Amazon Reviews: Broken System

Between 1 in 3 and 2 in 3 product reviews on Amazon.com are fake. They are bought and paid for. They are written by friends and family. They are swapped and traded on Facebook. They are incentivized from readers. Talking about this problem as I have for nearly 2 decades now has made me the repeat target of the thousands who make their living writing reviews, the millions of sellers who benefit from the fake praise and the dozens of Amazon employees working the system for personal and/or professional benefit.

Having reported problems with reviews to Amazon over many years and received repeated, direct retaliation from Amazon employees for doing so, I learned the hard way about the active involvement of Amazon employees in Amazon’s own marketplace, whether to ensure the success of themselves, family or associates or simply to ensure the failure of particular targets. This occurring repeatedly despite state and federal laws protecting those who report criminal activity, corporate malfeasance and other corporate wrongdoings from retaliation by those they are reporting.

Letters and emails to Amazon executives were answered with retaliation, as were letters and emails written to Amazon’s own legal team. This occurred because of the hundreds of billions of dollars of commerce that flow through Amazon annually. This occurred because those who rock the boat are targeted and thrown overboard. This occurred because of Amazon’s deep ties with local, state and federal government. This occurred because Amazon's executives buy entire newsrooms. This occurred because the truth could utterly destroy Amazon's marketplace dominance.

With control within the government and within the media, Amazon knows it has little to fear. Maybe a decade or so from now they’ll get a fine with a slap on the wrist despite ongoing, widespread corruption and corporate malfeasance. How quaint of them to recently throw their hands up in the air and declare they can no longer guarantee their marketplace. Meanwhile their own employees have steered billions in sales from one direction into another, harmed the sales of this product to ensure the success of that and more. Meanwhile Amazon employees have enriched themselves, their families, their friends, their associates. Meanwhile their executives have become billionaires by ensuring not even the truth affects the flow of commerce across their server engines.

If you know me, you know I’ve written many times about this problem, this widespread corruption. You know Amazon has targeted my books repeatedly because I’ve spoken out, because I’ve complained about my books being bombarded with unfavorable reviews by unscrupulous competitors, because I’ve let others know that Amazon itself was part of the problem. Speaking out about this problem has cost me millions of sales and tens of millions in earnings—and yet I will continue to speak out. I will not be silenced by Amazon’s continued heavy-handed retaliation or the criminal actions of its employees or others.

For those who don’t know me, please do take the time to read the numerous articles I’ve written about this problem. You’ll find the articles here at Linkedin, in my personal blogs (http://robertstanek.blogspot.com/ and http://williamstanek.blogspot.com), at Go Indie (http://readindies.blogspot.com/) and on my websites (http://www.williamrstanek.com and http://www.robert-stanek.com/). You’ll find posts about this problem going back to 2003 here @ http://www.robertstanek.com/rsblog.htm. I do of course write as William Stanek, Robert Stanek, William R. Stanek and William Robert Stanek.

Thanks for reading, I’m William Robert Stanek, Microsoft’s #1 author for nearly 20 years, and author of over 250 topselling books.

Amazon Fraud Again: Amazon Employees Caught Creating Fake Ebay Seller Accounts

In 2018, at least 50 Amazon employees were caught red handed creating fake accounts on Ebay and accused of multiple federal crimes, including criminal conspiracy, fraud and racketeering. Over a period of years, the Amazon employees had created hundreds—if not thousands—of fake seller accounts to lure sellers away from Ebay’s marketplace. The Amazon employees were caught after a months’ long investigation and sting operation designed to catch Amazon in the act of setting up the fake accounts with the intention of luring sellers to Amazon’s marketplace—and away from Ebay.

Over the many years Amazon employees operated as fake sellers on Ebay, they redirected thousands of sellers to Amazon, redirecting tens—if not hundreds—of millions of dollars in sales to Amazon. You might imagine when this extensive level of corporate malfeasance is uncovered there’d be explosive media coverage and damaging headlines. Yet you’ll be hard-pressed to find coverage of these happenings anywhere. (https://www.seattletimes.com/business/ebay-accuses-amazon-of-poaching-sellers-from-its-site/.)

Amazon successfully buried the bad press, ensured what little press coverage there was appeared deep in the news, and leveraged its power and influence to push the crimes out of federal courts and into resolution via arbitration, thereby ensuring the federal crimes of its employees were swept under the rug. Amazon gets away with decades of corporate malfeasance, federal crimes, abusive practices and more by publicly claiming to be a marketplace disruptor. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the company has tight controls throughout the United States over police forces and news rooms, and works over time to manage public perception, to spin reality, and perform damage control whenever it is caught in the act. Amazon does this all while laughing at the FTC, DOJ and other federal agencies investigating the company for antitrust and numerous other issues.

Sound Orwellian, like something out of the novel 1984? Not at all, through its Ring division Amazon has deep connections with police forces across the country—countless of which are indebted to the company for helping them solve crimes. Amazon in fact requires police forces to shill it’s surveillance cameras using secret agreements and private kickback arrangements in the guise of donations. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mb88za/amazon-requires-police-to-shill-surveillance-cameras-in-secret-agreement

Amazon has control over news rooms through its CEO’s purchase of The Washington Post. Control over the DC-based Post, not only provides Amazon with access to news rooms and reporters around the world, it also provides Amazon with access to and influence over federal agencies and the White House. Look any day at the press list for the White House and you’ll see how this is managed. When Bezos/Amazon want a story gone or buried, it’s a done deal. Case in point this story of widespread corporate malfeasance and federal crimes which was white-washed from existence. Crimes that should have included criminal conspiracy, fraud and racketeering--just for starters.

Amazon’s deep relations with federal, state and local government ensures many of the company’s other federal crimes, misdeeds and abuses have never seen the light of day. How deeply is Amazon embedded into the United States government? So much so that you’ll find dedicated recruitment pages for federal, government, and state agencies (including https://aws.amazon.com/federal/ and https://aws.amazon.com/government-education/government/), the Department of Defense (https://aws.amazon.com/government-education/defense/), U.S. Intelligence (https://aws.amazon.com/federal/us-intelligence-community/), Justice Department (https://aws.amazon.com/stateandlocal/justice-and-public-safety/), and on and on. Amazon’s own words are telling: With over 2,000 government agencies using Amazon Web Services (AWS), we understand the requirements U.S. Government agencies… AWS provides cloud capability across all classification levels Unclassified, Sensitive, Secret, and Top Secret.

Amazon is so embedded into our government that it is impossible to perform any fair or just oversight of the company. All those government agencies working with Amazon are handled with close (dare I say, cozy) relationships between many employees of Amazon and many employees of the government agencies. Those cozy relationships exist at all levels from the executive down. With such close ties to the DOD, DOJ, US Intelligence and hundreds of other agencies, is it any wonder Amazon can do whatever it wants, whenever it wants. Not to mention the fact that not only does one of the most corrupt corporations in the world have ties into every branch of state, local and federal government throughout the United States, that same corrupt corporation holds the most sensitive data and secrets of the United States on its servers and by holding that data, ensures it will never have a judgement day.

Control the police, control the media, control the federal government. What’s next for future President Bezos? Oh wait, with those controls Bezos doesn’t need to be president to run the country, does he. He just needs to remember which puppet strings to pull when. Is there any question now why the Amazon monopoly continues unchecked?

Thanks for reading, I’m William Robert Stanek, Microsoft’s #1 author for nearly 20 years, and author of over 250 topselling books.

Amazon's Black Eye Deepens: A Public Sham/e

Speaking out about fake reviews has made me the target of the thousands who make their living writing reviews for pay. This continues despite Amazon's public dispute with over 5000 paid reviewers at Fiverr--no few of which were writers, who unable to make a living at writing, made their living writing reviews.

1 billion--and counting. The approximate number of fake product reviews at Amazon, according to an approximate 1 in 3 estimate. Multiple billions, if you go with the more likely estimate of 2 in 3. This includes incentivized reviews, paid reviews, friends & family reviews and all other reviews that otherwise would not exist without those involved cheating the system. Pick a random product at Amazon with oodles of reviews and odds are nearly 100% that you've stumbled upon a cheat. Take 2 recent purchases made on the same day as examples of just how broken Amazon is.

The first purchase I made were special gloves for those with carpal tunnel. I bought the gloves, not because of the 857 glowing Amazon reviews, but because of the oodles of websites that said W-O-W what a fantastic product it was. The company's website also looked legit. There were dozens of products from this company all glowingly reviewed at Amazon.

How good were the extra large men's gloves I ordered? Well, I couldn't really tell you because the product I received wouldn't fit the hands of an 10-year-old child, let alone a full-grown adult. If I hadn't ordered multiple pairs of the gloves in two different varieties, I might have believed there had been a labeling mistake or something--which is the first of many lies the seller tried to convince me of when I tried to get my money back. In the end, the seller agreed to reimburse me while also telling me to keep the gloves. I was supposed to donate them or such. Think about that for a moment these quasi-medical-grade gloves were supposed to be worth $25+ per pair and the seller didn't even want them back.

The second product was a support brace from a company positioning itself as a medical equipment supplier. Again, I bought the brace not because of the 1312 glowing Amazon reviews, but because of all the websites that told me this was the best product of its class on the market. As with the carpal tunnel gloves, I was so impressed with what the websites were telling me that I bought several braces and several pairs of special compression socks for my daughter who has down's syndrome and needs special footwear. These medical supplies weren't cheap. $58 for one brace, as an example, and $30+ for each pair of the special socks.

The company looked legit--it too had dozens of related products all glowingly reviewed, along with all these websites telling me how great the product was. Imagine my dismay when I received are what I believe to be $5 products that were made in China. It took some doing, but I did finally get this seller to refund my money, but it cost me $12 in postage sending the products back to get it and a lot of frustration.

*It's important to point out that I ordered both products on the company website. I did not order the products at Amazon. However, the products were fulfilled by Amazon and shipped from Amazon's warehouses.*

After I finally got my money back on these purchases, I went back and looked at the products, the seller websites, all those related websites. I'm a sophisticated buyer, who knows not to trust any reviews at Amazon, and yet I still had been suckered into buying fraudulent products.

These sellers had built or paid their way into sophisticated consumer-oriented websites where hundreds of other products had been reviewed and compared. These sellers had created or bought dozens of customer testimonial websites. These sellers had bought and paid for a mind-boggling number of glowing product reviews at Amazon. These were mega operations, selling cheap knock-off products that weren't fit for use and using tens of thousands of fake reviews at Amazon to help them do it.

Thanks for reading, I’m William Robert Stanek, Microsoft’s #1 author for nearly 20 years, and author of over 250 topselling books.