Brokers in China are bribing Amazon employees there to quash negative reviews and engaging in other unethical practices on behalf of independent sellers seeking to gain sales and market share, according to a news report.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that cutthroat competition is tempting merchants on the digital marketplace to take action—even tactics banned by Amazon—that could give their businesses a leg up. “If I don’t do bad things, I will die,” the WSJ quotes one unnamed Chinese seller as saying of his business.
These unsavory practices include bribing Amazon employees for access to the email addresses of those who’ve penned critical reviews and offering them products, discounted or at no cost, to tweak or remove their reviews. At a much higher cost of $300 per pop and a five-review minimum, sellers working through brokers can bribe workers at Amazon to remove unfavorable reviews directly, the WSJ said.
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Aside from trying to game the reviews—which can be a make-or-break factor in driving transactions—merchants can pay brokers for sales data, including the keywords customers search for and other data on customers’ purchasing preferences, habits and more. Sellers can use this information to tailor their advertisements and product listings to appear higher in search rankings, which is important as many customers don’t make it past the first page of search results. WSJ said that at an Amazon sellers conference not hosted by the e-commerce company itself, a broker was offering up $80 for sales data; how many times people looked for a specific product and clicked through to a product detail page; and the other names of merchants bidding for ads and their cost.
WSJ said that the “small salaries” of many Amazon employees in China make them particularly susceptible to the risky bribery business, and once the company’s vice president in charge of overseas Eric Broussard markets got wind of the misbehavior, the company “shuffled the roles of key executives in China” in an effort to prevent further payoffs.
The news is just the latest misfortune for Amazon, which has consistently faced accusations of counterfeits cropping up on its platform in addition to review-tampering scandals. With the Amazon marketplace accounting for a growing share of its total gross merchandise volume and sales, many third-party sellers feel they have little choice but to cut corners in order to cut through the noise of the myriad merchants hawking their wares on a platform that dominates product searches.
