Amazon sellers harass customers for leaving negative reviews

Amazon is still notorious Fake reviews and exaggerated product ratings. Although the company tried to clean up its system, its efforts did not really succeed.a new one Wall Street Journal Report Now it is emphasized how leaving real reviews on Amazon has caused many customers to be harassed.

Quoting the example of multiple Amazon buyers, Wall Street JournalThe latest survey results show that Amazon sellers have taken down negative reviews by bribing customers and constantly hunting them down. Sellers who ship products through Amazon should not contact customers directly, but this is exactly what happened to a few people.

When Catherine Scott in New York bought a spray bottle from a third-party Amazon seller, she did so based on approximately 1,000 positive reviews and a 4.5-star rating. However, the $10 product did not work as advertised. A week after she left a negative review on Amazon, she received an email from the company’s customer service team asking her for a full refund and asking her to consider canceling her negative review on Amazon.

According to reports, the message concluded: “When we do not receive a response, we will assume that you did not see it and will continue to send emails.”

The company did not stop there. When Scott requested a refund but refused to cancel the comment, another representative contacted her and refused her request. “The bad reviews are a fatal blow to us,” the email read. “Can you delete the comment for me? If possible, I would like to refund you $20 as a token of my gratitude.”

In the end, Scott received multiple other requests from the company. She contacted Amazon about these annoying e-mails, but the company did not reply to her after several promises to investigate the matter.

Wall Street JournalThe report highlighted several other cases where customers were chased by Amazon sellers and offered twice as much refunds to remove negative reviews.

What is the real problem?

The biggest problem with this approach is that Amazon sellers should not contact customers outside the platform. According to Amazon’s policy, third-party sellers should also not access customers’ email addresses. Sellers who ship orders themselves can access customer mailing names and mailing addresses. But for orders fulfilled by Amazon, customer data should be hidden from sellers and brands.

“We will not share customer email addresses with third-party sellers,” an Amazon spokesperson told Wall Street JournalHowever, the publication pointed out that sellers can try to extract customer data from Amazon’s gaze in a variety of ways.

The report mentioned a company that provides e-mail retrieval services for Amazon sellers, and another company that retrieves e-mail addresses from Amazon reviews, with prices as high as $60 per item.

As far as Scott is concerned, for a long time after her complaint, the list of fuel injection products on Amazon has maintained all positive reviews.In fact, Amazon only deleted the brand and seller Wall Street Journal Contacted the company about this issue.

How do you protect yourself?

Although you may not be able to fully control how sellers can access your contact information on Amazon, there are some ways you can try to avoid similar problems after you leave negative reviews on your products.

on the one hand, Wall Street Journal It is recommended that you do not use your real name to post reviews on Amazon.You can go to Your account> Ordering and shopping preferences> Your Amazon profile Change your public name displayed in Amazon reviews.

You should also save any communications received from Amazon sellers via email or message so that you can forward them to customer service.

If the seller doesn’t stop pestering you and keeps sending requests to delete negative comments to your inbox, you can block their email address. Most email services provide users with the ability to block senders.