[Crew Review] 2 million products destroyed

Unreal

First, a survey: On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being happy as Larry, how do you feel about Amazon’s recent change on the restock limit? (Hit reply.)

Amazon vs. Counterfeits

Uncle Jeff is very protective of your intellectual property rights. (Unless you’re Peak Design or Rain Design).

Recently, we were allowed to see just how much Amazon has accomplished in the IP protection area as it released its first-ever Brand Protection Report.

Here are the important points:

• The company spent $700 million and employed 10,000 people to protect brands against fraud and abuse.
• They destroyed more than 2 million counterfeit products in 2020.
• Only 6% of attempted new seller account registrations passed the Amazon verifications processes and listed products.
• Those enrolled in Brand Registry reported 99% fewer suspected infringements.

There is still no clear rule as to an online marketplace’s liability when it comes to counterfeit products sold on its platform, but we may get an answer soon. Louboutin, home of the red-soled shoes, is asking the Court of Justice of the European Union for one.

Will Amazon’s “We’re not the ones manufacturing or distributing these products” defense be enough?

Disappearing brands

Remember the good old days when you can just pay anyone to review your products on Amazon? Easy peasy.

Unfortunately, it’s no longer allowed on the platform. And a few well-known sellers who ignored the prohibition are experiencing the consequences.

Aukey disappeared from Amazon recently. And many listings by other brands such as Mpow, Tacklife, and Tomtop have been made unavailable.

This came shortly after cyber security team SafetyDetectives uncovered 7GB worth of data revealing fake review scams that allegedly affects the privacy of around 200,000 people.

Included in the data were Paypal account details and email addresses thought to be used for paying for fake reviews.

How it works:

• The network would send a list of products that need 5-star reviews.
• Fake reviewers would buy the product and leave a review.
• They message the vendor with a link to their review.
• Sellers send a “refund.”

With this method, sellers get the 5-star review they want and reviewers get to keep the product as well as their fee through the “refund.”

So it’s a win-win, except for innocent people who take reviews very seriously before purchasing anything on Amazon.

None of these tactics are new, but this is one of the biggest takedowns made by Amazon targeting top sellers.

FBA: BTS

We’ve written about what happens to your inventory when it arrives at an Amazon warehouse. Because of the pandemic, the company has kindly given us a behind-the-scenes look at how orders are actually fulfilled.

We lurked in the comments section (one of our favorite pastimes) and it seems like some sellers are missing something from the virtual tour.

There was one who was looking for “the dude that randomly relabels our products to other random products in our inventory.”

Another was looking for the part “where they randomly lose my stuff, don’t check it in, then say they never received it.”

Another seller wanted to see the restrooms. “I hear they are the cleanest [in] the world… because the[ir] employees do not have time to use them.”

Have you seen the 10-minute video yet? What other parts of the fulfillment center do you wish were included?

Hire to Fire

Before its historic failure, the attempted unionization of Amazon workers in Alabama has led to some employees getting fired. Now, Amazon managers are saying they actually hire people just so they could fire them.

Why?

Apparently, these managers have a quota to meet every year called unregretted attrition (URA). The URA represents the percentage of employees Amazon wouldn't regret seeing exit.

Internal reports obtained by Insider reveal that even the upcoming CEO Andy Jassy closely tracks URA.

Amazon reached out to Insider and said the URA targets cited in their article were not accurate and are misleading. But they didn’t go into specifics.

Can’t rank? No worries.

There’s only so much real estate for products on the first page of Amazon’s search results.

And it’s hard to get a spot there, even if you’re willing to pay for ads.

We’re not against PPC, but we want to minimize our ad spend as much as we can.

So we devised a long-term solution for driving more customers to our listings.

We’d love to share them with you on May 19 at 10 AM (PST).

Join us.