The person behind the site buyamazonreviews.com is disputing a lawsuit filed by Amazon against sites that offer Amazon sellers the ability to buy reviews from Amazon customers.
Communicating via chat on the site, a man using the alias “Peter,” who identified himself as Mark Collins, the operator of Buy Amazon Reviews, had this to say in response to the lawsuit.
We do not post all 5 star review on all products. We ask sellers to ship their products in order to get reviews. We just help new or old sellers to get reviews. We inform them upfront that they have to provide some % price off promotional Codes So that Our People can buy your product at discounted rates and test their product and do reviews. They will only post honest reviews so those can be 1 star 2 star or 3 star as well But mostly and if they face any problem with their product they will inform us or to the seller about their product problems. So that way they can sell best quality products.
Our all reviewers are putting Disclaimer that they got free or discounted product in order to post their honest review. And we are just working here as a middleman. We do not pay any thing to the reviewers to post reviews.
In an FAQ on the site, however, Buy Amazon Reviews goes so far as to offer the businesses themselves the opportunity to write the reviews.
“You can either provide your own reviews or we can write them for you,” the FAQ reads. “We have in house writers who are skilled at writing custom reviews based on your specifications. After your order is made we collect some basic details so we can form custom reviews that will be used on your listing. Review length will be between 100 to 150 words.”
UPDATE: After this story was published, the text in that portion of the FAQ was changed to, “You cannot provide prewritten reviews. Reviews will be written from the reviewers only after using your product and they will write according to their choice or how they rate your product,” with a smiley-face emoticon. (Thanks to Joe Copeland of Crosscut for pointing this out.)
The home page of the site promises, “Never has it been easier to get multiple 4 and 5 star reviews on your Amazon product page. We provide real reviews from aged accounts with real buying activity. Most products in the Amazon marketplace will never even be seen. The more positive reviews you have the better your chances are.”
Amazon filed the suit in King County Superior Court against several of these sites, accusing them of trademark violations, unfair competition and deceptive acts, among other allegations. It’s the first suit of its kind by the Seattle e-commerce giant.
“While small in number, these reviews threaten to undermine the trust that customers, and the vast majority of sellers and manufacturers, place in Amazon, thereby tarnishing Amazon’s brand,” the suit says. “Amazon strictly prohibits any attempt to manipulate customer reviews and actively polices its website to remove false, misleading, and inauthentic reviews.”
Amazon is seeking damages including restitution, requesting an accounting of the alleged profits received by the sites.
