This post is by Mike Young, an online seller on Amazon and eBay based in London, England.
Everyone knows that competition on Amazon is fierce. But I didn’t realize just how fierce until my business lost 50% of its sales in one month, thanks to the black hat tactics of an “online marketing expert” hired by a competitor.
What started with a false claim of trademark infringement turned into policy warnings, a stream of fake negative reviews, and my suspension from selling on Amazon.
In this post, I’ll explain how my business was targeted, what tactics were used, and how I worked out who was behind the attacks.
My business
I started selling on marketplaces back in 2014 because my wife wanted to start an online business. We began with eBay, but after a few months we decided to move onto Amazon because it was easier and cheaper to fulfill goods using FBA, than it was doing our own fulfillment on eBay.
We are a family business and sell a range of products, such as branded toys, electronic accessories and seasonal items, as well as our own private label sports goods. At our peak we reached six digits of turnover and were planning to expand internationally in 2018. That was until our Amazon seller account was targeted by an “online marketing” agency, determined to bring my business down.
First trademark infringement claim
The attacks started on 31st October, when we were notified by Amazon that another seller had submitted a claim to them, saying one of the products we were selling infringed their trademark. When I went to look at the listing, I noticed that it was incorrect, as the brand name was set as the seller’s own business name instead of the manufacturer.
Initially, I thought that the company had simply made a mistake, and so I emailed them, asking them to withdraw the claim. After getting no response, I decided to call them but, again, I was met with silence.
At this point, I simply wasn’t getting anywhere, so I decided to escalate the case to the managing director’s office at Amazon UK. Soon after, Seller Performance contacted me to say that my listing had been reinstated and I could now sell the product again.
This wasn’t the end of the matter though, as despite being reinstated, Amazon couldn’t remove the black mark on my metrics, because the infringement claim itself hadn’t been withdrawn.
Naturally, this concerned me because I knew it was going to have a negative effect on my performance metrics, and could affect my sales. So, I made another attempt to get in touch with the company who had made the claim and also sent a counter-notice to them through my lawyer, to try and get them to withdraw it.
Overall, I thought this was all just a genuine mistake.
Policy warnings
Two weeks later, on 14th November, we were notified by Amazon about supposedly breaching another trademark. This was a different product, with three variations, and we received policy warnings for counterfeit or trademark infringements against each one of them.
The really strange thing about these claims, was that they were made by a company that exclusively sells home and kitchen products. Let’s call them Acme Kitchen Products. Yet, the product in question was a small, spiky, rubber ball that flashes when you bounce it.
It was a generic, unbranded product, but the Amazon listings did show Acme Kitchen Products as the manufacturer. That was strange. I did some investigating and I couldn’t find the item in Acme’s product range or any evidence that it was trademarked by them.
Now, every time that I get a policy warning I go and fight it. Other sellers might think it’s not worth the trouble, but if something’s not correct, then I think it needs to be put right. When I tried to make contact with the claimant though, I realized that although the notice was submitted on Acme’s behalf, it was actually made by an agent who was acting for them.
I followed procedure, and made contact with both the agency and the company, explaining that if the claim wasn’t withdrawn, we’d be sending a counter-notice. Acme basically told me they had no idea what I was talking about and that it had nothing to do with them.
They continued on this line, even after I sent counter-notices, so once again I was forced to escalate matters to the managing director’s office at Amazon UK. I then heard from a director of Acme, who apologized and explained that they were in Brand Registry and made the claim in error.
Was it really in error? I don’t believe it was. I thought the first notice I received was an honest mistake, but this looked like a deliberate attempt to damage my Amazon account, and I was getting concerned.
Listing manipulation
After some investigation, I found many other listings on Amazon where the same company – Acme Kitchen Products – had put their name as the manufacturer. These were also completely unrelated products that Acme didn’t make or sell. For example, they were listed (incorrectly) as the manufacturer for the best selling products in five different toy categories.
Around this time, I was also looking into the agent that Acme had used to submit the intellectual property infringement claims. I found that they were not a firm of lawyers, as you might expect, but actually an “internet marketing” agency. Submitting trademark and copyright infringement claims is a strange type of internet marketing, if you ask me.
So, why were they changing the manufacturer on Amazon product listings? I researched it further and put more of the pieces together. It seemed like the same agency were systematically submitting changes to unrelated listings, to drive traffic to Acme’s products. The product listings they were changing were bestsellers, so they knew the traffic would be high, and they could use the manufacturer link to divert traffic from popular products, which had nothing to do with them, to their own pages.
I tried to tell Amazon about this, but they weren’t really interested and told me that I’d already been reinstated and didn’t need to worry about it.
Negative feedback begins
I was successful in getting all the notices of infringement overturned, and could continue selling the affected products. Black marks remained on my account, because the submitters were refusing to withdraw their claims, which was frustrating but didn’t have a big impact on sales. But, only a couple of weeks later, a new kind of dirty tricks campaign began.
On November 30th, I started getting negative feedback on my selling account. From experience, I could tell there was something malicious going on. For a start, customers normally email us when they have an issue rather than just leaving feedback out of the blue. The second factor that rang alarm bells was that the two pieces of feedback had been left within just five minutes of each other, and at a strange time of day – 5:40 and 5:45 in the morning.
We have always regularly checked our feedback and every time we get negative reviews we look into it, to try and find out what the problem was. This way, if it turns out that we did nothing wrong, or that the buyer simply didn’t understand how to use Amazon, we can appeal and ask for it to be removed.
This time was no different, so we followed our normal process and started investigating the feedback.
The first order
We started reviewing the first order that the feedback related to, and our suspicions were raised further by the telephone number the buyer had entered. It was obviously invalid, along the lines of “123123123”. Customers normally enter a genuine phone number to help ensure the courier can deliver their order, so a fake number is unusual.
I was, however, able to find a working phone number for the recipient, using a directory inquiry service. The person who ordered this particular item had it delivered to a different name and address, as you would for a gift. When I eventually spoke to the recipient, they told me that they had the item, but they had never ordered it, didn’t know the person who had, and were sorry that they hadn’t told anyone or returned the item.
This person had received several items they had not ordered, but didn’t know what to do about it, and were concerned they would be accused of stealing if they did tell someone. The review claiming to be from them had read: “Received damaged item, change it asap”, so I asked them what condition the item was in when they received it. They said it was perfect.
Clearly, the person who ordered this item had no connection with the person who received it. It was a “ghost order” made for the sole purpose of leaving fake negative feedback, and the recipient’s identity had been used repeatedly to attack different sellers.
The second order
I now strongly suspected that I was being deliberately targeted. I looked into the second negative review, which had read: “How can I rate as no item delivered yet!”.
Everything pointed in the direction of this review being malicious. It had a similar fake phone number, and Royal Mail’s new 2D barcode tracking said that the package had actually been delivered successfully.
Some more research uncovered that the named recipient used to live at the delivery address, but had moved house years ago. So the attacker wasn’t only using ghost orders, sent to people with no connection to them, they were also ordering products to people’s old addresses and then claiming the items never arrived.
It would be hard to get a working phone number with only the name of a former occupant, so I couldn’t take this one any further.
Where was this coming from?
I wanted to know who was behind this negative feedback. I guessed that the “online marketing” agency who submitted the false infringement claims could have something to do with it. Perhaps feedback manipulation was another service on their list of dirty tricks?
I started to look into them, and through company registration and trademark records I discovered that they actually sold on Amazon themselves – the same company details were on an active Amazon seller account. That was a surprise, but in itself didn’t prove they were connected to the negative feedback.
But when I looked at the feedback they had received, there was positive feedback from the same two buyers who had left me negative feedback.
It was pretty clear now that the same agency was behind:
- False claims of intellectual property infringement against me
- Orders placed using fake identities so they could give me negative feedback
- Fake positive feedback submitted for their own selling account
20 bad orders in one day?
By now I was really upset. I took it personally that I was being targeted, and this wasn’t helped by two more malicious feedback comments being received on 4th and 5th December.
I started looking into these four orders, and noticed that all of them had originally been placed on the same day – 22nd November.
When I went through my sales for that day, I found a total of 20 suspicious orders, all with the same characteristics.
The first, as I mentioned before, is an invalid phone number along the lines of “111222111”. The second was the type of products they were buying. They were always cheap products, never worth more than £4.00, and they were usually products that had been popular, but weren’t selling well anymore.
The buying pattern also stood out, as these orders were made quite early in the morning and within a few minutes of each other. For example, the first order would be made at 8:10 and followed by orders at 8:15 and 8:20. All the suspicious orders were made in batches close together like this.
To top it off, most of the named recipients on these orders had also left positive feedback for the Amazon seller account connected to the agency.
Armed with this evidence, I emailed the managing director’s office at Amazon UK to explain my situation and the fact that I was clearly being targeted. I even told them that based on the characteristics that all the orders shared, I could predict which one would give rise to negative feedback next (and I was correct!).
While emails went back and forth between Amazon and myself, the negative feedback was beginning to push my metrics down, and I was no longer winning the Boy Box. In fact, my sales had fallen almost 50% as a result. So, with no end in sight, I ramped up my emails to Amazon and, I will admit, I lost my temper with them.
Suspension
On 12th December, when I tried to access my seller account, I found that I had been suspended. When the notification email came through later that evening, it said I had been suspended for two reasons: selling inauthentic products and for violating Amazon’s code of conduct.
I didn’t communicate professionally in all of my emails to Amazon, and I can see that does violate the code of conduct, but I think it was understandable given the situation. However, I do regret it.
What I can say categorically is that I have never sold a fake product. All the infringement notices I received were overturned, and I sent invoices to prove the authenticity of our products. Amazon accepted all of those.
We weren’t successful, however, in getting all the negative feedback removed. Having researched the orders, the pattern of the attack was very clear, but Amazon did not accept my evidence.
Being suspended has had a considerable impact on the business, and affected our cash flow severely. We are no longer able to sell on Amazon, and had to remove our stock from FBA at a cost of £5000. Some of that stock was then lost or damaged in transit. With no sales coming in, we were also asked to repay our Amazon Loan of £9000 in full.
We appointed an Amazon consultant to help us get reinstated, but it has been almost two months since we were suspended, and have had no success so far. To add insult to injury, negative feedback is still coming in from those twenty malicious orders placed on 22nd November.
In Closing
Despite this saga, I’m not angry with Amazon. I don’t see it as their fault. My anger is directed at the “online marketing agency” that targeted my account and tried to ruin my business. After all, it wasn’t Amazon that indulged in black practices – it was the agency.
In one way, we are lucky. We also sell on eBay, and have started selling our private label product direct to retailers. Without these sides to our business, I’m certain that we would have gone bankrupt.
Many sellers won’t be so fortunate. If these immoral characters can have such a big impact on my business, despite a thorough investigation, what impact are they having on other sellers? Some businesses make most, or even all, of their sales through Amazon, and would not survive an attack like the one I experienced.
I’m certain that there are sellers being taken down this way on a daily basis. Some won’t ever realize just how ruthlessly they were being targeted. Their businesses will go under, and their personal lives will suffer.
Business is hard even when it’s played fairly, we know that, but being forced out by dirty tricks is not part of the game, and we should not put up with it.
This post was by Mike Young with Alex Knight.
Mike is an online seller on Amazon and eBay based in London, England. Mike has a background in finance and IT and has investigated financial wrongdoing within the banking industry.
Comments
Great work Mike, thank you so much for doing this. Its terrible how people can destroy years of hard work, so easily and in fairness to amazon its hard to know how to deal with it.
I wonder if this is W and H enterprises I think they did something similar to me, for me my online selling accounts were just a side business and I could not afford the time to pursue the case, I did find the name Wali Afzal in companies house, is this the same person Mike?
There needs to be a new law to target these evil people, mis-selling on amazon, mis-representing there goods and when they don’t get there own way they try to bring down a business. I hope the police do something against the person or business that did this to you and you get compensation. I urge everyone to check there negative feedback, we might be talking about the same person, or maybe they use different names.
Hi Mike
This is terrible. So sorry to hear about your plight.
I hope you manage to get your Amazon suspension lifted and negative feedback removed.
Hopefully, someone can take action against the agency and company behind the false claims.
All the best for the future.
Hey Mike
Very dispiriting, echo Chris’ comments above. How frustrating!
I have experienced this sort of thing on Amazon, too. In fact, a product name was even stolen and that product remains a prime target. Each time we have a product rise, someone systematically comes and takes it down in one way or another. This started for us around 2013 and we have walked fine lines to stick around. It’s amazing we can still launch products that do well enough to be deemed “a threat”, thus targeted. I wonder what our business would be like without the ugliness.
I’m very sorry this happened to you and yes, thank God for eBay!
I was suspended on December 2, 2017 For Inauthentic claims on products from Walmart and Big Lots. I was a new Seller and this was depressing. I’m looking to sell on Facebook marketplace, EBay and Mercari.
Long wait for something like that to come, i have been targeted by my competitors for years , but never had guts and new how to tackle the problem.
At the beginning strugled badly to understand that there were anything wrong with my services and products. Only after few months i realised that someone was leaving negative feedback on purpose by seeing events occurring repeatedly within the short time from each other.
I suffered so badly so i was considerimg to close my account as sells went deep diving immediately. After many researches i came across that other an individual was acting alone or a company was behind of filthy tricks.
I am so plesed that at last someone like you Mike can fight the dirty game players and hopefully stop something like that to happen to anyone who wants to make his or her living by spending a lot of effort and hard work for years ,to create a clean and fair business .
I strongly believe they are same people who targeted me and i hope they get arrested and get what they deserve.
I think Amazon is at fault by creating such and easy way to target genuine businesses. Amazon should have well proven reason to close and account not just some negative feedbacks and claim by evil people.
I totally agree with you. Amazon has far to much say in the peoples business, after all, they carry the goods and dispatch them and have a platform for us to sell on BUT to close the business is a ruthless step that they take far far too lightly and frankly, i can see a day when someone decides to sue them for loss of profits and damages and I think they would lose because they have a lot of money and any judge would know that so they will just say to Amazon cough up! So I think there are grounds to take action against them, even if they are an unwitting participant because its them that closed the avenue to selling and in so doing stopped someones proven yearly income, from an ambulance chaser type solicitor I think they would have a field day with this and if the business is gone then the seller has nothing to lose, I would go down the legal root if I lost my account this way.
Mike I am sorry to hear about this. It is hard to build a successful business and to see being destroyed by other people for no just reason is heartbreaking
Really sorry for you hearing that people will do this type of act. Thanks for sharing your story with others
Amazon is about money, people being treated like this has no effect on their bottom line – NONE! You must know that Amazon is a whore of a company, and we all deal with this whore. It is wrong to say Amazon is not culpable is just absurd. Vicious people not being questioned or removed by Amazon, as hard-working people just try to take care of business?
Totally agree that Amazon are responsible, the bad people did not close the account Amazon did. The result was a disaster for the seller. The bad people won the day. What kind of message does that send? Be a sh*t and win. That’s not the result I want to hear. Actually i support eBay and try not to do anything on Amazon. I find they are like dealing with a horrible bank phone system or queue like for the tax line number. Just horrible company and your words ring so true. I suggest they take legal action against Amazon, nothing to lose, get a no win no fee lawyer on it if i was them.
You might not blame Amazon but I do, absolutely.
EXACTLY the same thing happened to me with the fake goods/feedback scenario. After several years on eBay I also switched to Amazon after eBay scrapped “Ending Soonest” as the default view for buyers and replaced with “Best Match”, which ruined our business. It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now, although I have managed to get a small business back up and running on eBay. But it’s a struggle now. But I digress.
I built up a six figure turnover too, in fact from almost nothing I was approaching a quarter of a million turnover in just under 18 months. Then it started. first of all a couple of negative feedbacks. Then an A-z claim stating the goods were counterfeit. Then another. Then another. Within a few weeks I was trying to fight off half a dozen or more negatives a day, at least a couple of A-z claims and Item Not Received claims.
Exact same pattern, items were being returned by Royal Mail with “Not at this address” labels and yet the “buyers” were sending in fake item A-z claims for items they had not received. I later found out they were even sending in photos of completely different items from the ones I was sending. Only after I invited Amazon to open a few of my items at random – or they could open the lot if they wanted to – did they accept that the photos of the item were not photos of items I (or rather they, via FBA,) was sending out.
This went on for a few months, with a constant battle with Amazon’s foreign based staff trying to get them to understand these were false feedbacks and claims. It was affecting sales, it was extremely stressful – my wife will say I’ve never actually recovered, I’m a permanent nervous wreck now every time anything happens on eBay and, well to cut a long story short – I have written about it on this forum before – Amazon suspended me indefinitely.
I never found out who was doing it and in the end a manager admitted to me “off the record” that the reason they got rid of me was it was taking two members of staff a lot of time to maintain my account and continue investigating these issues.
Frankly I’m not convinced they bothered to investigate anything. There were clues – the perpetrators were almost certainly Asian judging by the names they were using, and there was often a “Z” in the name, almost as if they were gloating, wanting me to know it was them again.
Now I’m not sure what percentage of people in the UK have a Z in their name but I’m guessing it’s a pretty small number. So why Amazon couldn’t see this blatantly obvious connection is beyond me. They talk about sophisticated fraud detection programs, but I’ve yet to see any evidence of it.
Amazon also charged me per-item to get my stock back, I was luckier in that it “only” cost me around £1200 but these were also only small items, all of which went into half a dozen boxes and must have cost Amazon a maximum of around £30 to return to me. They also “lost” around 20% of my goods.
I also had a battle to get my final payment but got it eventually, but I know of many stories where people who have been suspended have lost their final payments.
Why do I blame Amazon? Because this sort of thing obviously goes on a lot more than we know, and they are doing little or nothing to prevent it. This is a company who are “stealing” seller’s final payments, and in my opinion their stock as well, unless there is some mysterious black hole somewhere swallowing it all.
This is one of the most successful companies in the world run by the world’s richest man who, if you look into his history, doesn’t give a damn about anybody else as long as he is making money. He’s hiring staff at extremely cheap rates who simply are not able to cope with these things and when serious issues like this come up it’s somewhere between excruciatingly difficult and impossible to get the help you need.
These people are committing a criminal offence and Amazon are aiding and abetting it. I know, ebay are not much better but it is easier to get at least some sort of support, and they do seem a little more aware of certain issues even if they’re not too clever at dealing with them.
But this should not be allowed to happen. Amazon should be involving the police and doing more themselves. Financially, they have the resources. But sadly this is the world we live in now, it’s every man for himself and if you’re a victim it’s just your bad luck. Don’t expect any help from Amazon, eBay or the police because nobody is interested.
The trouble is by turning a blind eye to it, the problem will only get worse as more and more people learn how to exploit the competition in this way. If we’re not careful we will end up with a society as corrupt as some of the Eastern countries.
I haven’t dealt with this yet, but I have received TM violations from products that I just listed, on an already created listings that haven’t even sold any yet. How can they submit a TM violation without any evidence?
Anyways, I came here to add a little inside information from a distributor of mine, we’ll call them Tommie, who use to work as a manager (don’t remember department) at AMZ.
Tommie’s response to a of mine question about their prices being close to AMZ’s price and how AMZ can afford to sell at wholesale prices was very surprising to me based on how I know they treat their sellers.
Tommie said that most of their revenue comes from sellers and the products they sell. Huh? No way! … “Yep!” Tommie replied, “Their AMZ account subscription, product fees, labeling & packing service, their advertisement percentage, and storage fees, not to mention all the apps for sellers to use/purchase, they get a cut.” Tommie continued on by saying they could care less about a small, none, or a loss of revenue on a listing, and that AMZ wants to be the place, that everyone knows and will come to, for the lowest price of a product available. Which is why we get the broken and annoying price alert algorithm (don’t get me started on that POS!).
According to Tommie, the larger the customer base was the larger the seller base was inturn … More $$$ for AMZ. They even have an algorithm, tied into the price alert (ugh), the sends out a scan across the net every 15 minutes to find the lowest price of all products at major retail stores, and Amazon will match their products price to that lowest price. At first I was in disbelief, that was until I read an article on how many new sellers sign up a day. I forgot the actual number, but it was high enough to make me believe Tommies information. Another convincing factor that made me believed it was all true was whenever I saw a product price drop on Target or Walmarts, within 15 minutes Amazon’s price would change to be the exact same price.
This is why I would absolutely blame AMZ for allowing these attacks and false claims from marketing firms who’s sole purpose is to be the devil’s @$$h0Ie! AMZ can afford it! and should want to protect the sellers! As we are the foundation that made AMZ grow even larger and quicker than what it was. And yet we get things like the price alert, constant lost and damaged inventory, and a seller support system that doesn’t understand what you are talking, or doesn’t even care or read the emails and responds with templated responses.
This is beyond frustrating and as mention in other comments, illegal. Even so, they will always take the side of the initial action, whether it be from an inaccurate price alert or a false TM/patent accusations. Their policy is guilty until you can prove your own Innocence. Then beg your accuser to forgive you for proving your Innocence and hope somewhere inside them is a shred of morality to withdraw their claim.
I never had luck with eBay, so not user friendly for sellers except the actual listing part. But as soon as a site like AMZ pops up with two shipping and a prime like membership, you better believe I’m switching. Even if it’s way less monthly sales. I’d gladly pay that price, as long as the new site took care of it’s sellers, I’m on board!
Me Too. I think Amazon truly awful and should have millions of lawsuits against them for this type of behaviour and believe sooner or later there will be a class action that might just make them sit up and pay attention to the seller’s point of view after all we are the ones paying the bills. Actually, they are very pro-China factory and do not care about western sellers, they tout the factories in China and say go direct and stuff your existing customers and we will take care of everything for you….and they do and the Chinese factory has to do almost nothing in comparison to western suppliers. I know this as a fact as I have the inside track on this. So this is not guesswork, its a fact.
Oh, one other thing. If you’re doing well on Amazon and publishing stories about it on here or anywhere else you’re a bloody fool, because you’re simply presenting yourself as a target.
If you’re doing well in ANY business keep it to yourself. The world’s most successful businessmen didn’t get where they are by telling the world how they are doing it.