The Downfall of Amazon: Dangerous Products, Fake Reviews & Vanishing Brands - Louis Rossman
The Downfall of Amazon: Dangerous Products, Fake Reviews & Vanishing Brands - Louis Rossman
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Amazon has enacted a rather dumb rule with regard to paid product reviews. I was contacted about a year ago by a chinese company I have bought a lot of electronics from and left positive reviews for in the past. They offered me deep discounts (via rebate) on products if I left reviews after purchasing and using them for a while (no 'has to be positive' strings attached). I reviewed a couple of their products last year and put a disclaimer about being partially compensated for the review at the top. One of the products wasn't great (it was a bottom of the barrel budget phone) and I gave it a middling review.
I didn't hear from them for a while, then about 3 months ago they reached out with two more products they were asking me to review. Same deal. I submitted reviews this time and they got rejected because it is apparently now against Amazon's policies to publish compensated reviews. I resubmitted the reviews with my disclaimer removed and they published them. Kinda crappy on their part that they won't allow reviewers to divulge that information.
Which is weird. Because some reviews have a tag/label specifying "received product for free". So there must be some way to indicate it.
I believe those are ones where it's a product sold by Amazon first-party and Amazon themselves sent it free, maybe as part of the Amazon Vine program.
So Amazon goes by the maxim of "rules for thee, but not for me". I can't say that I'm surprised :)
I always disclose in my reviews if the seller tried to bribe me and that I refused. I have yet to have one taken down for that, and I figure that's something people might want to know.
The only time I was bribed, I left a note on my review about it, and it's the only product review I've left anywhere that's ever been rejected.
Yup that's like exactly what I did and what happened to me, except it was a nose hair trimmer