Let's face it, Amazon's review system is broken at the core. I have the perspective of a seller on Amazon and, as such, you simply don't exist without _positive_ reviews. For the story, it all begins when you start with Amazon as a channel. Ads would be an option to kick start a presence but you actually need some traffic (you actually need the "buy box" which is just Amazon's way to legitimate you as a seller) to be able to advertise (this is true at the very start on a given Amazon market). So you, or people you know, place _fake_ orders to get started and if possible add a first review which, naturally, is fake.
Once you have that going, congrats, you are selling on Amazon. From there on it's a uphill battle to gain traction and it all comes down to better position for your products. This is not different from any market really but there are specific hurdles along the way. Amazon tracks the number of "defects" on your product which counts things like A-to-Z claims or... negative reviews (and more stuff I won't bother you with here). If you hit a threshold (1% of claims _or_ negative reviews) you start seeing a nice warning telling you that your account is at risk of deactivation. Additionally, a similar threshold or trend, unsure tbh, will result in a temporary loss of the buy box mentioned earlier (60 day look back window for the above-mentioned threshold). This means that you disappear! (no ads, remember?).
So, you can probably imagine how strong your incentives are to get any positive review juice out there. What is shown in the tweet is actually against Amazon's terms[1] but there are more (and less) subtle ways to get what you need including things mentioned in comments around here and you really don't have that much of a choice if you want to stand out in the noise.
With all that being said, whatever you think of delivery related reviews for instance (especially in covid times which has added a lot of uncertainty to the whole thing), they hurt businesses exactly where it hurts. And that can be extended to negative reviews in general even when these are legitimate warnings for other potential buyers. Imagine now for a second that you rely on low volumes of orders, the number of potential genuine reviews is also low and with the Amazon thresholds you are therefore literally at the mercy of a few bad reviews without a cushion of positive reviews to fall on. So yeah there is a market for fake reviews, duh...
So, you can probably imagine how strong your incentives are to get any positive review juice out there. What is shown in the tweet is actually against Amazon's terms[1] but there are more (and less) subtle ways to get what you need including things mentioned in comments around here and you really don't have that much of a choice if you want to stand out in the noise.
With all that being said, whatever you think of delivery related reviews for instance (especially in covid times which has added a lot of uncertainty to the whole thing), they hurt businesses exactly where it hurts. And that can be extended to negative reviews in general even when these are legitimate warnings for other potential buyers. Imagine now for a second that you rely on low volumes of orders, the number of potential genuine reviews is also low and with the Amazon thresholds you are therefore literally at the mercy of a few bad reviews without a cushion of positive reviews to fall on. So yeah there is a market for fake reviews, duh...
[1] not the best link but there is a screenshot showing the terms in the thread where it says that you can't ask for positive reviews or give something in exchange for it.. https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/new-asking-for-rev...
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