Why is Aukey Banned on Amazon?

The competition in the field of mobile accessories is extremely high and in this competitive era, every company is trying various methods to do something different and to remain on top. Recently a top accessory manufacturer Aukey has done something due to which it has been delisted from selling on Amazon. Aukey has done a massive data breach by paying customers for posting fake reviews. There were 2 other big companies, Mpow and Tomtop who faced similar penalties.

According to a report, direct messages between amazon vendors and customers were seen where customers were asked for positive reviews in return for free gifts. According to this strategy of getting positive reviews, Amazon’s algorithm boosts the product’s visibility,t which means an increased sale followed by further positive reviews.

 

What these accessory makers would do is that they work with a third party to inform potential reviewers about the products that needed 5 stars. People would then purchase the products by logging with their personal accounts, leaving 5-star reviews as committed. The reviewer would then send a message to the vendor and share his/her PayPal and account information to get the refund of the product they had purchased to give the review. They would get the refund but keep the reviewed product as a form of reward.

It is reported that around 75000 accounts were used to post these illegitimate reviews. Interestingly, the reviewers were trained to follow some rules as well which meant they needed to have a word count in mind, they had to wait for a few days before posting a review and reviewers used professional-sounding language in their video reviews to look legitimate. The third parties that were involved in it were to be largely blamed for this as they did not warn the company about the cons of posting fake reviews.

 

As per Aukey’s spokesperson, however, the company is not significantly affected by this but getting delisted from the world’s leading e-commerce store definitely tarnishes reputation. Amazon has not only delisted Aukey but many other stores as well. It has been reported that although Amazon did ban Aukey from its e-commerce store, the brand is still visible under its sub-brand “key-series”. Many other brands like Mpow who had been delisted from Amazon found ways to showcase their products on Amazon and when the issue was identified Mpow products disappeared while Aukey products were still visible. Aukey has also allegedly been paying Amazon even after the ban to showcase their products in their search. This activity has obviously been happening under the Sub-brand name but there is no doubt that the sponsored products are of Aukey’s. Amazon was quick to identify the issue of fake reviews but has still not been able to successfully remove all Aukey’s products from their e-commerce store. If Amazon is unable to entirely solve this issue, people might end up losing trust in Amazon which will be a major setback for them.