The competition on the Amazon platform is fierce, and it is very difficult to promote a product. It must have invested a lot of time and money in the early stage, but before the seller can enjoy the joy, it will be maliciously attacked by some competitors, resulting in a sharp drop in product ranking and sales. When the listing may be locked, Amazon sellers cry, although they have escaped Amazon's detection, avoided buyer complaints, and can't escape the opponent's spoof…

Next, we will take stock of some malicious competition methods that Amazon sellers hate and grit their teeth . Sellers can stay vigilant and take precautions.

1. Buy short inventory during critical periods

A seller told that during the peak season last year, a buyer sold out the stock of a certain product in his store. He was thrilled to receive such a large order, even though he knew at the time that he would not be able to restock in time. But what happened next made him realize the seriousness of the problem – a seller grabbed the buy box because he was out of stock, and a month later, the buyer's order was all returned!

At that time, he was completely unaware that the buyer who sold out his inventory might be his competitor! As a result, his product not only missed the peak season sales, but also did not make a penny due to returns!

Although we can't be sure that the buyer must be spoofing his competitors, Amazon does have a lot of malicious competition methods such as short-selling inventory! First, they will sell out your inventory in order to steal the buy box, and then they will be on the same Amazon. listing or other platforms to sell your same product, and finally return the excess inventory.

There are also automated software on the market today that will buy your inventory in bulk and return it in bulk. This practice can cause you to run out of stock quickly, thereby ruining your listing.

Therefore, sellers should be vigilant about such sudden large orders. If all the large orders are returned in the later period, they can complain about such returns.

2. Tampering with listings

Some malicious competitors will buy VC accounts with high listing editing rights to maliciously modify the product page information of competing products, such as title and description, change the listing to adult products, change product pictures, etc. This wave of spoofs leads to sellers not selling the right products. , Being complained by buyers, the product cannot be searched at the front desk, which will eventually lead to the loss of product sales, the plummeting ranking, and it is very likely that the product will be taken off the shelf and the account will be blocked!

Sellers who haven't registered a brand need to be especially careful about other sellers tampering with your listing. If you encounter this kind of spoof, the seller can immediately contact customer service to explain the reason and get the editing right back. But the best way is to register the brand. Many new sellers will skip this step at first, but through brand registration, you can get a higher listing editor weight.

In addition, sellers need to frequently check account health to ensure that there are no abnormal violations.

3. Malicious bad reviews

If the product sells well in the early stage and has few bad reviews, and suddenly there are many bad reviews every three weeks and five times, it is very likely that competitors have written them up. If you encounter such malicious bad reviews, you can click on the buyer's account to see the latest Whether his review refers directly to similar products, and if there are multiple reviews, the seller can use the "report abuse" button to submit it to Amazon's "Product Review Abuse" team.

If there is no evidence that a competitor is doing it, sellers can squeeze out negative reviews by adding positive reviews so they don’t show up on the homepage.

4, brush praise

Amazon has been cracking down on 5-star reviews and has built algorithms to detect unusual spikes in reviews. If your listing suddenly gets 100 5-star reviews, Amazon will detect the anomaly and suspend your account immediately. There are shoddy sellers who have seized on this, deliberately leaving a lot of positive reviews on competing listings and making the positive reviews as fake as possible.

In this way, your product may be judged by the buyer as a review and lose the order, and your account is likely to be suspended by Amazon as a manipulative review.

5. Malicious complaints

Amazon takes infringement issues very seriously. If a competitor maliciously complains about your product infringement, or sells fake products, Amazon will usually take immediate action to freeze your listing. For different complaints, sellers can take the following measures:

① If you are accused of infringement, you should first contact the brand owner and tell him the reason, and ask him to help contact Amazon, stating that the seller is the legal copyright owner. At this time, Amazon should restore your ASIN.

② The first step is to submit a plan of action (POA) outlining how to improve it. In addition, provide an up-to-date purchase invoice indicating that the product is indeed from an authorized distributor.

6. Crack down on account indicators

Amazon sellers usually need to maintain certain metrics on their accounts, such as order defect rate, negative feedback, return rate, customer response time, etc., in order to maintain good performance in the eyes of Amazon. If your product has too many returns or bad feedback in a short period of time, your product or account is at risk of being frozen.

And malicious sellers will buy your products multiple times, and then return and leave bad reviews at one time. Multiple returns and bad reviews in such a short period of time can have a catastrophic impact on your account metrics.

If you suspect that your account metrics have been hacked, you can report it to Amazon. You have 90 days to dispute bad reviews, and if they are deleted within that time, nothing bad will happen to your account.

7. Embezzling the registered trademark of Amazon's store name

Most sellers on Amazon will trademark their brands so that they can register for Brand Registry. But many sellers are too lazy to trademark their Amazon seller account.

For example, your Amazon store is called Playtoy. In the Playtoy store, you may sell a certain brand. Most people will register the trademark of the certain brand and complete the brand registration, but will not register the trademark for Playtoy, and some malicious sellers will Will take someone else's Amazon account name to register, and then completely take over their account. This practice is uncommon, but sellers still have to be wary.

8. Abusing inactive listings

Because inactive listings are often not monitored, malicious sellers often hijack and abuse these listings without the seller's knowledge. My colleague had a competitor who converted one of his product listings into a sex toy. Therefore, you should close all inactive product listings in your account that you do not plan to continue selling.

Summarize

Competition itself is commonplace. If your competitors are better than you, you should learn from others why they are better, and make progress together with fair competition. However, there are always some sellers who are fascinated by their interests and resort to all kinds of tricks in order to defeat their opponents, and the people who lie in the gun are all Buddhist and regular sellers. Sellers should develop together when they are Amazon. Only competition can promote operating technology and products. The improvement of quality, malicious attacks will only hurt each other, and the gains outweigh the losses.