Amazon's dividends are gradually disappearing and the platform rules are becoming increasingly strict. However, there are more and more sellers and the competition is becoming more and more fierce. In this crowded scene, some unscrupulous sellers are blinded by profit and take malicious measures to attack their competitors. Today, the editor will help you take stock of the harmful tricks used by unscrupulous sellers.
1. Leaving a bad review maliciously
Some unscrupulous sellers will use their own buyer accounts or bribe professional bad review writers to purchase products in competitors' stores. After receiving the products, they will directly leave you bad reviews regardless of whether the products are good or bad. Some reviews even specifically mention that a competitor’s product is more suitable at the end, and include a link to the product page. Of course, in this case, you can usually delete it by contacting Amazon Seller Support.
2. Maliciously liking a low-scoring review
It is impossible for any product to receive 100% positive reviews, there will always be sellers who give negative reviews. While some sellers try their best to ensure that their product homepages have no negative reviews, some competitors will like those one-star reviews. They will use a large number of buyer accounts to click "Yes" under "Was this review helpful to you?" under Review until these reviews appear on the product details page. In this way, customers will only see one-star reviews when viewing the listing, which will affect the listing conversion and lower the ranking.
3. Give your competitors good reviews
Giving positive reviews to your own products is a marketing method adopted by most sellers, but some unscrupulous sellers will also give positive reviews to their competitors. They will give your listing a large number of positive reviews in a short period of time, far exceeding the normal daily growth of your reviews, and the content of these reviews is very positive, just like a fake review. Some buyers will give up buying your products after seeing these reviews. Once Amazon discovers these false reviews, it may stop selling your listing.
4. Complain using sensitive words
Some unscrupulous sellers will leave negative reviews after purchasing a product and mention that the product is "fire", "dangerous" or "hazardous", or directly complain to Amazon that the product is unsafe to use. These sensitive words can easily trigger Amazon’s keyword algorithm robot review, resulting in the closure of the listing. At this time, the seller can only restore the listing by submitting an action plan. Similarly, such a complaint will seriously affect the ranking of the listing.
5. Email bombing
We all know that Amazon buyer accounts can send emails directly to sellers without buying anything. Some unscrupulous sellers, with a large number of buyer accounts, can send 400-500 buyer messages to competitors in an hour or overnight. Some sensitive words are usually embedded in the emails: for example, conterfeit, fake product, broken, exploded, fire and other sensitive words. After being captured by Amazon, the account will generally be warned at the very least, or even blocked at the worst.
6. Buy out all your inventory at critical moments
In order to increase their sales during key moments such as flash sales, Black Friday, and Prime Day, some sellers will use several different buyer accounts to purchase competitors' inventory in bulk. Some listings are quickly declared sold out because the inventory is too small. However, three weeks later he received return requests for all the goods he had previously sold. The competitor does this in order to freeze his inventory and increase his own sales, leaving the other party with nothing.
7. Malicious clicks on ads
Although advertising can attract traffic and increase sales. However, if malicious clicks are made by competitors, it may result in high click volume and low conversion rate, thereby lowering the weight and causing the ranking to drop. Of course, if some clicks are determined to be invalid by Amazon, the corresponding click fees will be returned to the seller.
8. Malicious follow-up sales
Such sellers are usually just launched (stores without good reviews), and no matter how earnest your warning letter is, they will not be moved. Anyway, I'll follow you. So is there no way to deal with it? The general solution is to open the other party's front desk, and then send a message to the top-ranked sellers to inform them that someone is maliciously following the sale. Once Amazon receives a lot of brand complaints from sellers, it will quickly shut down those idiots. Of course, it is not ruled out that some of the dog sellers are more tenacious. As long as everyone persists in complaining, the problem will always be solved.
9. Hijack your listing
Some brands have reported that their product images, titles, and other content have changed, sometimes to the point where it seriously hurts the brand’s ability to sell the product. This is because they suffered from hacker attacks, "hackers would upload vulgar and controversial images to product listings and delete the correct images. They would also change the product descriptions and then claim that the products can cure cancer and other diseases, causing Amazon's 'robots' to permanently remove the entire company's product line from the Amazon product catalog." Although the brand may have registered for Amazon Brand Registry, which is supposed to prevent any other seller from changing the product detail page, it seems to have no effect after encountering these "expert" sellers. In the face of this risk, it is recommended that you upload your products to Amazon and then submit them to Archive.org (a non-profit digital library) to protect your product images and listings. This will provide proof of the exact date your content was published. In addition, it is recommended that you register the image copyright for your own exclusive images at Copyright.gov (U.S. Copyright Office).
10. Purchase VC accounts and abuse their rights
Similar to the listing hijacking trick above, wholesale vendor (VC) accounts can edit the product details of products being sold by other sellers to ensure that their products are displayed correctly. However, some sellers buy these accounts on the black market and use this ability to alter competitors’ product pages with irrelevant images in order to hurt their sales.
11. Change product category
“Best seller” is a coveted and highly competitive label for many Amazon sellers, and some try to obtain it by switching product categories.
Earning a 'Best seller' tag can increase a seller's sales by 30% to 60%, depending on the competitiveness of the product category. Some ruthless rival sellers will work with the Amazon product catalog team to switch your product to another product category so that you lose the tag.
12. Stockpiling fake goods
The saying “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” is of little comfort to brands whose products have been copied. Worse still, these counterfeiters are now taking away the brand’s product sales. Amazon’s marketplace system means that unless a product or category is locked out for new sellers, any seller can list inventory of a product and start selling. This could open the door for rival sellers to produce counterfeit products, while brands remain in the dark until consumers start complaining about encountering fakes.
13. Suspending a seller’s account for false infringement claims
If sellers are able to prevent competitors from posting listings for a few days (especially on weekends), this will hurt their ability to sell. Amazon sellers often use this false infringement accusation against competitors, and the accused sellers need several days to investigate and resolve the issue.
14. Stealing a competitor’s trademark
For example: If you are a seller on the US site, selling private-label products, using a generic trademark, but not registered with the US Patent and Trademark Office, you must be careful about malicious opponents registering your trademark.
15. Fake QA
It means posting some deceptive and poor-quality questions and answers under other people’s normal LISTING, which interferes with buyers’ purchases and reduces conversion rates!
16. Import the email addresses of normal sellers and send return messages to groups
Nowadays, many services are well developed, and it is not uncommon for ASIN to be directed to email addresses. Many bad sellers use this method to cause a large number of returns from normal sellers!
17. Free review form for evaluation group
Some unscrupulous sellers use small accounts to post review-free orders in review groups, but then do not refund the buyers, resulting in a large number of returns! Serious listings were removed from the shelves
18. Check the store information and then maliciously update your listing
Unscrupulous sellers will check store information through links, and after checking, they will observe whether your store has FBA and FBM LISTINGs, and submit refurbished LISTINGs, causing you huge losses!
19. Change your listing to adult products
Many sellers may have fallen victim to this trick. Your competitors use some tricks to directly move your products to the adult category, making it difficult for buyers to search for your products.
