Amazon bans 600 Chinese brands: Report

Amazon recently surprised several Chinese sellers on its e-commerce platform when it banned as many as 600 brands. The Amazon ban was slapped on these Chinese companies after it was found that they had violated the policies of the retail giant related to review abuse. Amazon had banned all forms of review abuse way back in 2016. Amazon ban will impact globally popular brands like RAVPower, Mpow, Aukey and others.

With permanent bans on 600 Chinese brands across 3,000 seller accounts, Amazon is cracking down on firms that were misusing the e-commerce platform’s review mechanism, according to a report by The Verge. The e-commerce giant reportedly revealed that the process of banning these Chinese brands has been completed after a five-month global crackdown on brands that were ‘gaming’ the system created by Amazon for user reviews.

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According to the report, the Amazon ban was applied against brands that had “knowingly, repeatedly and significantly” violated the company’s policies. The issue with these “incentivised” reviews was first spotted by the Wall Street Journal back in June, and reported that electronics brand RAVPower was offering a $35 gift card to users who reviewed the product. The report names brands like Mpow, Aukey, RavPower, Vava and more, that are popular not just in China but around the world as well.

Detecting these brands attempting to skirt Amazon’s rules is likely to have been a challenging affair especially as some of the offers made to buyers were hidden as an extended warranty program or as a “VIP testing program”, according to the report, while other brands only contacted users who wrote negative reviews, offering a “refund” on the product if they deleted the review – with no need to return the original product that was negatively reviewed.

“Amazon works hard to build a great experience in our store so that customers can shop with confidence and sellers have the opportunity to grow their business amid healthy competition. Customers rely on the accuracy and authenticity of product reviews to make informed purchasing decisions and we have clear policies for both reviewers and selling partners that prohibit abuse of our community features. We suspend, ban, and take legal action against those who violate these policies, wherever they are in the world,” the company said in a statement to The Verge.