Amazon Cracks Down on Reviewer Swag
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2016 7:33 am
Yesterday, Amazon announced a new review policy that will largely eliminate the practice of sellers offer free or highly discounted merchandise to reviewers in exchange for hopefully favorable reviews. The company has never allowed paid reviews and in recent months they've cracked down on "professional" review sites that sellers pay to generate them large numbers of often highly suspect reviews. But they still allowed (until yesterday) sellers to contact reviewers and offer products. Buyers were required to put a disclaimer in their review that they received the product for free. I always put my disclaimer at the top of the review, but many buried theirs in the last paragraph.
Ever since I made it to the top 10,000 of Amazon reviewers about a year ago, I've received lots of such offers from sellers, often 5-10 a day. Most of these companies come from China and a lot of them have the same e-mail domain @163.com. I turn most of them down (it's mostly stuff we have no use whatsoever for), but I have gotten several hundred dollars of good merchandise (and a lot of junk as well). I try to write objective reviews and I'm not afraid to give a bad review for a piece of junk, but I know a lot of reviewers just crank out bogus 5-star reviews to keep the offers coming. A recent study showed that reviewers of free products were 12 times less likely to leave a 1-star review than people who paid for the product (part of that's understandable if you're not actually out money for something, you're less likely to get really bent out of shape if it doesn't work). Also, a number of sellers get very testy and try to browbeat or beg you into changing an unfavorable review. My own response has been to add a note to the review telling buyers just what the seller tried to do, but, again, I think some people just go along with it to get the sellers off their back.
The new policy will not affect book reviews. Authors and publishers can still offer free review copies. Also, Amazon has their own Vine program to help sellers get reviews of products. Amazon contacts the reviewers and actually sends the products to those reviewers, generally of brand new products. Of course, they charge sellers for this service. I am not a Vine reviewer, although I expect Amazon will get a lot more Vine requests in the future.
Ever since I made it to the top 10,000 of Amazon reviewers about a year ago, I've received lots of such offers from sellers, often 5-10 a day. Most of these companies come from China and a lot of them have the same e-mail domain @163.com. I turn most of them down (it's mostly stuff we have no use whatsoever for), but I have gotten several hundred dollars of good merchandise (and a lot of junk as well). I try to write objective reviews and I'm not afraid to give a bad review for a piece of junk, but I know a lot of reviewers just crank out bogus 5-star reviews to keep the offers coming. A recent study showed that reviewers of free products were 12 times less likely to leave a 1-star review than people who paid for the product (part of that's understandable if you're not actually out money for something, you're less likely to get really bent out of shape if it doesn't work). Also, a number of sellers get very testy and try to browbeat or beg you into changing an unfavorable review. My own response has been to add a note to the review telling buyers just what the seller tried to do, but, again, I think some people just go along with it to get the sellers off their back.
The new policy will not affect book reviews. Authors and publishers can still offer free review copies. Also, Amazon has their own Vine program to help sellers get reviews of products. Amazon contacts the reviewers and actually sends the products to those reviewers, generally of brand new products. Of course, they charge sellers for this service. I am not a Vine reviewer, although I expect Amazon will get a lot more Vine requests in the future.