Echo Dot, Apple Watch, JBL Speakers listings hijacked | Hacker News Reader

Echo Dot, Apple Watch, JBL Speakers listings hijacked

sellercentral.amazon.com

94 pointshippich21 comments

I know someone on disability that makes up to $20 per 5-star review they write. It's helped them but they feel guilty about it.

For some reason the comment brought to mind the old folklore story:

Anyway, the story is that one day Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassee, who had recently transferred to Cupertino from Paris, had just parked his car and was walking toward the entrance of the main office at Apple when Steve buzzed by him in his silver Mercedes and pulled into the handicapped space near the front of the building.

As Steve walked brusquely past him, Jean-Louis was heard to declare, to no one in particular - "Oh, I never realized that those spaces were for the emotionally handicapped...".

https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...

Amazing! Thank you for sharing.

It looks like this link (to a Seller Central forum thread?) is only viewable if you have an active seller account. I only see an error page telling me my seller account was closed for inactivity.

REVIEW MANIPULATION!

Amazon Echo Dot listing Hijacked - OMG!!!

*AMAZON WAKE UP SOMEONE IS RIPPING YOU OFF!*

FY Posture Brand is taking Amazons Echo Dot listing, Apple Watch listing, JBL speakers listing to the cleaners LOL

Check out these listings!!

All the reviews of these mega brands are being rerouted and connected to the FY Posture Brand posture listings

The listing is for a posture corrector However all reviews are for Amazon Echo Dot! (76,785 five star reviews)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B091H11FYD

The listing is for a posture corrector However all reviews are for Apple Watch (134,392 five star reviews)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09583B786

The listing is for a posture corrector However all reviews are for JBL speakers (76,785 five star reviews)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08Z76YKPM

Who would believe this can happen on Amazon.com in 2021!!

It's visible if you don't have a seller account at all, at least. Use a private window.

Similar sort of thing happens with Google Groups:

- logged in: access granted

- logged out, but with a cookie indicating a Google account: access denied, prompt to log in

- no Google cookie (e.g. private window): access granted

Thank you! Strange bug.

There is a lot of sellers frustration in that thread. I didn't know that it could be such a problem for a seller to simply build and maintain their own catalog on the platform.

I have ended up getting involved in Amazon bits from time to time as from a client's point of view it's all e-commerce.

They are an absolute nightmare to deal with. Everything is opaque, everything takes however long they want and changes you make as a seller, even as a registered brand owner are merely a suggestion that even if accepted may be rolled back half an hour later with no notification.

The whole platform is at the mercy of bad actors (of which Amazon themselves are the worst)

They then squeeze for the highest fees they can get away with - the bulk of their expertise being used to work out stuff like this rather than delivering any kind of positive experience to their suppliers.

Over the years I have built a hatred of them.

Why it is like that? Why there is no platform emerged focused on merchants?

Merchants don't make the platform money, buyers do

Somehow Amazon already fixed this, even though they don’t care when it happens to other sellers.

It's crazy whack-a-mole. This one appears to have been printer ink before and seems still active.

https://www.amazon.com/Posture-Corrector-Comfortable-Adjusta...

The fact that listings can be changed more than a certain amount, without some sort of review and cost associated with that, is a huge gift from Amazon to fraudsters. It's the platform being designed to enable fraud.

Not a week goes by without our collective nose being shoved in the pile of poo that is Amazon's fraud platform wearing a cheap façade of ecommerce. And we still have trouble admitting it.

When a platform is designed for making money above all else, while willfully ignorant of humanity's millennia-long history of using fraud in pursuit of money unless that option is ruled out, and takes no steps to rule it out, it is equivalent to being purpose-built for it.

One would think all the AI development happening at the major tech companies could be leveraged to fix this.

You don't need AI, just a bit of willing. I can't imagine it would be hard to create a trigger for human intervention when a product's title, images, category(?) and description all change.

Unless the incentives for Amazon are changed, I don’t see AI making a difference.

Man… almost seems like they fix it if they wanted to.

They probably cannot at scale. I'm sure they would if they could; it is very likely a source of embarrassment.

So what's the process here? How does the malicious seller take over an existing product listing with good reviews and repurpose it like that? What's the loophole being abused?

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