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>For just $5, Seller Mafia will “brush” an account, which is when a product page is stripped of all information except its reviews and listed with a new product
by cc439 7y ago
>For just $5, Seller Mafia will “brush” an account, which is when a product page is stripped of all information except its reviews and listed with a new product, which is against Amazon’s marketplace rules. This allows a seller to inherit a positive star rating and high ranking for a product without ever selling anything. So a shopper may see a four-star product like a jade roller, but the listing has had previous lives as a garage opener and a step stool to earn that average four-star rating.
Ah, that explains several incidents where I rebought a previously purchased item by searching through the listings in my order history, only to receive a completely different product (I once received lace underwear when rebuying a specific shampoo for example).
- mgillett54 7y agoWow this is really sleazy. This seems like something that Amazon could solve by having humans in the loop, but they probably have too much inventory.
- nrb 7y agoThis seems like something Amazon could trivially solve with software. Product name, description, and listing categories all provide obvious context about what is being sold, they could easily analyze these changes and detect abuses such as this. I'm surprised they don't automatically scrub the rating and reviews (why not just automatically generate a new listing and list the old one as unavailable?) for such consequential changes to a product listing.