Thursday, October 6, 2016

Amazon Changes TOS & Monopolizes It's Review System

Amazon has recently changed their Terms Of Service and Reviewing Guidelines, this has left both reviewers and sellers scrambling to clean up the mess in its wake. 

    I have been reviewing on amazon for a while now and I used to love it. How it works is the sellers provide willing reviewers with products either at deeply discounted rates or free, and in doing so it creates a mutually beneficial arrangement. The sellers receive feedback, reviews and attention for their product, and the reviewers receive the products. In many cases this allows the reviewer to purchase an item they may need at a rate they can afford. Amazon requires full price purchase be reviewed as well, so these reviewers are also loyal customers in some cases spending hundreds of dollars every week. As a reviewer and customer I rely on customer reviews to help me in my decision whether to purchase an item, or skip over it in favor of something else.
    This means that we all take our reviews very seriously, they are well thought out with descriptions of what does and doesn't work with the item. We also take pictures and make videos often times showing how to use a product when instructions are not included, or are not very clear. The amount of time that goes into our reviews is as much if not more then a full time job, and anyone that tells you it is easy either doesn't review or doesn't do a very good job.
    I personally am up until 3 or 4 am every morning working on reviews doing my media or networking with sellers. I am currently ranked at just above 11 thousand, I know that sounds high but we are talking about a ballpark of 200 million reviewers. I have worked very hard to get my rank this low and take pride in all my reviews. Now Amazon has basically told me and everyone else that our reviews are worthless and untrue. This is very offensive, and unfounded.
    I do admit that reviewers hand out more 5 star reviews then the average customer does, but there is a simple explanation for this. We give the sellers a chance. If we receive a product that doesn't work correctly, or breaks after one use we contact the seller. We then work with them to receive a replacement or refund. No review is left until we are satisfied we have gotten the best impression of the product possible. The average customer should be doing this too, but normally they don't even attempt to reach the seller so they can make it right before leaving a bad review, or negative feedback.
    Amazon is now allowing reviews only through their vine program. In this program the select the reviewers and the products they review. This has monopolized their system. If a seller wants to be involved in Amazon vine they are required to pay a very hefty fee per review to do so. This makes it impossible for small and new sellers to compete, and basically leaves them in the cold. The fact that these changes were immediate means many sellers lost out on thousands of dollars in product, and us reviewers are scrambling to help them in anyway we can. So I will now be posting all my product reviews here on my blog and sharing them on my social media platforms. This is my attempt at making these people whole again, as much as they can be.

This is a photo of all the stuff I was sent to review and can't on Amazon so I will be reviewing on my blog this is just my pile now imagine this multiplied by 150+million these sellers are now out so much and Amazon is to blame

Please Sign This Petition & Tell Amazon They Are Wrong

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