Amazon Resellers Begging For Fake Reviews
This is a true story – I recently purchased a Bluetooth wireless hands-free for my smartphone so I could telework easier on the days that I teleworked. Inside the packaging was a little “sweepstakes” care, which of course I won. So I followed the instructions and I got an email back in a few minutes congratulating me for winning and that my prize will be mailed out today (I don’t have it yet, hmmmmmm).
I was also asked if I would consider being a product tester for this company. This is a scam and I knew it, but I played along and I even called them out for a scam. I was told it is not a scam and that they would like me to test their latest product for them and provide feedback on the product. After going back and forth a few more times, I was asked to provide positive feedback. I said, what if I don’t like the product and I was asked to please not provide negative feedback and to please work with them. I played along and now, I’m supposed to search Amazon for the item, put it in my cart, and take a screengrab. Once they confirm that I have it in my cart, they will use PayPal to send me the money so I can buy the product.
Once I get the product, I will then purchase the product from Amazon and write a favorable review and then I can keep and use the product.
So for the cost of the item that I won $50 and the reimbursement for the product they want me to buy for $50 (so $100 total), they get positive reviews on Amazon. And this my friends is how that works, the people who get scammed are those who buy the product in the future and find out that the reviews are not accurate. Amazon also gets scammed as the concept behind the verified purchaser is to ensure that the review is done by a person who actually purchased and used the product in question.
Amazon calls this an incentivized Amazon review and it is against their Community Guidelines the company soliciting the review and the person making the review can both get banned from Amazon.
You can learn more about how Amazon is cracking down on this here
While researching this blog post, I learned that “Ambulance Chaser” lawyers are actually soliciting the following “Do you have a suspended Amazon account? We can help appeal your Amazon account suspension”
BuzzFeed has a huge article about this scam as well.
If you think this has happened or is happening to you, you can email Amazon at community-help@amazon.com
I personally don’t find reporting this as being a “Karen”, if a potential purchaser can’t find valid reviews about a product, they may be swayed to purchase a poorly designed clone of this product based solely on fake reviews.
In May of 2021 a large database of leaked fake reviews including information about the reviewer was leaked online.
Update: If you are curious how all this shook out.
- I received the free prize that I “won” on the sweepstakes
- I told the company that I wasn’t interested in losing my Amazon.com account, and my Prime membership just for a $50 free item
- I let Amazon know, via the above email address, and well, they never answered me for more information, so I guess they could care less
