Amazon has stopped RAVPower, Taotronics and Vava from selling electronics accessories, such as chargers and power banks, on its platform over fake review concerns. The ecommerce colossus has been grappling with the menace of sham reviews, both fake and incentivized, for some time now. Just last year, the company claimed to have blocked around 200 million fake reviews before they became visible to shoppers, as well as having helped social media companies take down over one thousand online groups engaged in posting hoax reviews via a mix of human analysis and advanced machine learning techniques.
Amazon clearly mentions that if a seller tries to offer buyers an incentive, such as gift cards or explicitly requests them to submit a positive product review, appropriate disciplinary action will be taken. These actions can include anything from removing all products from a particular brand’s portfolio and withdrawal of seller privileges to a permanent delisting from the shopping platform and even legal action against the seller. Earlier this month, Amazon suspended Aukey and Mpow, allegedly for engaging in questionable behavior for soliciting positive reviews from customers in exchange for rewards. It is worth noting here that Amazon has been accused of stifling competition from third-party sellers to promote products from its in-house brands in the past.
Amazon has now delisted RAVPower, Taotronics, and Vava — all three of which are owned by the same Chinese company, Guangdong SACA Precision Manufacturing. Amazon confirmed to The Verge that it is also investigating other brands owned by the company for suspicious behavior. The latest crackdown on fake reviews by Amazon is a big move, as RAVPower is a well-known brand that sells a wide range of accessories, including phone and laptop charging bricks, power banks, USB hubs, car phone holders, and batteries to name a few.
Gifts In Exchange For Good Reviews
The suspension of RAVPower and its sibling brands comes after a Wall Street Journal investigation found the company offering a $35 gift card in exchange for a review of its charging brick. Of course, doing so violates Amazon’s code of conduct for sellers who want to hawk their products on its massive platform. Donny Dong, VP of Sales at Sunvalley Group which handles the three aforementioned brands in the US, argues that the company doesn’t solicit five-star ratings from buyers in exchange for monetary rewards, according to the WSJ. For reference, the disciplinary action has nothing to do with sub-par product quality, something Amazon's in-house AmazonBasics brand has been accused of in the past.
In an official statement, the China-based owner of RAVPower and the other affected companies revealed that it is halting the sale of products under the brands via Amazon, but will continue selling these products via their respective websites and offline outlets. The company didn’t mention the hit it would take after its Amazon exit, but per a New York Times profile back in 2017, Sunvalley expected to clock roughly $270 million in revenue from Amazon sales alone.
Amazon recently published a blog post documenting the steps it takes to curb fake reviews on its platform. Amazon admits that its methods are not perfect, but it continues to ‘devote significant resources’ to ensure that it can block biased or incentivized reviews from appearing on its online store. The company adds that organized operations on social media for generating fake reviews en masse have been growing. However, it is actively working with these platforms to negate their impact. On a related note, the company is also trying to tackle the issue of fake Amazon employee Twitter accounts stirring up trouble.