Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon third-party sellers reportedly hound customers who leave bad reviews

gizmodo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 104 posts

Re: Amazon third-party sellers reportedly hound customers who leave bad reviews

#21

Post by bawolff »

slapfrog wrote: post #14
antipodes123 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long time Amazon Seller here It's against Amazon TOS to contact Amazon's customers outside the Amazon messaging system, and they are really heavy handed against sellers breaching this. If you complain to Amazon that the seller is contacting you outside the Amazon messaging platform and harrassing you, then Amazon will close their seller account. Alternatively you can threaten to report them to Amazon for this and the…

> > "contacted Amazon, who responded with "we'll deal with the issue and get back to you within 48 hours", which never happened" > "If you complain to Amazon that the seller is contacting you outside the Amazon messaging platform and harrassing you, then Amazon will close their seller account." What is the purpose of telling somebody to do exactly what they just told you they already did, and insisting that it will w…

> Your comment is tantamount to gaslighting.

That's a bit strong. People can have different experiences, amazon might treat different groups differently, etc

Re: Amazon third-party sellers reportedly hound customers who leave bad reviews

#22

Post by ravroid »

I bought a cheap $60 or $70 drone on Amazon and eventually gave it a 3-star rating. I was hardly being critical of the product at all, just gave an honest review. The next day I received an email from the company offering me $100 Amazon giftcard to remove the review.

Re: Amazon third-party sellers reportedly hound customers who leave bad reviews

#24

Post by [deleted] »

slapfrog wrote: post #14
antipodes123 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long time Amazon Seller here It's against Amazon TOS to contact Amazon's customers outside the Amazon messaging system, and they are really heavy handed against sellers breaching this. If you complain to Amazon that the seller is contacting you outside the Amazon messaging platform and harrassing you, then Amazon will close their seller account. Alternatively you can threaten to report them to Amazon for this and the…

> > "contacted Amazon, who responded with "we'll deal with the issue and get back to you within 48 hours", which never happened" > "If you complain to Amazon that the seller is contacting you outside the Amazon messaging platform and harrassing you, then Amazon will close their seller account." What is the purpose of telling somebody to do exactly what they just told you they already did, and insisting that it will w…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon third-party sellers reportedly hound customers who leave bad reviews

#25

Post by thraway12 »

Yeah this shit has got to stop. I'm sorry that you're competing on a platform that is overly sensitive to the truth, but hound Amazon, not your customers. And if you don't like it, maybe use all that fervor to organize and start competitors that aren't sensitive to that kind of truthtelling from customers: take all of the vendors who are disfavored by the platform and run something that isn't skewed. The tech has been out here for long enough that someone needs to make an amazon competitor.

Re: Amazon third-party sellers reportedly hound customers who leave bad reviews

#26

Post by Rebelgecko »

decremental wrote: post #8
blibble wrote: post #5

I had this... a third-party seller started harassing me via email to submit feedback so I did... I gave them a two star review with something along the lines of "kept pestering me to leave feedback" then they started emailing me demanding that I remove it, which I ignored then they started phoning the number for the delivery, which happened to be an elderly relative (as they were the order recipient) contacted Amazon…

The third party sellers shouldn't get access to your contact information. On DoorDash, calls go through DoorDash's system. Same with text messages. No one gets the other person's real number. I've had one restaurant that always calls me right after I place the order to ask me for my phone number to put into their system for future orders. I always tell them no, I prefer to go through DoorDash instead. A similar syste…

I've seen a pretty common scam where items are sold for "too good to be true" prices, only to be cancelled a few days later. I assume this is to harvest people's contact info

Re: Amazon third-party sellers reportedly hound customers who leave bad reviews

#27

Post by Rebelgecko »

tylerrobinson wrote: post #2

The situation with Amazon reviews has become unbelievable. I recently purchased a $20 item with around 30,000 reviews, overwhelmingly positive. $20 was a reasonable market price for this item from any retailer. There was a card inside the box from the seller saying they’d send me a $15 gift card for posting a 5-star review and then forwarding them proof I had posted it to some gmail account. I followed the instructio…

Amazon also takes down reviews that mention paid reviews

Edit: In Amazon's defense, they've apparently banned one of the companies (Mpow) that makes a product where I've had my review deleted

Re: Amazon third-party sellers reportedly hound customers who leave bad reviews

#28

Post by OnlyLys »

tylerrobinson wrote: post #2

The situation with Amazon reviews has become unbelievable. I recently purchased a $20 item with around 30,000 reviews, overwhelmingly positive. $20 was a reasonable market price for this item from any retailer. There was a card inside the box from the seller saying they’d send me a $15 gift card for posting a 5-star review and then forwarding them proof I had posted it to some gmail account. I followed the instructio…

I've experienced this but with Google Maps.

A highly rated pizza chain in my city (4.8 stars out of 6000+ reviews) is giving out free desserts if you rate them 5 stars. I've called them out on it years ago, but it seems that they are still doing it today: https://goo.gl/maps/1L8zdhWgwDK8b8Cy6.

Re: Amazon third-party sellers reportedly hound customers who leave bad reviews

#29

Post by tostonescon »

antipodes123 wrote: post #11

Long time Amazon Seller here. It's against Amazon TOS to contact Amazon's customers outside the Amazon messaging system, and they are really heavy handed against sellers breaching this. If you complain to Amazon that the seller is contacting you outside the Amazon messaging platform and harrassing you, then Amazon will close their seller account. Alternatively you can threaten to report them to Amazon for this and th…

I had a seller hassle me on my personal email after me telling them to stop asking for removal of an honest review in exchange for a replacement of a poorly made product.

Literally could not find a way to tell Amazon, so I left a review on their seller page.

Amazon deleted that review because "product was fulfilled by Amazon"

Amazon is a dumpster fire these days.

Re: Amazon third-party sellers reportedly hound customers who leave bad reviews

#30

Post by ganoushoreilly »

tylerrobinson wrote: post #2

The situation with Amazon reviews has become unbelievable. I recently purchased a $20 item with around 30,000 reviews, overwhelmingly positive. $20 was a reasonable market price for this item from any retailer. There was a card inside the box from the seller saying they’d send me a $15 gift card for posting a 5-star review and then forwarding them proof I had posted it to some gmail account. I followed the instructio…

There was a great sky talk at Defcon this week about groups that literally have catalogues of stuff people choose from, order, then get PayPal refund for the 5 star reviews (multiple merchant sites not just Amazon). Some of it is pretty expensive stuff (3D printers, batteries and more). I don’t have an answer for a fix but I definitely just ignore reviews now.
Post reply on HN