As the amount of online trading has increased it has become both tough for vendors and customers to connect. This has meant that some companies are using underhand ways of getting high rankings on trading platforms such as Amazon.
Amazon and similar trading platforms are wise to this and these practices are strictly against their rules, but it is a constant battle for them to keep on top of this and to keep the bad guys at bay.
These include
- Create fake positive reviews for products – often this is done by simply copying popular reviews for other products but can get past the ranking algorithms. Fake reviews are easy to spot but will require diligence from the user. This is often done by external reviewers. To prevent being suspend vendors will have many web sites
- Taking down of competitors through fake negative reviews - by flagging as dangerous, fake or sub-standard that get them suspended by exploiting trading platform’s ranking systems. This can be accentuated by buying and returning goods to the supplier as defective, which is a double whammy. Even good sellers can take weeks to get back online
- Create fakes sales – companies commission people overseas to make false purchases often sending empty boxes and claim these as legitimate sales and thus improving ranking.
So what can you do?
Todays internet shopper needs to be cannier about reviews and rankings and not trust them at face value. Fake reviews are often easy to spot because the fake reviewers are often lazy and they may be generic in nature, in poor English, unbelievable or very short.