Correction: I was unaware that the brand FunWares reached out to a member of my team located in the United States. That member asked to have the items sent to me, but since I did not have any direct contact with Funwares, neither myself, the UK team, nor my family knew where these had come from. The brand did not just send it out of nowhere. Further, I am not alleging the brand paid for any fake reviews. The miscommunication prompted the investigation into this topic, but I do not believe that FunWares fakes its user reviews or pays for any user reviews. As stated in the video I enjoyed using the product and make no representations or believe that the company has done anything wrong or misleading - that said, it doesn’t change the fact that these types of scams are very prevalent online!

First reply

hello there

Yoooo hi dude

Ok

@ENOOOO

Well I never read the positive reviews anymore on Amazon. I mostly scan the negatives to see if there's any consistent issues. If they are only "shipping got damaged" or something clearly that the manufacturer warned against and the buyer still bought it..."this was too small or big" kind of thing (measure before you order, people)...I'm good to go. Is it me or does anyone else skip over the positives?

yes good strategy

its a great strategy for suspicious listings.

Same, I also skim over the questions section above the reviews for the same thing, seems like you honestly can't trust reviews on any site now!

Yeah. I go over the low and negative ratings, see pictures and go over the Q&A before buying. I rarely go over the positive reviews.

he mentioned in the video fake negative reviews can be bought

Meanwhile, Amazon randomly banned me from reviewing products. I used to enjoy writing a review of things I bought there and detailing the type of things that I find helpful to know when I'm buying something. The experience of being banned for no reason and having to fight with them to unblock me made me stop doing reviews. Just soured me on it. So they allow a lot of fakes and treat their actual customers like crooks.

I got a lot of email from amazon to write reviews, i dont have time for that, its a waste of my time to write it for them, they got to pay me to do that, my time is not free.

Same. They removed a review and banned me for “reviewing the shipping experience” even though I’ve never mentioned shipping in any review before.

same

Same thing happened to me. I contacted them several times asking what I did wrong but the only response I ever got was a canned email accusing me of violating review guidelines. I can't think of a single rule that I ever broke, my reviews were always polite and honest and my small handful of negative reviews were always civil. I think amazon's system is very broken cause I still get emails asking me to review my purchases too. Like gee I'd love to but you nippleheads banned me. I shouldn't get so pissed at something this small but I honestly enjoyed writing reviews and helping other people decide if a product is worth their money. It's just asinine that we get censored while millions of obviously fake reviews stay up. And it pisses me off all the more that it's getting harder and harder to find certain products in stores so I can't even completely stop shopping on amazon.

Yes they rejected a review I wrote for a totally great product! I don't waste my time anymore

The scam I noticed on Amazon was just how many products were raised in price in the past few weeks and then "put on sale" for Amazon Prime Day. I saw quite a few items that had a nice % off, but when I checked their price histories, it was just the normal price for the products. I thought this was illegal...

That practice has been around forever with not just amazon, its especially common on Black Friday, sellers raise the price months before the date then slash it to the original on the sale day

@komaboi19 supermarkets do this all the time,it is illegal but good luck in proving it.

How did you check the price history?

@dsmyify There are browser extensions that provide a price history. Like for instance keepa.

It has made illegal in my country fairly recently, but i dont know about USA

This is why I almost always watch reviews on YouTube, while making sure they aren't sponsored.

Just how do you make sure? 😅

@Global ist Usually when they're sponsored they leave a link with a bunch marketing in the description, along with a nice discount code surprisingly named after them, or if the product was sent to them for free, or if they literally announce the sponsor

​@Global istLegally you have to disclose clearly if you are sponsored

Dudes how innocent are you? Are you 9yo?

@RobCXS tons of people don’t, but I get what you’re saying.

A couple years ago I looked at my reviews and there was two fake reviews that had been made for things iv never looked at let alone bought or reviewed. The scarier thing was they were medical items like a home x-ray machine MRI scan or something else medical can't remember exactly what it was but there were two different items and both were medical. All Amazon did was delete the reviews.

It's disheartening to see the prevalence of scams in the tech world. As enthusiasts and consumers, we should be able to explore and enjoy advancements without the constant worry of falling into a trap. It's high time for a more stringent crackdown on these fraudulent practices. Let's continue to spread awareness and demand accountability. Keep up the great work in shedding light on these issues!

I find it quite funny Arun tells about how surfshark will protect us from data breaches, while his own adress got breached 🤭😂

Exactly my thoughts 😂

Shill maybe?

It might be the sole reason he even took the sponsorship in the first place.

Well maybe he only started using this feature because of this lol😂

I find that shopping on Amazon is actually a lot of work because you have to do all this research not only to find a product you want, but to go through the reviews to see if they seem fake. I do this for most items I buy. Some items that are brands or an item I am already familiar with I don't have to do that much effort. Also when I do reviews I try to be detailed so people reading it will realize this is a real review and not a fake one. It is a shame that so many scams are out there. Heck, the internet is basically a scam. The anonymity of online entity's makes it too easy. I don't think this will ever change much. I hope that Amazon and others can help reduce the problem, but I am not holding my breath. It all comes down the old adage "BUYER BEWARE"

I didn't face this problem too much, probably just look at the price to see if it is decent for the product and see 'Amazon's choice' options.

@Niranjan Pandit Amazon's choice is considered *crap* by some percentage of the pc builders and gamers.

​@Sujeewa RathnaweeraOr locks. Lockpickinglawyer shows how terrible the choices are.

You don't have to do any of this if you stick to the main brands

I just started using AliExpress because everything on Amazon is just drop shipped from there anyway

The timing of this is crazy. I just recently purchased a small telescope off Amazon and when it arrived the box had a little note inside that said something along the lines of "review the product for 5 stars for a chance of 25$ (or 25% off, i don't remember)". I genuinely remember thinking how suspicious that was, even though the product arrived and it seems to work, I can't help but feel suspicious of it.

Something similar Happened to me, the seller offered me £30 to remove a bad review. I did just to see if I could get £30... I didn't get it.

I worked as a graphic designer and copyrighter for an Amazon seller in my young and hungry years. Sooo many scummy tactics, the dude was also probably the worst person out of all my clients troughout the years. Don't worry, not doing that crap anymore, earned enough money and got enough experience to get the job I always wanted to get :)

Same thing happened to me as well

I get those all the time.

I miss being able to look at a product in a store and judging how good a product is by feeling it.

right

Me too. I still buy everything I possibly can in stores, but it's getting harder and harder as stores continually narrow their product selections. You could buy pretty much anything you could think of at Walmart or Target just 10 years ago, now if you need anything beyond basic items from the store's own brand line you have to order it online. Sucks :(

As an AI model, I cannot provide information from personal experience, however, this video is a great review of the "Amazon Review Scandal". It excellently describes the problem and stays entertaining.

😂😂😂

@Samuel As an AI model, I agree with your use of emoji.

@Privacy ValuedAs an AI language model, I must agree with your auto-generated statement.

npc energy

My chat gpt when I try to make friends with it 😂

Best way I found to “verify” reviews is not to read the amazon reviews but to look up the item I’m interested in on YouTube, find a review with a reviewer that specifically shows they have said product in their possession and pay attention to the product release date and when the products actually shipped.

My wife was impacted by something like this and we got some really odd items from it. Like a multicolored shiny flag and a panda hat. After we confirmed none of our accounts were impacted and nobody sent it to us as a gag gift or something, we looked more into it and found it's a common scam practice.

Probably one of the most interesting reviews you made. I was thinking of publishing a book on Amazon and you outlined Amazon functionality by showing how as a user we get scammed

I have been an Amazon Vine Voice for the past year. Amazon actively encourages leaving accurate reviews that express your real opinion. They frequently punish people who are overly positive on all their reviews. Also, Amazon provides a very large list of products that you can select from, but from that list we can pick and choose. Most products are from unheard of brands, but I have found numerous good quality products on there. It is a very good program and I believe it does help to weed out the scams and terrible products.

The fact that Amazon punishes overly positive reviews, doesn't that mean it is controlling your feedback? At the end it should be want that customer thinks. Postive or negatjve

When I say they punish people who are overly positive on their reviews, I don't mean individual reviews. I mean people who only leave 5 star reviews and don't spend time actual trying the products and reviewing them. There are clear indications in the program of who is putting in work and providing good feedback. The real reason behind this isn't exactly to keep leeches off the platform (that's a bit more of a biproduct), but instead to prevent seller manipulation (buying people's reviews). As someone in the program, I can tell you that some manufacturers try and include extra 'gifts' and 'personalized messages' with their products to encourage viners to leave positive reviews. This is thankfully caught pretty easily, and there is a strong baseline understanding in the community that if you do this, you will be caught.

That's why sellers sometimes receive Vine reviews with made up "problems", just so that it won't look perfect. Not much better than having a fake review.

I have just become a vine voice and the first 3 items I ordered 1 was complete junk and of very poor quality and my review reflected that however I saw many 5 star vine reviews for the bad item, one review even said they purchased the item even though there is a tag that says it was a free item ! ?? Or am I just seeing that tag ? I am an honest person and I was really shocked, I guess these people are either dishonest or just fearful of writing bad reviews or using AI ect, I will never do that, I just hope that my honesty will not effect my aim to get to gold tier, with higher valued items, but free stuff is free stuff, and so far even with it being mostly tat available I'm happy with what I'm getting so far.

Well done raising awareness to this. Amazon wont be happy but they need to fix this.

I’ve been delivering for Amazon for 3 years and the amount of people telling me they haven’t ordered the parcel is insane, glad you made this video

I know Arun's address

@Ronaldo x Messi What is it?

Hi🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

@MatiasPalttoquite easy to deduce if you wanted to, but it is DOXXing, which is illegal and falls under the Computer Misuse Act.

I one bought some binicolours and in the producr it said 5 star reviews gives you a free prodouct

Thanks for another great video. Your suggestion of including the price alongside the title of the review is an excellent idea, but I would also like to see the seller’s name there too. There are far to many 3rd party sellers out there, that piggy-back off of legitimate, good quality products with their inferior quality products. Keep up the great work 👍🏻

I was browsing for a wireless mic and found one with over 3,000 reviews. A browse through them showed that the seller was just switching out products and stacking new reviews on top of previous items sold.

I don’t understand why Amazon allows listings to be edited.

​@Hydrated Beans The problem is that there are plenty of legitimate reasons to edit a listing. The price changed, fixing a typo, one color is no longer available, etc. A human can easily tell when it's an entirely different product, but it's surprisingly hard for a machine

@Pwnation98 their are ways to detect substantial changes though. Especially with language models. We can detect algorithmically when the meaning of something changes.

I am in the hospitality industry from past 10+ years. Now imagine this review scandal for the restaurants you order food from. A group of scammers are basically controlling what you eat and people have no idea !

This one was really well made, you got into the intricacies of review manipulation

The way Arun tells us "This could be a sign of data leak" and procedes to let us know about surfshark that he uses for years now is hillarious

looking for this comment lol

May I know why it's hilarious? I'm genuinely curious. Is SurfShark involved in some sort of data leak before?

@Juswa It's hilarious because if Surfshark can protect your data then why do the sellers have data on his address when it's supposed to be protected?

@Nasukesurfshark isn’t incogni. there’s a possibility that before he had surfshark, his info could’ve been sold to data brokers. also, maybe it’s not on all the time. so many factors here bud

@Nasuke its ironic that he uses this as a sponsor selling point, that it will be a safeguard against data leaks, whilst admitting he has received and thus likely to have been in a data leak himself

Appreciate the effort and the amount of research put into this video. Enjoyed this video. Great job buddy!

I once sat down and wrote like 5-10 genuine reviews for Amazon products that I purchased and liked. They all got flagged and rejected by Amazon because my behavior was bot-like I guess? When I followed up with customer service to try to get my reviews published, it didn't go anywhere. So in trying to weed out bad reviews, Amazon also prevented real reviews from being published and basically discouraged me from ever reviewing anything ever again.

I always read Both the positive and the negative reviews before purchasing anything! But yeah, I’ve had the feeling that Amazon is a little bit too shady for awhile now. I really try to not give our corporate overlord anymore money than they already have.. unfortunately, there are just some things that I can’t find anywhere else 😕

I love how he took so much time off the actual topic of the video just to explain to us about fake reviews and haters, this man is the best for real

This is an awesome video! You got super investigative. Also, I can’t lie the best part of this video is your “prime-mate” joke. I actually laughed aloud.

Thanks for this video, I'm a business owner, carpet cleaning, I get email, messages, SMS and even direct telemarketing phone calls by people offering fake reviews multiple times a month. I've never taken up offers but pride myself my reviews are real and I have nothing but 5 star reviews. But I know one off my competitors has paid for positive reviews. It not just Amazon, it a issue everywhere

Even though I'm not a big tech person - you have really amazing content. You seem to put a lot of thought and research to make the most polished, professional videos. Cheers!!

This is really a problem with multiple marketplaces, not just amazon. There was an issue that happened back in 2020 where people were receiving packets of seeds which was determined to be the same issue. It lets the seller get both the fake reviews as well as pads their order history so that their account looks more legitimate.

Online sellers, before customer reviews, were actually afraid that reviews would be negative! Turns out reviews are often a psychological justification for a product — nobodly likes to be wrong, and a negative review of a product means you admit you were wrong. Negative reviews, I‘m sure, are still written to warn others about a product. Hope your kids enjoy the catapult! :D

Arun’s uploading schedules is on point. And each video is a goddamn masterpiece.

You never watched the whole ting

@IlIllIllIIlllIIIIbrotha you posted this exact comment context or not five times on this one video you have one video on your own channel so much for “content” and one subscription you are legit one of the bots Arun was talking about in the video I doubt you watched

Bot

i got £10 amazon gift card for leaving 5 star review, i mean can you blame me lol?

Is this paid comment??

Thanks for the update brother, I see the fake reviews and leave things I want on hold and see more upcoming reviews and see if close friends and family have the product for me to test out and go from there. I have had companies message me and ask me to change my review for gift cards or another product. Gotta be careful everyone! I love the idea of item purchase date and price on the review!!!

Something that might help would be for Amazon to shut down the marketplace for 3rd party sellers and curate all the products themselves. It wouldn't fully prevent review buying, but if only Amazon themselves control the listings (descriptions, prices etc) then that eliminates at least some of the strategies and closes some of loopholes the 3rd party sellers employ. It might also make it easier for them to notice and keep track of suspicious purchase activity if all products are stocked and fulfilled at Amazon warehouses as it would give them full control over how much they stock and such.

That was great video and will definitely help raise awareness among consumers. I myself learnt quite a lot. Thanks!

I work for a large german retailer and my team is responsible for the reviews on our webstores. It's brutal. Even without merchants that are incentivized to mess with it we still get a certain level of fake reviews that our partner takes care of. It's a sysiphean task and even with actual verified purchases that we ourselves handle from start to finish I wouldn't guarantee that no one can get past us.

No matter the topic, Arun always entertains us in a next level way, keep going Arun!

i got £10 amazon gift card for leaving 5 star review, i mean can you blame me lol?

Is this paid comment?

@Myrchamster where do I sign up?

@Myrchamster only 10 bro... I got a 30 dollar giftcard from Bluetooth earphones

@Myrchamster Yes, I can.

Thanks for this video, People really need to be aware of how easy they can be manipulated.

I ordered something off of Amazon once and it came with a card telling me that if I left a 5 star review and showed proof, I would be given an Amazon gift card or whatever it was. While I did leave a 5 star review because the product worked well for what I needed, I couldn't bring myself to morally ask for the money.

I used to review products for sellers on Amazon in exchange for their products. I always insisted on being honest - if I didn't like the product I would send them an email offering not to write the review at all. The amount of times they would respond insisting I write a 5 star review and threatening me was frightening.

great video...i love how he built the story around the unsolicited products circling back to the beginning of the video,and then seamlessly transitioning to promote the sponsor.

Wow. What a rewarding rabbit hole. Amazing video mate, I've been following you for years, and this was absolutely conclusive detective work. Really well done!

Thanks for explaining this. I’m an Amazon seller, honestly doing my business with everything above board. A few weeks ago I had a customer email me that someone sent them my product for free and they didn’t know who. I was perplexed and said it must have been a gift. Other people told me there was a scam involved, I just didn’t understand what it was. Amazon does try hard to mitigate these black hat tactics and genuine sellers like myself are afraid to step any toes outside the lines because we don’t want to risk our accounts. However there are millions of Chinese sellers and others who use all these crazy tactics. It does make it hard to sell against them. Still I would not resort to doing these things. I really hope that Amazon does come up with more ways to fight these issues while not penalising genuine sellers like myself.

Why can’t they have a unique QR code for each package and it only activates when the shipment is delivered. After the customer scans the QR code, they are able to review the product. I feel like this could be a good solution.

Hi

​@Max Proshit bro that's a sick idea

Yeah I learned this hard lesson a few years ago when I decided to splurge on an office chair. And we know Amazon knows about this but they don't care because these bought reviews make people spend more on their website and ultimately that's all that matters to them.

Something else that wasn’t mentioned about Fakespot is that its AI registers all Vine Voice reviews as unreliable. If a listing has too many of them compared to normal reviews, it automatically gives the listing an F.

There was an app that showed you all the suspect reviews but it got shut down, funny that. It was very eye opening too. So many change the product on a good item and then change the listing to a new poor product. It also roughly said 60% were suspect and that was a few years ago. Such a shame the app got shut down? Probably by Amazon. Annnnd you have just now explained all that now haha. I was onto this years ago.

That's why I always read the 4-star and 3-star reviews cuz those are the honest ones. Also, Amazon can detect when products get an unusual amount of positive reviews and they ban those products

Yup! I unfortunately did this. I was short on cash and ran into someone doing it. It was an easy way to make money but eventually Amazon caught on to what I was doing. (I can no longer post reviews)

Amazon has a bit of the blame tho. Almost every negative review I have left on any product has been rejected and needed to be rewritten to be "more product related" but as soon as I swapped bad remarks for good, it gets approved with no issues from Amazon, just like any other positive review I have left.

But still amazon is much better than rival ecommerce companies like flipkart, walmart etc I have been conned by Flipkart.. by their fake 'Supercoin' thing. At least amazon does not resort to these things !

Hi

Amazon doesn't like bad reviews because it means less sales and therefore less profits

The thing with reviews is as a company, you do want people to only sell good products... And in order to do that negative feedback is great! But what you don't want is people just complaining and venting... I write amazon reviews all the time, so much so I've been invited for Vine, and quite of number of them have been negative reviews, below two stars. I've had a number of reviews rejected (and banned from reviewing on the product) but the negative reviews that weren't rejected were all those where I tried to seem level headed, provide both the negatives and positives (if any) and provide any solutions I can think of.

@Pixels bro all major ecommerce companies block negative reviews.. as you said it impacts sales But more than that it creates a negative impression (of the vendors and ecommerce platform) which all want to avoid. Btw nowadays as you can buy likes , friends, subscribers on FB and insta so can you buy positive reviews !!

That is why the Amazon Influencer Program is such a great program because it is actual reviews with the product in hand, usually demonstrating and describing the product. It is nice to actually see the product in real life, in use, and people's opinions on the product. Highly recommend watching those videos before making purchases and reading the reviews. I am happy Amazon is providing this opportunity :)

I don't think I have ever used this word in a comment, but this is MINDBLOWING, never been so shocked by a shady marketing strategy. Great video Boss!

Damn! This really makes me think about the validity of people who are in drop shipping and e-commerce. I mean sure, some products may live up to their rating, but at the cost of integrity to the customer... Really makes it come across as dishonest

If this happened to me, and I didn't have to pay for shipping or anything, I would be selling them for like 25% of their price at regular garage sales.

"Wow, your tech reviews and tutorials are always top-notch! I can't tell you how much I've learned and benefited from your channel. Your passion for technology really shines through in every video, and your clear explanations make even the most complex topics easy to understand. Keep up the fantastic work, and thank you for being my go-to source for all things tech-related! You've definitely earned a loyal subscriber here!"

Was this written by an AI? lol

@Nicole B Yes... 😅

I have always had a feeling about Amazon.. something just didn't feel right to be honest. 😂 Amazon is kind of shady

😂

Lol true 🤣

Ayoo congrats Arun hearted your comment

Thanks for the information. Most of this i think many of us knew but its nice to have it all explained and there were many things I personally wasn't fully aware of.

I was buying pet clippers and noticed that reviews are for a much reliable brand, but the picture and description on the listing is about completely other brand. So i got a hint, but you did this so in depth, as always, I'm impressed once again 😊 Great work! Not that you need me to tell you 😁

I'm a Vine Reviewer. It felt like a scam when I first got the invite from Amazon tbh. It's kinda crazy and I leave absolutely true reviews. I always read reviews when shopping so don't want anyone wasting money on crap.

A couple years ago I would often get a small business card. It basically said “if you leave a 5 star review, we will send you a $20 amazon gift card” It worked! So a lot of fake reviews written, screen shot of review send to the business card email and then you gift a card. Amazon cracked down on this.

Great explanation! I've heard of fake reviews before, so I understood better with your video. Be safe on the internet, everyone!

This happened to me. Exactly this. The item was a low quality digital TV antenna. I spent weeks on the phone with Amazon trying to get to the bottom of it, and most of the reps I spoke seemed to assume I was the scammer.

i ORDERED AN EARTH GROUND ROD AND RECEIVED 12KG OF VEGAN DOG FOOD( i WAS TOLD TO DONATE IT ) gawd know what happened there

@lipsee100 wtf is vegan dog food xD

I got a 200 dollar drone

@Fahad something you shouldn’t feed your dog.

@Fahad the stuff the poor vegan teacher's dog eats 💀

This is one of the MOST Detailed Yet Simplest explanations of the HUGE Scandal of Fake or Bought Reviews. Amazing Research, which must have led into SO MANY Rabbit holes.

Very informative. I heard of some of this, but it's crazy to know you can have your own racket just selling reviews.

My father and I kept receiving different cheap items from amazon a few years ago that we never ordered. Most of the time it was cheap cables but one time it was an echo dot. I wondered what that was about. Now, I know.

Your the best tech YouTuber! I love your personality and dedication to your work!

Man! You do a lot of research. Thank you. It's a crazy world out there and it's only going to get more crazy. Thanx for the work you do.

In Germany I've heard about a similar case years ago. Some guy received endless amounts of deliveries he never ordered from Chinese companies because sending stuff they can't sell to random adresses is cheaper than paying Amazon the storage fees or even the disposal.

lmao 🤣

big gay

I will gladly volunteer my address to receive free stuff

​@Mr.E and hope you don't get someone's kidney 😅

this happened to my family we kept getting free cake products

The best tech guy. Along with reviews he also makes people aware about tech scams while keeping the videos fun to watch. No other tech channel can compare to this guy

Your name says it all

I just sort Amazon reviews by "date added". I think that sellers will usually "buy" positive reviews when the product is new to Amazon, to get them started, so most of the first reviews are likely to be fake. However, they are less likely to keep paying reviewers to add more and more positive reviews for months/years, so the newer reviews are more likely to be real. Indeed items that have crazy high overall scores, tend to have quite a few negative reviews when you just look at the most recent ones.

Great video ! And yes.. there's just too much fake reviews, even fake comments (hello Twitter) and it's just that easy to believe whatever we read if we don't take the time to check if the account from which the comment comes from is fake or not

I’ve had Amazon products sent to me that I haven’t ordered, I assumed it was just some sort of glitch in the matrix… I even said to my partner, it’s a shame it’s not something expensive 😂 but this is now quite worrying as you can’t just change your name and address like you can an email or mobile number!!

If this happens to me I hope I don’t get anime body pillows or anything that can frame me up as a menace to society.

I think it's great that Arun and other big tech reviewers are out here teaching people about the dangerous and sleazy things going on in these online marketplaces. It's really important things for consumers to know, and many less tech savvy people don't think about things like this. So Arun, thank you for watching out for us!

What are the odds those toy weapons were actually paid reviews.......

Hi

Those reviews you briefly showed and found nothing wrong with were almost identical, they were all centered around competition but worded differently, repetition helps solidify something, whether bogus or fact. I was initially looking for the words "Miracle" and Gamechanger" as those two alone are massive fake review red flags.

I find it very hard to believe what Nature’s Bounty did, because they've always been a straight-up company in the past. I'm not saying that their lying. It is always possible that a sales department could get one or two bad apples doing something sneaky. I just found this absolutely shocking. Well at least they still have great products!

I actually met a guy who does fake reviews for Amazon when I was on holiday. He was ashamed to be doing it and wanted to find another job

Thank you for this, as much as I shop on Amazon, this information is important and good to know! Such a waste sending all this stuff in mail to people that don't even know what they're receiving and and why it's on their doorstep. It just seems like such a shame!

This is a very interesting video. As an author I am always wondering why some books have literally tens of thousands of reviews.

We NEED more of this from you. You are big enough to make people aware of these scams. Keep up the good work!

the guy who sent you the lawn toys is a genius. You reviewed them and made a positive remark on them. So probably some of your subscribers are gonna buy them

Top Tier Video. One thing though... the part about the fake review spotters. It sounded like they weren't great but you seemed to dismiss them partly due to THEIR reviews... which made me wonder if those sites have been fake review bombed by the fake reviewers themselves 😂

Earlier this year I stopped writing reviews. I use to write complete detailed and honest reviews all the time. I have been an Amazon customer back when all they sold was books, so that amounted to quite a lot of reviews. I am a private consumer; I have never received free products for reviews or paid for my reviews or has any incentive to rate one way or another. Amazon began to remove my reviews claiming that they "violated" their terms. They sent a link to their terms with the emails. I read in full already knowing that I never violated any of their terms and as I already knew I DIDN'T. They not only removed reviews that were less than a month old they removed reviews that were over a decade old. Even reviews that have received over 50 helpful votes. I gave reviews to help other consumers in making an educated purchase by detailing my personal experience with that product. As I said, because Amazon started removing my reviews in groves I not only stopped making reviews I went back and manually removed every review I ever made. Amazon DOES NOT care about sellers buying, faking, scamming reviews. It became quite apparent to me that they themselves control the direction of sales by removing negative or positive reviews. Amazon itself is a great place to get what you want or need but if you call regarding review/comment/rating issues they forward it to a separate entity of Amazon that administers it. I have read reviews that were either racist/fowl/sexist/political and they still exists? They didn't violate their terms? They still exists while proper reviews are removed because the Amazon dweebs that manipulate the ratings allow it.

You know they can also change the return/replacement policy after you purchase something right? This happened with me when I was buying an item with 0 reviews. It showed that the item had refund policy of 10 day return. But, I was lucky that I checked it again right before it was shipped, because I realised they changed the policy to non-refundable with only replacements allowed within 12 hours of my purchase! I immediately cancelled my order and got my refund back! That's why I always take a screenshot of the listing page (with their return policy etc visible) right before I purchase anything on amazon.

I can't believe that I'm not allowed to post a review for an audio book I finished because I haven't spent $50 on Amazon in the month... How messed up is that?!

This very thing happened to me a couple months back when I received an unexpected Amazon delivery which contained (wait for it....) three bottles of premium lube (for sexy type business not the type for cars and rusty hinges). Of all the things I couldve received, three big bottles of premium sexy lube? Well, at least they still had the safety seal on them. Could've been worse. Could've been sticky and furry. 😅

this hits home for me. I've been an Amazon Prime member since 2014 and I have 100s of reviews of products, good reviews and bad reviews. One day out of the blue Amazon decided they didn't want me reviewing purchased products anymore and they banned me from reviewing products, saying it appears that I was compensated for a review, which is not allowed on Amazon (this just happened to happen after I left a 1-star review of a product). I contacted Amazon customer service and they were absolutely no help, they wouldn't even tell me what review i had supposedly been compensated for. I must have chatted with 5 or 6 different Amazon reps and all of them refused to give me any information and told me they would not restore my ability to review products. To this day I still can't review anything, and even worse I'm not even allowed to ask a question about a product. Not being able to review a product, especially if it sucks or is defective is frustrating, but not being able to ask a question about the product in downright infuriating. Because of Amazon's asinine mistake and policy, I now end up returning about half of my purchases because of not being able to ask about details or features of the items.

This is also an issue that definitely needs addressing. I'm surprised Arun didn't talk about it in this video. This for sure isn't the first I'm hearing about this.

Just open a new account mate.

@Lars Lprinciple though tbh

@Lars L I can't because if I use the same shipping address or payment method as my current account then I think my new account would also be flagged. But I'll give it a try and see what happens, I do have another email address I could use.

​@NonLegit Nation 2 you would need to change the name and credit card number too

This has been happening for so long. All the Soundpeats headphone reviews on amazon are paid reviews, they arrange people to buy product, make them write reviews. If the reviews are approved, they refund the customer. The reviews are well balanced to keep it convincing.

Allowing the listing with more than one product it's absolutely bonkers, and it's all on amazon. Most stuff I browse are listed like that. These days, I mostly buy stuff directly to trusted brands website or physical shops (amazon is actually way overpriced in many things) or used or cheap crap (that I'm ok in being crap) on ebay.

I once gave a 2 star review on a product on Amazon that I thought deserved the 2 stars and the company emailed me and told me if I took down the bad review and replaced it with a 5 star one they would send me a $50 gift card to Amazon… I was shocked!

THAT IS SUS

It is not only Amazon, Google, Facebook too. If you see a business with a ton of positive reviews it is probably payed or forced by the owner through his employers and their family and friends. Some even offer discounts just to leave a positive review. Run away from businesses like this. The goal is to get on top of listings, search engines, business listings website and etc., to fool as many new customers as they can to make a sale.

11:54 -- This might be why when I went to Amazon last year (trying to buy several additional USB charger plug bricks that I really liked) the specific item I wanted was no longer on that page. It's not that the page no longer existed, it's just that the page no longer had that item at all, but instead had a few unrelated electronics from the same seller. I even clicked on the item from my purchase history to make sure I would be getting the exact same thing. At the time I was just disappointed that they no longer had that specific item, and assumed it was no longer in production. But now I'm wondering if it was one of the fraudulent moves you described here, where they were farming for good reviews, and then later pretended those reviews were about a more expensive item.

I actually used to be part of a facebook group that gave the merch away for free for positive reviews. I collected the data and contacted Amazon. They hung up on me and didnt care.

Just remember how many of you give a review of any product until you don't see any problem in it. Always look for bad reviews 🤗 as no one have time to write a positive one and if u see it, it's probably a fake one. We only complain about something we don't like and through review we show our anger while if the product is nice we usually don't care😝

I'm glad you made a video that basically states the obvious.

I was offered £30 to give a 5 star review for something that I had bought for £19. I wasn't happy with the product but Amazon would not allow me to say that I had been offered money in the 2 star review I gave.

I got literally paid to leave positive reviews for a very trustworthy brand on amazon. I just needed to buy the product, then leave a nice review. They then reimbursed me the cost of the item + shipping costs (even if i didn't pay for it) + 12 USD as commission for the review lol

This is why I switched to Walmart for most of my purchases. It has competitive pricing with Amazon for most part and are less likely to be knock-offs.

I can only imagine the amount of hard work and time that goes into the making of such videos. Your recent videos spreading awareness have been really good and informative. You're doing a really fantastic job, buddy. Thanks a lot!

I use Amazon a lot and the biggest thing I noticed in the reviews, is my adding keywords into the description, the seller can merge reviews. I bought a usb-c cable, and the reviews were very good, but as I was scrolling through and reading the reviews, some of the reviews started talking about,”how soft and smooth the item was, and “it’s a convenient size for the car”. Turns out half the reviews were for a box of tissues.

As someone who works within the Seller Partner Support department, I am smacking my forehead through the entire video. The number of complaints we received about Customer feedbacks and other sellers complaining about fraudulent infringement on their listings, all make sense now.