Media exposes Amazon's order fraud problem! Officials are about to crack down on it

Just ask the sellers on the US site to see how hard Amazon is cracking down on fake reviews. In addition to regularly cleaning up suspicious reviews on a large scale, the company is also constantly strengthening its algorithms to identify more fake reviews. Now the US site has very little room for fake reviewers to survive.

However, Amazon's crackdown on other sites is not as harsh as on the US site. For example, the situation on this year's dark horse site, Japan, is relatively more serious than that on the US site.

Just recently, the Japanese TV station NHK conducted an in-depth investigation into the rampant fake reviews on Amazon Japan, and directly exposed the mastermind behind the fake orders.

(Infiltration! China's fake review factory)

Main contents of the survey

After learning that there are cases of people being paid to write positive reviews on the Amazon platform, the reporter tried to contact some of the fake review writers, and some of them could indeed be contacted through their public contact information.

(The reporter did not receive any response after he introduced himself)

But after hearing the reporter say "We are from the TV station for an interview," almost all of these people refused to answer any questions.

Then the reporter tried to contact again using the identity of "Amazon user who wants to write reviews to make some money", and finally someone who claimed to be an agent gave the reporter some replies.

The agent told the reporter that after purchasing the product, if you send him a screenshot of the order information, you can get a refund within 2 days, which is equivalent to getting the product for free. The agent also said that they have connections with many sellers and have many products that they want to review.

After selecting, the reporter chose to buy a USB cable, Bluetooth headset and mobile power bank from China. The number of reviews and ratings of these three products are very high.

The product arrived in about 3 days. After a simple experience, there was basically no problem with the USB data cable and earphones, but the mobile power bank could not be fully charged no matter what. So the reporter contacted the agent to see if they could reflect the real situation and give this power bank a 3-star rating.

Obviously, this request was rejected by the agent, who said that a good review was required in order to get a refund. Then the reporter asked the agent a soul-searching question:

"Wouldn't you feel guilty about leaving a fake review?"

Faced with such soul-searching questions, the agent was silent for a moment, saying that the reporter's idea was strange, that the competition among sellers in China is very fierce, and everyone is thinking about how to sell better. He has graduated from university for three years (perhaps because he thinks that only students have such naive ideas), and the reporter's question is meaningless.

The company immediately cut off contact with the reporter, but NHK's investigation did not end there. In order to understand the entire supply chain, NHK decided to conduct an investigation at the three 3C manufacturers it had purchased from before.

I guess you can guess where the reporter went next. Yes, these three stores are all 3C sellers from Shenzhen.

However, the reporter's trip to Shenzhen did not go smoothly at the beginning. The reporter did not find the two stores of headphones and USB at all. There were completely unrelated companies at the addresses they provided. The heads of these companies also said they were unaware of it and that the addresses might have been stolen.

After verifying several fake addresses, the reporter finally contacted a seller who was willing to talk about the fake order problem. The seller told the reporter that "Japanese people have a low sense of self-judgment. Whether eating or shopping, they like to follow the crowd. If there are two identical products, they will definitely choose the one with more reviews."

3C sellers interviewed by NHK

The interview team even contacted a special order-brushing company. In the small studio, dozens of mobile phones were automatically placing orders and leaving reviews, without any manual operation.

The person in charge of the fake order company even shared with the reporter some review maintenance tips that only sellers would know.

For example, machine and manual reviews are conducted alternately, so the chances of reviews being deleted are lower. There is also a method of merging variants that can allow a product to get a large number of reviews in a short period of time. It is best to merge similar products. If reviews of other products are merged, it is easy to get your store closed, and so on.

After the recording was completed, the program team reported the above situation to Amazon Japan and quickly received an official response.

Officials said that they will set up a special investigation team and work with the technical team to screen and delete fake reviews 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. They will also continue to optimize the algorithm and strengthen the ability to automatically detect fake reviews.

This video has now become popular on major platforms in Japan. NHK's documentaries have always been famous for their detailed data and profound viewpoints, especially programs on China-related topics, which are far beyond the reach of European and American media in terms of quality and quantity.

However, I never thought that we Amazon sellers would be reported one day. Can the impact of this report turn the Japanese site upside down?

Amazon has always valued media exposure and criticism the most. After the dumping problem was exposed, Amazon quickly launched a donation function; after it was revealed that the traffic and display of its own products were supported, it quickly removed the relevant display positions...

It seems that the voice of the media is more effective than that of us sellers. Therefore, at the end of this report, Amazon’s claim to the media that it will crack down on false reviews is definitely not just talk. The order-brushing environment on the Japanese site will deteriorate rapidly in the next few months, and machine-brushing will be the operation that dies the fastest.

Some sellers do this by botching a large number of reviews. If they lose reviews, they can just botch them again. Products with hundreds of reviews can sell well even if they are of poor quality. However, under Amazon's future crackdown, this method of botching will gradually become unviable.

Under such a severe crackdown on review deletion, the only way to survive is to follow the white hat operation method of the platform rules. Many sellers want to know how we can survive so well in the waves of review deletion. Let me reveal a little bit. We use a high-profit white hat method with on-site advertising as the core, combined with optimization and off-site, which can increase the traffic and orderly growth of products.

Because the whole routine complies with Amazon's rules, it will not be caught by the review deletion algorithm. It is precisely this high-profit route that allows us to survive well regardless of review deletion or tariffs.

If you want to know more about our high-profit gameplay, please scan the QR code below to consult me~

PS. If you want to join the seller discussion group, you can also private message me to let me add you to the group