is a group that helps local merchants to file unfair complaints against Chinese sellers in order to gain profits. Local sellers only need to pay fees and provide the ASIN of competitors, and then they can wait for the other party's link to be removed after being complained.

▲ The picture comes from Zhiwubuyan

In fact, many sellers have said that they have encountered the same situation. The final result of the appeal is often to move all products to other warehouses. Some sellers have complete EU agent and manufacturer information but are still successfully complained about, with more than a dozen SKUs removed from the shelves within one day. What's worse, since they cannot move the products immediately, they also have to pay high storage fees.

The closer the big sale is, the more frequent these spoofs become. Some sellers have reported that they have received significantly more negative reviews and returns than usual, and most of the negative reviews are in the form of long essays. Even if you focus on white hat tactics, you still feel terrified and unable to guard against them before the big sale every year.

Of course, as black technology and spoofs are rampant, sellers should operate in compliance with the platform guidelines, submit necessary information and pass relevant audits to avoid being taken advantage of by criminals.