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Comment by IAmGraydon | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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."

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.

The reviewer is the sender not recipient.

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