Amazon is generally a well-trusted place. It’s useful because you buy nearly anything on Amazon from household essentials to car parts and anything in between.
Amazon offers a great platform to compare items to ensure that you’re getting the best bang for your buck by taking price and quality into consideration. If you’re like most people, you’re going to choose an item rated highly by other customers.
What happens when that product that everyone seems to love turned out to be a dud instead? This is a problem that many Amazon buyers have experienced thanks to the Amazon Sellers Scam.
How The Amazon Sellers Scam Works
There are a couple of methods that Amazon Sellers use to increase the appeal of their products using false positive reviews. They may:
- Create fake Amazon accounts to leave positive reviews on their own products.
- Provide previous buyers with an incentive, like a gift card or free item, in exchange for their verified positive review.
- Swap their product listing so that positive reviews for another item appear instead of reviews for the product currently being shown.
- Create fake websites that appear similar to Amazon
In each of these cases, several positive reviews appear for their product on Amazon. This leaves potential buyers with the impression that the product is of high quality when, in reality, it may actually be a low-quality dud.
How can I spot the Amazon Sellers Scam?
The best way to spot this scam is to take the time to read the individual reviews shown on a product listing on Amazon instead of simply relying on the star rating. Make sure that any pictures shown in the reviews match the image displayed on the product listing and make sure that the reviews talk about that product and not about another item.
Fake websites that appear similar to Amazon can be identified using Browser Protection, like Guardio. Protection like this works by scanning the code of any site that you visit to ensure that there is no malicious code, that the owner of the website is legitimate, and that the website has been around long enough to be trusted.
What should I do if I’ve fallen victim to the Amazon Sellers Scam?
If you’ve fallen victim to the Amazon Sellers Scam, contact Amazon’s Customer Support team right away and provide them with as much information about the problem as you can, including any discrepancies that exist between the product listing and the actual product that you received. If possible, provide them with pictures as well.
Amazon provides third-party sellers with the right to set their own refund policies. However, in cases where a product received doesn’t match the seller’s description or the seller is found to be committing fraud by way of false reviews, Amazon will side with the buyer. In most cases, the buyer will get a full refund once the merchandise is returned.
