Amazon takes fake review suppliers to court

The operators of a website that sells four and five star reviews for Amazon products is being taken to court by the online retail giant.

GeekWire reports that Amazon has accused Jay Gentile of selling fake ‘verified reviews’ to suppliers and even supplying advice on how they can trick Amazon into thinking they have sent out products to legitimate customers.

While small in number, these reviews threaten to undermine the trust that customers, and the vast majority of sellers and manufacturers, place in Amazon, thereby tarnishing Amazon’s brand,” the lawsuit says.

Defendants are misleading Amazon’s customers and tarnishing Amazon’s brand for their own profit and the profit of a handful of dishonest sellers and manufacturers. Amazon is bringing this action to protect its customers from this misconduct, by stopping Defendants and disrupting the marketplace in which they participate.”

In a follow-up piece an operator of buyamazonreviews.com, which is another website implication by the lawsuit, defended the structure of his business, claiming that the reviews came from legitimate sources.

We do not post all five star review on all products. We ask sellers to ship their products in order to get reviews. We just help new or old sellers to get reviews,” the site owner argued.

We inform them upfront that they have to provide some percentage price off promotional codes so that our people can buy your product at discounted rates and test their product and do reviews. They will only post honest reviews so those can be one star, two star or three star as well. But mostly and if they face any problem with their product they will inform us or to the seller about their product problems. So that way they can sell best quality products.”

All of which is in direct contradiction with the site’s own FAQs, however, which prior to the publication of the report told users: You can either provide your own reviews or we can write them for you. We have in house writers who are skilled at writing custom reviews based on your specifications.”

The text has now been amended to say that pre-written reviews will not be accepted.