Amazon filed suit against two companies, AppSally and Rebatest, on February 22 in Seattle, reports CNBC. The e-commerce giant accuses them of encouraging the publication of false reviews, by playing an intermediary role between marketplace sellers and complicit users. In 2020, the number of fake reviews deleted by Amazon was estimated at 200 million.
AppSally and Rebatest, experts in the art of deceiving Amazon security
Receiving an empty Amazon box is a bad sign for most platform users. For some it’s just normal. AppSally has a particularly clever system in place to trick Amazon security on fake reviews. The sellers, AppSally customers, sent empty boxes to an accomplice used, accompanied by a photo of the product. Here’s how to get a positive and genuine review. The user collects gift tickets, free products or a small payment.
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AppSally promises its customers to get their products listed in Amazon’s marketplace search engine. For 25 dollars, the entry price, the company guarantees ” outrun all your competitors without leaving your room “. Rebatest, for its part, claims to have an address book of 900,000 users. willing to write fake reviews on Amazon, but also eBay or Walmart.
This situation, now well known, is hell for Amazon: it ruins users’ trust in the platform’s product ratings and misleads the product ranking algorithm. A mixture likely to harm the reputation of the platform with consumers. In 2019 it was estimated that 60% of reviews in the high-tech section were fake.
The (unwinnable?) war against fake reviews
To deal with this situation, Amazon explained that it had put in place ” Powerful machine learning tools and trained moderators analyze more than 10 million reviews every week to stop abusive reviews before they even go live “.
The world champion of e-commerce no longer hesitates to take legal action against third-party sellers and, or, ban them. In 2021, Amazon had also raised its voice against social networks allowing groups of fake reviews to flourish. 1000 groups were reported on platforms in the first three months of 20211.
In the case against fake review brokers, Amazon sought damages from AppSally and Rebatest in an undisclosed amount. The platform also hopes that the two companies will be banned from continuing their activities.