UKC

A first for me to be offered cash for a good review, though it could be I’m thinking the entry method to possible phishing scam or even a fraud scam? The first is bad enough, but can’t make up my mind if there could be more to it.

Bought a low value item (£13) from Amazon, fulfilled by them, received it and when I opened the packaging a card fell out. Sized, coloured and appeared at initial glance all to be like an Amazon gift card. However, claim your £10 Amazon gift card was on front though with usual Amazon colouring and logo, but with an error as it said amazon.uk (missing the “co” part).

On the back of the card was generic wording (use of dear friend, thanks for choosing commodity, etc.), had spelling errors, and essentially got around to asking for a good review, and if you screenshot it and send with the order ID to them to a gmail address, “they” (no reference to seller or Amazon) will refund £10 through PayPal.

Mmm, sending details they probably don’t know, to an anonymous email address …. no thank you.

Can’t make up my mind if the seller would be involved, or even aware of this, as it could be a rogue employee somewhere in the processing system (the bag had a very easy to open and re close seal so the card could have been added at any stage). Also, whether if anyone actually sending an email as requested to claim £10 would give those behind this sufficient details to commit a fraud.

Being cynical, I reckon that no money would be paid via PayPal and email address and whatever else they could get from order number, screenshot photo, etc. would be harvested info, or could possibly open the door to provide further details being requested as the next step.

Annoyingly, Amazon have no contact details I can find to report it to - all their help details links go to external contacts to report phishing/fraud; nothing to report internal to Amazon or about an incentive offer for good review. Coincidentally, fake reviews with the likes of Amazon was featured on the BBC this morning and apparently Amazon state that they take this matter seriously and remove sellers that abuse their T&Cs! How do they get contacted though if they don’t provide a means to do so!

Take care of a possible new variant of a scam.

I would report it here under the "unsocilicited package" option. I know it isn't quite, but probably the closest. I think they do want to hear about these sorts of things

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GRGRY7AQ3LMPXVC...

If they did, they would have an obvious means to report such issues.

I had a similar thing buying printer ink through Amazon with cash offered for a 5 star review. This happened twice through separate sellers (though I suspect they were the same or linked). Tried to report to Amazon, but never got a reply. Left a negative review saying what had happened. Amazon deleted the review.  I no longer trust reviews on Amazon.

There is a website called review meta

https://reviewmeta.com/

that checks how likely Amazon reviews are to be fake, then gives you a revised rating based on the seemingly legit reviews. It’s quite clever it checks other reviews by those reviewers to see if they seen natural etc  

They'll delete the review if you are reviewing the seller rather than the product in a product review.  That's only fair because the product itself may be available from multiple sellers and be OK.  It is really annoying if e.g. in a book review somebody goes on about it arriving late or not getting a sale price and gives it low stars despite the book itself being good.

I see that link goes to the American website. I can’t find similar on the UK one unfortunately. I was thinking I could always use live chat and ask them for an email address. However, assuming they gave me one, I’m not at all convinced that I would get any reply though it may be of some help overall if Amazon do investigate.

Mmm, not sure they delete like that in cases “automatically”. Maybe only if seller queries/complains? They certainly, from what I’ve seen, don’t delete (all/some?) say five star reviews for items for example where the reviewer only comments about seller, speed of delivery, packaging, etc., and nothing about the product!

Equally bad are reviews that give 5 stars but comment that it was a present, not used yet but looks good, etc. That changes the overall rating and not in a good way usually to prospective buyers.

Amazon, also, don’t delete seller reviews IME where the review is misunderstood by the buyer and they comment only, in the review seller part, about the product (unknown to everyone except them!), delivery, price, etc, and nothing about the seller. That can bias the ratings for the seller.

I’m suspicious of the whole review system with Amazon.

Edit: I’ve just remembered that I’ve never seen Amazon allow any seller review where the item was fulfilled by Amazon. Maybe this also apply to any attempted seller review (where Amazon fulfilled the purchase) if comments put in the product review?

A few months back a large number of sellers were banned for doing this - https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/17/22680269/amazon-ban-chinese-brands-revie...