Amazon investigating claims staff were BRIBED to delete negative reviews and share customer data
-
Loading... - Anja Lovec
- 17 Sep 2021
- 1040 Views
- 0 Like
- 0 Comment
Amazon is investigating reports that third-party retailers bribed staff to delete negative comments, restore banned accounts and access secret sales data.
According to a Wall Street Journal report employees were tracked down through social media sites. In China, where this behaviour is apparently more common, this was done through WeChat.
Employees were apparently approached by brokers who offered them various sums of money to delete negative reviews or provide customer email addresses.
Cash offered ranged from $80 to $2000 according to the WSJ. For taking down five bad reviews staff were offered $300.
Staff were also asked to provide information that would give one seller an advantage over the other.
With Amazon Marketplace being a competitive selling environment with many sellers fighting for customers the score given to a product can be crucial.
Sellers often contact buyers through the site to ask for a review, or for problems to be raised directly before customers leave the all-important star rating.
A lower rating will drag down the average, and where sellers offer similar products to each other this can have an impact on their profits.
However Matt West, Chief Revenue Officer at online review platform Feefo described deleting negative feedback as "counter-intuitive".
"Not only does it falsely distort the image of the product or services a company like Amazon is selling, but it also causes doubt in the consumers mind that the reviews are even real in the first place, a wholly positive picture is too good to be true".
Depending on the type of information leaked, Amazon might find itself in breach of GDPR law. Fines for breaking GDPR can be 4 per cent of a company's global turnover.
An Amazon spokesperson told Mirror Online: "We have strict policies and a Code of Business Conduct & Ethics in place for our employees. We implement sophisticated systems to restrict and audit access to information."
"We hold our employees to a high ethical standard and anyone in violation of our code faces discipline, including termination and potential legal and criminal penalties."
"In addition, we have zero tolerance for abuse of our systems and if we find bad actors who have engaged in this behavior, we will take swift action against them, including terminating their selling accounts, deleting reviews, withholding funds, and taking legal action. We are conducting a thorough investigation of these claims. "
