Deleting negative reviews, selling internal confidential information... Amazon employees are under investigation for bribery

As a seller on an e-commerce platform, what do you dream of doing?

First, make all negative reviews disappear automatically. Second, use the lowest cost to make your products visible, thereby increasing sales.

Under normal circumstances, the first thing requires sellers to spend a lot of time and manpower to communicate, and sometimes even need to pay real money to compensate. Often, poor communication will cause product sales to drop, but it is precisely because of these real negative reviews that sellers will continue to improve the quality of their products. The second thing is often the final cost that consumers have to bear, after all, the cost of advertising is not low.

Leifeng.com discovered that there is now a new solution to this problem.

According to the Wall Street Journal, if you want to accomplish these two things on Amazon's e-commerce platform, you can use a simpler and more brutal method - find Amazon insiders through an intermediary.

Some of them can directly delete bad reviews; some can get the email addresses used by buyers who gave bad reviews to complain, so you can contact them; some can even get confidential statistics within Amazon, such as statistics on products, sales volumes, and buyer habits. After mastering this data, sellers will know what kind of marketing methods can better attract buyers, and certain keywords can also improve search rankings, which were originally confidential data.

According to the Wall Street Journal, these behaviors exist in many parts of the world, but they are particularly evident in China. Due to the rapid development of e-commerce, the number of sellers in China is soaring and the demand is huge. In addition, Amazon China's salaries are relatively low, so it is easier to take risks under the incentive of money.

Taking Amazon employees in Shenzhen as an example, they can sell internal sales data and email addresses of buyers with bad reviews through intermediaries. If their stores are closed due to negative reviews, they can also restore them through internal channels.

Currently, the prices of these services range from US$80 to US$2,000. According to an intermediary, mid-level employees from Amazon China have the authority to directly delete negative reviews and know the email addresses of buyers who write bad reviews.

According to the agent, the price of deleting negative reviews is now $300 per post, with a minimum of 5 posts, which means that sellers must pay at least $1,500 in service fees to get the service. If it is too expensive, you can choose the second service, which is to buy the email addresses of buyers who give negative reviews, and then provide free or discounted products to persuade them to adjust or delete these reviews.

Although many of the people found to have accepted bribes were middle-level Chinese employees, senior executives are also to blame, and Amazon has begun to take action against these people.

The Wall Street Journal quoted a person familiar with the matter as saying that Eric Broussard, Amazon's vice president in charge of overseeing international markets, has begun to be investigated. In addition to him, some American employees are also involved. After the incident was exposed, Amazon has also been reorganizing key executives in China in an attempt to eradicate bribery.

Internally, Amazon has been trying to stop sellers from taking advantage of loopholes, but that can sometimes be a whack-a-mole situation, former Amazon executives and other people familiar with the matter said, and it has affected many sellers who were originally doing business honestly.

One Amazon seller said that because competition through fake reviews and deleting negative reviews has become so common and fierce, he is also considering using these tactics. "If I don't do this, my store will go bankrupt."

An Amazon spokesperson said the company has strict policies and codes of business conduct and ethics, and has systems in place to limit and review employee access. He added in a statement: " We hold our employees to high ethical standards, and anyone who violates our code will be subject to disciplinary action, including termination and potential legal and criminal penalties . We have zero tolerance for abuse of our systems, and if we find bad actors engaging in this behavior, we will take swift action against them."

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