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.
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.
https://www.ft.com/content/3af8bfb8-ad3a-11e8-94bd-cba20d673...
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.
Something I find perplexing about this theory, they do have the shipping number right? Shouldn't it be trivial to find who is benefiting?
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasive_species [1]: https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/invasives/index.shtml
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.
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.
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.