Amazon have created a system that is so one-sided and unfair in many ways that sellers could be pushed into resorting to pay for reviews.

BTW, notice I did not say "pay for positive reviews" but rather "pay for reviews".

Now, of course, one could setup something like a paid focus group where those who like the product are then encouraged to review on Amazon. That's not necessarily what happens on Fiverr. I am astounded at how blatantly some of these reviewers advertise on Fiverr. And, yes, Fiverr does look the other way. Not their problem. Well, at least not yet.

How is the Amazon system unfair?

Source/disclosure: I own a company that provides management services to Amazon third party sellers (A3PS). No, we have nothing to do with reviews yet we do see how the system works and how messed-up it is.

- Bad reviews can absolutely tank product sales
- No mechanism to protect from stupid or unfounded bad reviews
- Negative reviews carry way too much weight
- Amazon routinely removes positive reviews from listings
without justification
- Amazon never removes negative reviews
- Review posters can use fake names
- Search ranking is influenced by review score
- Reviews are being used as business weapons
- Amazon allows people who never bought the product to post a review
- There are zero standards to control who can post a review
- Buyers use neg reviews to extract frebbies

I won't discuss all of these in detail unless someone asks for clarification.

The first problem is that people who would post a negative review are far more motivated to do so than positive reviewers. This is common sense. Posting a review is a hassle. Motivation is important here. Someone who is unhappy about something --anything-- is far more motivated to take the time to post a review. And, in some product categories, dissatisfaction might have nothing whatsoever to do with the product.

This means that reviews are not a true representation of the product except in category-dependent corner or near-corner cases.

Example: Weight loss. Person buys an exercise widget. Doesn't use it consistently. Does not alter their diet. Three months later they've lost no weight at all and they are angry at something. They get an email from Amazon asking for a review. They lash out at the product. It feels good. In the process they've caused a situation for the A3PS whereby they might have to find dozens to hundreds of positive reviews in order to counteract the weighted average effect of that one utterly unfair negative review.

The review system treats weight loss pills and a screwdriver as though the review posting mechanics (motivation, satisfaction requirements, product-buyer relationships, effort required for success, etc.) are exactly the same.

That is just one example of the sort of thing that can drive sellers mad. There's real financial damage to sellers because of the ranking and in-page sales consequences of these reviews.

When someone says "reviews are being bought on Fiverr" the assumption is "positive reviews". The truth of the matter is that less-than-reputable sellers know full-well how deadly negative reviews are on Amazon. And some of them engage in attacking competitors with damming negative reviews.

Using simple math one can see the effects of bad reviews. The weighted averaging Amazon uses to calculate average review score has changed; for the purpose of this discussion I'll used the older and simpler version.

Say a product has 10 5-star reviews. They have a score of 5.0. Perfect.

If I now post 5 1-star reviews to that page the score goes down to 3.7. This is bad. It costs sales and ranking. My fake negative review served to damage my competitor.

How many 5-star reviews would it take for my competitor to repair the damage?

The answer is shocking: They need an additional 60 5-star reviews, for a total of 70, in order to get to 4.7, which would show five stars. Ranking would be affected less and buyers would see five yellow stars.

In order to get back to 5.0 they would need 500. Yes FIVE HUNDRED 5-star reviews for a rounded score of 5.0.

And that, right there, is one of the main issues with Amazon's scoring system. Anyone can post a review. Hire a bank of people in China, have them create fake accounts and start posting 1-star reviews on your competitor's products. You'll destroy them. Their sales with tank and they'll have no humanly possible way to recover their ranking. A minimal effort on the part of the attacker is remunerated with massive damage to their competitor.

The situation that is created is mathematically insurmountable. Someone with a great product and a perfect score would have to amass hundreds, if not thousands, of perfect reviews in order to counteract a negative review attack. This is, well, nearly impossible. And so, I can see how many sellers might be forced to resort to buying reviews in order to protect their business from attackers. The reward for attacking a competitor with negative reviews is massive, the cost is minuscule and the consequences are non-existent.

Amazon flat-out refuses to allow the seller to engage with buyers PRIOR TO a negative review being posted. In other words, something that is normal behavior IRL does not exist on Amazon. If you have a business IRL and a customer isn't happy with something you sold them they can either return it or talk to you to seek resolution. That's why Walmart and Best Buy have a Returns desk. People are serviced and everyone is happy.

On Amazon people get angry and post negative reviews. The seller isn't allowed an opportunity to connect with the buyer and make an attempt to resolve the issue. Perhaps the batteries were missing or the shipper broke the thing or the color wasn't to their liking. It would be sensible to allow the seller the opportunity to help buyers in this way.

Another horrible problem is that some buyers are very aware of the fact that sellers fear negative reviews. We've seen buyers ask for heavy discounts or 100% discounts "or else". In a lot of cases sellers choose to give in to the extortion because the consequences of bad reviews can cost them tens of thousands of dollars per month in sales.

We've seen cases where people post a 1-star review when the product arrived late. The review had nothing to do with the product. The seller was using Amazon for fulfillment. In other words, Amazon shipped the product and they screwed-up. Yet Amazon refuses to remove the negative review and the only way to counter it is to find dozens of positive reviews, which is nearly impossible.

In yet another case a seller got a 1-star review because they ordered three units and only received two. Again, Fulfillment-By-Amazon screwed up. The seller had nothing whatsoever to do with the act of picking, boxing-up and shipping the product. Yet Amazon rules do not allow this review to be removed and the seller would have to add dozens of 5-star reviews to fix the problem.

The Fiverr review jobs are not the problem, they are a symptom. One has to ask "Why are sellers compelled to pay for reviews?". The answer takes you straight back to Amazon. Sellers would have zero interest in reviews if the system was fair, manageable and couldn't be used as an offensive weapon by shady competitors.

I could go on for hours on this one...