Amazon bans top Chinese electronic brands from platform for posting fake reviews

In a strong crackdown, e-commerce giant Amazon banned several Chinese electronics companies from its portal for providing incentives to users to write fake consumer reviews for their products. According to a report by Gadgets Now, the Chinese brands were enticing Amazon users with free gift cards in exchange for writing positive reviews for their products. While writing feedback in exchange for gifts is a common practice in the Chinese e-commerce world, Amazon has a strict policy against any fake review that may be posted to sway or influence buyers. Such reviews are seen as an abuse of the review system by Amazon.

Top Chinese sellers banned from Amazon

Amazon's crackdown against Chinese companies includes some big names in the electronics business whose sales on the platform exceed $1 billion. The list includes names such as RAVPower power banks, Taotronics earphones, VAVA cameras, Atmoko, Aukey, Austor, Homasy, Homitt, Homtech, and several others. Notably, RAVPower power banks, Taotronics earphones, and VAVA cameras, three brands under Shenzhen-based electronics major Sun Valley Group generated $697 million in sales from Amazon last year, as per South China Morning Post.

"According to our investigation, the reason [for the ban] may be that some products offered gift cards to customers, which is allegedly in violation of the rules of the Amazon platform,” Guangdong SACA Precision Manufacturing said in the statement. 

The Chinese state-run media also quoted Amazon's Vice-president WW Customer Trust & Partner Support Dharmesh Mehta who underlined that Amazon had a 'zero-tolerance policy' towards review-based violations which even included asking a friend to leave a review on its portal. "Recently, after a thorough investigation, we suspended a few well-known selling accounts because we found they were violating our clear and long-standing policy prohibiting reviews abuse,” he said in a letter to the platform's vendors.

Meanwhile, Zack Franklin, a Shenzhen-based Amazon consultant for merchants said that while thousands of stores were shut down over review manipulations regularly, the ban this time had drawn massive attention since the Chinese sellers were 'big names' in the e-commerce industry "Amazon shuts down thousands of stores every single day for manipulation of the review system. The reason it's so notable this time is that the stores that they shut down are so big," ANI quoted him as saying.

The e-commerce giant had previously taken similar action against Chinese merchants violating its policy including an online store backed by ByteDance- TikTok's parent company.

(With Agency Inputs)