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

gizmodo.com

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

#81

Post by remir »

barneybooroo wrote: post #44

I once negatively reviewed a drone on Amazon. Their EMEA boss emailed me out of the blue wanting to set up a phone conversation to convince me otherwise. Really needy and gross! I reported this to Amazon who said that wasn’t “meant to happen”, but I doubt any sanction came from that.

I reported this to Amazon who said that wasn’t “meant to happen”

The simple fact that third party sellers can contact buyers by email is enabling this crap.

All Amazon has to do is build some messaging system so all communication between sellers and buyers happen on Amazon instead of by email. In case of abuse, it could be reported easily.

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

#82

Post by Fnoord »

sneak wrote: post #77
rlaabs wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The New York City council recently passed a bill that requires apps, like Doordash, to share the customers real name, number, email address. Their reasoning is that this somehow "helps" small-business. https://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=4...

This just allows them to sell your name+email+phone+address to Google et al. State mandated doxxing. This is why I have a burner phone number, throwaway domain/email, and special alias for food delivery that needs my home address.

..but then they still have your home address in their archive of PII. Which is bad enough (wasn't Dominos or New York Pizza hacked the other day with PII getting leaked?).

I barely ever read spam (and receive it mainly on one of my older e-mail addresses but it does end up in the spam filter). I barely ever receive spam on my phone number. I won't say never, cause it has happened, but probably like twice a year or so. And I use my real phone number and real e-mail address everywhere. Which, in case of using an alias, isn't clever. But in your case, they still got the address.

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

#83

Post by dawnerd »

OnlyLys wrote: post #28
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 .

Shake shack does this too. They opened one up nearby and simply changed the location of a well performing store across the country to where the new store was so they could open with thousands of positive reviews.

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

#84

Post by rlpb »

squiggleblaz wrote: post #80
rlpb wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> since we're now also dependent on it for enforcement This, I think, is the root of the problem. In the case that Amazon takes control of the situation (you don't really have a relationship with the third party seller; you have a relationship with Amazon), then despite what they claim, they should be held legally responsible. In the UK we have a legal concept of "vicarious liability". An employer is liable for an em…

> then despite what they claim, they should be held legally responsible. I fully agree with this. There is a great deal of distrust in contemporary society, because those who hold the power do everything they can to avoid being held responsible. And because they hold the power, they are able to do it. If these parasites want a civilisation to be parasitical off, they will need to shape up. However, it needs to be car…

> So aside from being responsible for the bad actors they choose not to exclude, they should also be responsible for the actors they unfairly or disproportionately exclude.

I entirely agree. I think that this could be made quite general: when a private entity is in a position of gatekeeping a large proportion of a market (say, 30%), then it should automatically have a universal service obligation - unable to arbitrarily choose not to do business with those it finds inconvenient. "Fired" customers should have legal recourse under the universal service obligation. Abuse (by a fired customer) would be an acceptable reason to fire that customer, but the business would have to demonstrate abuse to a legal standard of proof.

Business owners might consider this to be an unfair burden. I see it from a socialist perspective: if you're a big player, that's the burden you must bear in order for the market to remain a fair place to do business.

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

#85

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

DoubleGlazing wrote: post #56

I've stopped buying 3rd party seller items because of this. Now, I'll only buy items sold directly by amazon. For example, I bought a little portable projector last Christmas. In the box was a big bar of Swiss chocolate and leaflet offering me a tripod in return for a five star review. The projector wasn't as good as the description made out. It wasn't terrible, just not as good as they claimed. So I left a three sta…

Only 3rd party sellers are allowed in India due anti-competitive/eCommerce regulations, Couple of years ago I left a negative review for an item when the seller/manufacturer who failed to uphold their warranty statement as described in their product listing calling out the false statements in the product listing.

The seller reached out to me on LinkedIn, Out of frustration I blocked the seller on LinkedIn. I still feel bad about the entire scenario, I wonder whether I was too harsh.

Now there are several products on amazon.in where ordering requires you to interact with the seller on WhatsApp, e.g. Name board, You need to message via WhatsApp to the seller with the text. So obviously they pester you to leave a positive review through WhatsApp.

If Amazon cared a bit about Privacy, they would have integrated it part of ordering process in the website itself. Compared to Amazon, even Uber is better at masking customer's phone number from drivers(They route it through their number).

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

#87

Post by adolfojp »

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 got one of those bribery cards with a purchase.

The item wasn't good.

I posted a 1 star review of the product with a photo of the card to warn others.

Amazon didn't approve the review because it didn't comply with its standards or whatever.

Amazon is complicit in all of this.

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

#88

Post by second--shift »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #26
decremental wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Aha - that's what this is. I keep wondering why many sub-20$ items on eBay keep getting cancelled on me. The equivalent item on Amazon is usually 20-25$ (but doesn't quality for free tier shipping on its own) so I shop eBay for same - half the time or more recently it's either a) a drop-ship from Amazon even in its box/packaging, or b) cancelled as 'buyer requested cancel'. I knew it was a scam but I didn't know what for.

Good thing I ship to a PO box and use a generic C/O name.

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

#89

Post by Fuzzeh »

kadoban wrote: post #66
Fuzzeh wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the item isn't full-filled by Amazon (ie my stock isn't in an amazon warehouse) then I need their address details and phone number (for the courier) to ship the item. Dealing with Amazon, as a seller, can be a terrible experience. Using their full-fillment service more so. They don't check returns so the next customer night get only part of a product, or in lots of cases a bogus product when a buyer fills the box…

Do you actually need a phone number to ship? I've literally never had a shipping company call or text me, can't imagine they require phone numbers.

Courier companies DPD/FedEx/UPS request one. Sometimes it speeds up the process is a location is difficult to find.

With DPD it's certainly down to the individual driver because they're calling on their own phone ( many just wont because of thst).

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

#90

Post by donmcronald »

throwawaysea wrote: post #3
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…

It’s probably best to ignore reviews and just shop based on critical reviews or recommendations from friends. And even then it is better to purchase directly from manufacturers rather than risk getting counterfeits. I’m not sure what value middlemen like Amazon add other than fast delivery, which most people can live without.

> shop based on critical reviews

There’s nothing critical about them anymore. They’re all affiliate marketing sites. Have you noticed there are no bad products anymore? Their only goal is to convince you to buy something. There’s no expertise.

RIP johnnyguru.com :-(

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