Mystery seeds: Amazon bans foreign plant sales in US | Hacker News Reader

Mystery seeds: Amazon bans foreign plant sales in US

bbc.com

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Seeds on Amazon are an absolute joke and have been forever.

There are so many fake seeds to completely nonexistent plants, and obvious photoshops, for sale.

Some hilarious examples:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06Y16C9FN/

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GQTK5PB/

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01D80OV4E/

> fake seeds to completely nonexistent plants

Amazon is the embodiment of "caveat emptor" because "seeds on Amazon" just means "seeds that show up in Amazon search engine, and Amazon get a cut".

Of course, to make matters more confusing, that is no true for all articles. As a small, but very profitable, subset of articles are Amazon branded or served by Amazon owned companies (That are shown higher in their product search engine).

It makes for fun listings, unless you really want to buy something.

Is this really true? Banning the sales of seeds will not change anything because seeds were not ordered anyway. Seeds are send instead of the originally ordered item (the item to be reviewed). Seeds are light and cheap and will continue to be used.

Perhaps this is a measure intended to create the impression that Amazon is addressing the problem, rather than actually addressing the problem (I assume that's harder to do.)

This seems to be the standard platform playbook. If your platform is being used for bad behavior, create a policy stating people shouldn't use it for that, and when Congresspeople ask about the problem, just state you have a policy and hide behind your Section 230 immunity like your life depends on it.

My understanding is that these seeds were originally shipped as seeds, but then the listing was reused for some other item, which miraculously has a ton of reviews on day one. By banning seeds Amazon are, in the strictest sense of the phrase, closing the loop hole of being able to send seeds for cheap reviews.

Unfortunately they leave the loophole of completely changing a product listing wide open.

Maybe they should stop allowing listings to be reused for other items.

They're banning FOREIGN plant sales. There are import and customs controls in place that Amazon does not follow or require sellers to adhere to.

These mystery seeds are bringing increased scrutiny to imports, and Amazon is taking this move to reduce it's liability.

I'm sure they weighted the alternatives (e.g. wait for legal action, implement change) and determined the least expensive route was to just stop the business.

An anecdote: I bought some seeds on amazon a few years back and they ended up coming from China with a customs declaration filled out as "bookmarks". I decided not to plant them.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/ACtC-3eNO55-KL0ynsmXLT8...

Sending plastic beads (or crap) instead of seed would be good for environment

I’m confused about how this brushing scheme works. Why would anyone review some random seeds they got in the mail? How would they even know where to go to review them? If they didn’t even make the order, it isn’t associated with their account, so they couldn’t even make a review. And finally, even if they did get lots of positive reviews, it would help them sell more...seeds?

The reviewer is the sender not recipient.

It’s likely a totally different product, the seeds just give a verified shipping history. They review the other product on their own account that “ordered” the seeds. The seeds are cheap and make it untraceable back to the original product.

So then how does banning the sale of seeds help? They’ll just switch to plastic doodads or some such.

The purpose of a ban isn’t to prevent fraud on Amazon, it’s to prevent unwanted seed from entering the country.

Gaming the rep system is a fault on Amazon's structure. If people in China are doing this without repercussions then what is stopping other people across the world from doing the same?

The special thing about China is that China's the only part of the world with a high volume export industry.

In 2017, there were 24 other countries with an export volume at least 10% as large as China's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_exports

If export volume is the only factor, we'd expect to see e.g. Polish companies sending seeds at about 10% of the volume coming from Chinese companies.

One possible explanation is that EU exports frequently stay within the EU, so Polish companies would be more likely to try to get fake reviews from e.g. German customers.

Or you need enough chaos required in the other 90% to learn to do this technique.

Mail from China is subsidised, not sure about Poland

https://www.ft.com/content/3af8bfb8-ad3a-11e8-94bd-cba20d673...

The purpose of a ban isn’t to prevent fraud on Amazon, it’s to prevent unwanted seed from entering the country.

I don't see how it helps though. The product page for such scams doesn't show "seeds". It's an actual product, but the seller sends seeds. Banning the sale of seeds doesn't stop this.

Can’t they just ban the sellers then?

> ban the sellers

Something I find perplexing about this theory, they do have the shipping number right? Shouldn't it be trivial to find who is benefiting?

Protect the country's ecosystem by a species that may 'invade' and take our existing flora [0],[1]. If 5% of the recipients want to do something "green" and plant these in a park/forest near them, without knowing the impact.. well 10-20 years from now you may have wiped out other more useful and necessary species.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasive_species [1]: https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/invasives/index.shtml

Understood, but the question is still: how does this affect the actual trend of sellers gaming their metrics via seed shipments? Those seeds aren't actually being ordered. They're just a cheap, light item to ship to get a tracking number.

It was already fraud before this rule. It's not like the scammy seller is going to obey this rule when they're already flouting the more fundamental ones.

I think this comment has the right idea [0]. Amazon has two problems with seeds:

1. people doing what appears to be a weird scam that involves seeds being mailed across boarders

2. seed sellers on amazon have been flagrantly violate import controls for years.

This new policy seems to be addressing #2, which is important to Amazon now more than ever because of the increased scrutiny caused by #1 making international news.

I've personally bought seeds from Amazon which were declared as "bookmarks" to sneak past US customs.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24393395

I think this comment has the right idea

Yep, I can see how the new policy can help with #2. The news post seems to be suggesting Amazon is doing it to address #1 - which the policy doesn't do anything about.

It likely won't help -- that's the issue.

Amazon has a history of making PR statements about problems announcing policy changes that do nothing to solve the actual problem....

But why seeds, wouldn't an empty envelope be even easier?

I think the item needs to be fulfilled by Amazon's logistics in order for the "verified purchaser" bit of the scam to work. Seeds are the closest thing to an empty envelope, in terms of weight and cost to stock them, I'd assume.

With seeds banned, I expect stickers will be the new decoy product.

Alternate theory: The whole goal here was to make it harder for people to buy seeds and thus to garden. ;)

> Alternate theory: The whole goal here was to make it harder for people to buy seeds and thus to garden. ;)

There is a long running joke on reddit that I see pop up in other places too - the joke being that gardening is illegal in New Zealand.

https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/2nem47/can_you_...

Please stop spreading the conspiracy theory that this is a joke, running or otherwise. Gardening is illegal in New Zealand.

1. Set up new Amazon store.

2. Buy list of US consumer data.

3. Set up Amazon customer accounts using data lists.

4. Order gizmos from your new store using your new customer accounts.

5. Send seeds instead of gizmos to real addresses around the US and provide Amazon with tracking.

6. Leave reviews for gizmos.

7. Watch store rise in ranking.

Otherwise, they never get any positive reviews. They would all read "What the hell, I ordered a gizmo and got seeds."

I received one of these packages from singapore yesterday. There is no website on the packaging or inside of the envelope. Therefore, I don't understand the amazon review thing. Its just a package of seeds in a manila envelope.

Yes but there's a shipping number associated with it in China, and there is a confirmation that a thing was shipped to the US address. That's what they are after here, and nothing more.

Why put anything in it?

The news articles I read on this speculated the seeds may be invasive species, implying it's a sort of subversive attack in addition to the review scam.

Did you plant the seeds? I'm curious what would grow.

It may not be a great idea to pant mystery seeds from overseas. You could end up with something invasive that’s hard to get rid of.

I bought a plant like that on Amazon (cat’s claw creeper) and luckily did more research before planting it. It’s a problem in the southern US, and I don’t want to be responsible for introducing it to California.

I am not an SME; looking at the photo on BBC these look like lemon stones (seeds). Could you identify them? Did you ask anyone/did anyone gave you a hint on what could they be for/from?

They don’t need you to do anything. The person who sent it to you is now a “verified purchaser”, which makes the review they leave more reputable.

Sellers "sell" an item with a random person's address somewhere in the world. This allows them to make reviews without it being suspect that 100's of reviews have come from purchases shipped to the same address. In the past it seemed that Amazon cared more about items having a high rating than fixing these issues, but with the recent negative press it may have become positive EV for Amazon to start enforcing at least legitimacy around reviews.

It would seem that Amazon could notice that a particular item got a lot of reviews from addresses it knows have only ordered from more establishe accounts in the past.

Echos of Purple Loosestrife seeds being sold by a Canadian Seed company while our conservation organizations and agencies were all trying to kill it every where. At least the USDA has determined the seeds are not necessarily problematic.

Seeds of Eichornia caused permanent damages in a Spanish river. The economical loses are over 25 million euro by now and increasing. This money was not spent to erradicate it, just to control its propagation and trying to made the river navigable again.

In USA, Kudzu causes economical damages estimated between 100 to >500 million dollars (each year).

Might be an urban legends. In Poland there's been warnings about "seeds coming in envelopes from China", but no one really knows anyone who got such seeds.

My wife did. It’s a thing. I had no idea where they came from but I assumed it was either a scam or a practical joke by a friend. When I wasn’t the latter I decided it had to be a scam.

>>but no one really knows anyone who got such seeds.

You asked everyone in Poland :) ? If they sent them to USA, maybe they sent them everywhere. IIRC, mailing from China is dirt cheap as well.

I haven't, but if it was a thing, Polish social media would be all over it.

We order seeds from around the world all the time. Luckily most of our orders go through private websites, not Amazon.

So Amazon in its infinite grace and benevolence has consented to follow the law?

The comment is snarky but based in fact. Importing plants requires a customs license; 99+% of foreign plant listings on Amazon are illegal.

I am glad you mentioned this.

I don't know the legal situation in the USA, but I know that many countries have restrictions on importing any biological/organic matter. Seed, dairy products, meat, etc.

Usually explained as needed to control the spread of biological pathogens and preserve local ecosystems, but regularly used to protect local industries against international competition.

Anyways, I have always been surprised that this apparently never has been enforced by border-crossing online sales platforms, like e.g. Amazon.

Could it be like this because Amazon is an American company? I know that the USA is generally rather bad at enforcing its laws, when it comes to the country's larger corporations. I find it always ironic when the country talks about corruption and nepotism in other countries (no doubt bad things), but then appears to ignore its own track record.

It might also just be that in the end, the actual responsibility is on buyers (i.e. importer). Those might be too small and numerous to prosecute individually. However, it always felt weird that large online platforms never appear to do any preemptive filtering. Aside from obvious things like guns and explosives maybe.

I do know of a few countries where packages with restricted/controlled contents will regularly just "disappear" at customs. When that happens, you better not be foolish enough to demand an explanation.

The comment is snarky but based in fact. Importing plants requires a customs license; 99% of foreign plant listings on Amazon are illegal.

While it does require a license, a small lot import permit is free and lasts 3 years for multiple importations.

https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/planthealth/import...

I don't understand who (which company) sends the seeds?

Is it some kind of drop shipping and seeds are simply the cheapest thing?

Why is it always seeds and not just eg. an empty envelope?

Also it should be possible to trace back to the review and thus the company from a reported unsolicited seed package.

Been discussed before.

But, again I'll mention that America is largely planted with imported seeds. Collected by Botanists in the 1800s circling the globe and bring everything back indiscriminately. Our food crops, our animal feeds, our garden flowers, our vegetables.

This ban is a silly act, political in nature and irrelevant to everybody except the legitimate Asian seed sellers who's business gets hurt.

Seems interesting, do you have a source.

Any history of the 1800s will do. Any visit to a conservatory.

People also put leeches on themselves to cure ailments in the 1800s. I don’t know if the ban is political or not, but stopping seeds from entering a country is nothing new. Customs paperwork has asked about it as long as I’ve been alive.

Australia has been wrecked by foreign flora and fauna. New Zealand airport biosecurity staff literally vacuumed my entire suitcase and tent in the when I arrived there once.

Why was TheButlerian's response below killed?

Leeches ARE used contemporarily, eg - https://www.guysandstthomas.nhs.uk/resources/patient-informa...

"In medicine, particularly plastic and reconstructive surgery, leeches may be used to help improve blood flow in an area of tissue or skin flap that has poor blood circulation. Leeches do this by removing clotted blood (congested blood) from delicate areas, such as underneath a flap of skin. By removing this clotted blood, leeches can restart blood flow in the small blood vessels of the flap. This helps to prevent the tissues from dying."

Lol, did not realize that, interesting. Bad example I guess. Feel free to pick any number of other examples, or look to my other examples in my post.

Re TheButlerian, it looks like all their recent comments got downvoted and so their account was closed.

That was entirely my point. Locking the barn door, after the cows are gone.

Corn? Tomatoes? Potatoes?

America was also largely industrialized with chemicals that were developed and used indiscriminately.

Wheat? Oat? Barley?

Philodendron? Rhododendron? Melon, peach, orange?

Eucalyptus? Palm? Walnut? Ginko?

The list is endless, and includes nearly every flowering garden plant.

I think the concern is the introduction of invasive species that are not here, whether they have never been here, have been eliminated, or are currently being combated.

The difference is that people who have NOT ordered these seeds are receiving them. That raises all sorts of troubling questions as to the motive of the sender especially since it appears to be coming from China.

27 States had to issue advisories against planting these seeds. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/26/us/seeds-from-china-mail....

As I understand, these shipments are typically part of a review fraud system where an item is "bought" using a stolen account and a review left in its name. But in order to show up as a verified purchase Amazon requires tracking information. To make it appear that the item was actually mailed, a nominally priced item is sent, some cheap seeds in a small envelope. But Amazon doesn't know that, it sees a completed shipment and assumes it's for the item being reviewed, which is something other than seeds.

In other words, banning sales completely misses the point and won't stop the flow of the mystery seeds. Assuming that's what's actually going on.

I've received several products I didn't order, as part of this fraud. One is actually a forehead thermometer that's come in really handy lately, thanks scammers! ;)

In order for the seeds to be part of this fraud, the listing also has to be changed, as I understand it. Initially the listing is for seeds, and the seeds have the right ASIN and the orders are fulfilled and all these newly-created fraudulent accounts are "verified purchasers". Then they edit the listing to be for batteries, for example. All these verified-purchaser accounts now come and leave battery reviews on the battery listing, propelling it to the top of the battery ranking.

So another part of stopping this scam is making it harder for sellers to edit their listings to completely change the product being listed. Fixing typos and adding photos, sure, but larger changes should be reviewed somehow.

Unless we all misunderstand what's going on, as you said.

It would be super-easy for Amazon to not allow listings to change the product type.

Your reasoning must be wrong, or Amazon is consciously complicit??

I assumed they needed a tracking code for a delivery in USA, that Amazon can verify a delivery was made using it, but can't verify the goods sent.

If I'm right then having tracking data include the package weight would go some way towards stopping the fraud - at least for heavy products.

I wonder if shipping companies ever offer a 'verified item' system - they could have the recipient open the pack, photograph the contents and include with delivery details. Or, maybe an xray outline of goods.

Or at least the weight/dimensions of the package. At least in Canada, anything tracked has this all keyed in and shows on the receipt, dunno why they can’t have it pullable electronically too for verification.

Oh I love the xray snapshot idea!

I've heard of people specifying "hold at depot for me to pick up" on valuable shipments, partly to thwart porch pirates, but more to bolster their case in the event of missing/wrong/damaged contents. Open the package and inspect the goods right there in the lobby, in full view of the clerk and coverage of their security cameras.

I'm realizing that if one has a home security camera that covers one's porch, one could do something very similar (although not quite as airtight) by simply opening the package on the porch in the view of that camera. Hmmmmm.

Disclosure: i grew up on a farm, so i remember ripping/planting and harvesting.

the risks of invasive species or diseased species are very real, and i suspect the concern here is that a seed recipient in proximity to a farmland could potentially introduce a pathogen or aberrant crop into the field. The introduction of castor beans into a corn crop for example can contaminate hundreds of tons of grain.

The united states is massively dependent on a monoculture of corn, soy, and wheat. Its a dangerous gamble, but the profits and savings from doing this are enormous. These crops are groomed to be disease and drought resistant, however they are not invincible. Paranoia that random seeds from export controlled countries could somehow destroy a harvest is i think at least somewhat warranted.

We suffer some in UK from introduced species from USA. "American Flag"/Signal Crayfish being one that's out-competed native species. Others include grey squirrels, bullfrogs, and apparently mink.

https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/facts-about-uk...

Not all “foreign” plants are invasive, but the ones that are... they’re a real problem. They displace native species, disrupting the balance of ecosystems. Himalayan Blackberry in the Pacific Northwest being a good example. It will choke an entire landscape, suppressing or murdering native species that didn’t evolve to fight that particular competition.

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