Is Amazon Putting Greed Ahead of Their Ethical, Moral and Legal Obligations? Another Company Fern & Willow With 100% Fake Reviews

Amazon started a new service that shows Amazon Hot New Releases but Amazon is doing little to nothing to stop the massive amount of fake reviews on their site, even after having it documented for them. Fake reviews and fake companies receive a big bang and advantage from Amazon when launching new products, which we have demonstrated in several articles. Amazon is giving another asymmetric advantage to the fake review cheaters that also launch new products and get listed as Hot New Releases.

How does a company achieve a successful new product launch and get a Hot New Release award?

The #1 Most Successful and Cost Effective Way to Succeed on Amazon: Use Illegal Fake Reviews

The fastest way to achieve new product success is buying fake reviews at $5 per pop. So for $100 you could have twenty 5-Star reviews and make the list– it’s that simple for a company to earn an Amazon Choice Badge. Over 80% of adults say they read the reviews before making their purchase.

This is a pretty simple scheme perpetrated by off-shore companies with little to lose. First, they have almost no investment in the US, so they have no financial risk if they get caught. Most don’t even fund a US website. Secondly, they have an alternative brand built so if the first brand gets caught, they can immediately relabel the products and continue pushing them aggressively– or start another quick relaunch already set up as a backstop.

Many of these companies already have that second company doing business out of China and India. So with these redundancies built into their business plan they are even more aggressive launching with fake reviews. Fake reviews are illegal but since almost nothing is done and this has worked well for many years (even today), it is by far the most successful way to launch a new product on Amazon that we could identify.

The #2 Cost Effective Way to Succeed on Amazon: Buy Amazon Advertising

The second way to get a new product launch is buying heavy advertising through Amazon.  We calculate this to be about 180 times more expensive per review, with no certainty of the ratings.  Due to the massive cost associate with advertising, it’s mostly the bigger brands that use this approach, leveraging an already known product variation.

The advertising works far better with 100 -1,000 5-Star reviews, and that’s where the fake reviews farms step in– especially if you see they have an Amazon Best Choice Badge or Best Seller Badge (many companies have achieved this award using fake reviews).  The more advanced and successful cheaters now do both, advertise and pay for fake reviews. They are using their fake reviews to advertise their high number of 5-Star ratings and their unethically earned Amazon badges.

The #3 Cost Effective Way to Succeed on Amazon: Have a Successful Home-run Product

Even though this is what most people want to believe is the best way to achieve success in the Amazon Marketplace, it’s the hardest path.  If the product launch is in a competitive field you won’t even make it on the first page without some kind of outside influence. Being on the second or third page means you will never receive the reviews needed to move up significantly. All the while you know that companies have been caught posting five or six fake 5-star reviews every day and Amazon does nothing. One expert claimed it takes an average of 300 units sold for each genuine review.

Amazon knows which reviews are genuine and which are fake. They could stop this practice tomorrow if they wanted to.  We believe it’s too profitable for Amazon to stop this now, and too ugly and entrenched a problem for them to admit. They know their moral and legal obligations, but still repeatedly nothing is done.

Imagine trying to provide an honest product with the best price against a competitor flooding the market with fake reviews for years– it’s a no-risk business model! They have an asymmetric advantage. So even if you launch a superior product, you can sit in Amazon purgatory forever.

To date, we’ve had only one company come to us and claim Amazon has removed proven fake reviews, but that was in Italy. We have not see one fake review removed by Amazon that we can document, and every article we write is sent directly to Jeff Bezos at Amazon, the Department of Justice, and the members of the Congressional Consumer Protection and Commerce Committee.

Since we started reporting on this fraud, most of the companies we identified have become even more emboldened, such as Ebanel. Amazon is well aware of their past frauds but (shocking!) again nothing was done. Amazon allows fake reviews; Ebanel appeared to never stop habitually buying fake reviews even at the same time Amazon was claiming they had taken appropriate action. The misconduct by Amazon is shocking and contrary to everything they tell the public, Congress and the media. Serial consumer fraud runs wild on the site. I wish Amazon would come clean.

It appears Amazon and the DOJ prosecuted one company in the last couple of years (praised in the press at that time) with the understanding that their are hundreds of new companies registering with Amazon every day. Many of them are offshore with the idea of using fake reviews once they are approved.  As the Amazon marketplace gets tougher and more entrenched for all the competitors, today offshore companies must believe they have a shot at success, and I don’t believe it’s by spending capital on advertising because most would have built a website first.

Fern & Willow: 100% Fake Reviews

This week Fern & Willow launched using the same old fake review scam. Even though it’s obvious all the reviews are fake, Amazon (Jeff Bezos) will review them and of course nothing will be done.  All eight reviews we looked at had at least two other common reviews of almost unknown products– meaning without doubt if you study fake reviews Fern & Willow uses fake reviews to launch news services.

PRODUCT: Fern&Willow-Memory Foam Travel Pillow for Neck, Chin, Lumbar and Leg Support – for Traveling on Airplane

At least Fern & Willow has a website that lists an actual address. It appears their company headquarters is an old run-down house in South Hampton, England (and they claim they sell high quality goods!). Here are Fern & Willow’s 100% fake reviews. Notice how many Amazon Choice badges and Number 1 New Release badges are associated with with the same fake review farm accounts as Fern & Willow.

Reviewer AimV Rated:

Fern & Willow  2 times
ZAMAT  2 times Amazon’s Choice
Toughergun
JW Pet  Amazon’s Choice
Casmonal  Number 1 New Release
Venus To Mars Amazon’s Choice
Soulcker Amazon’s Choice
Homder  Amazon’s Choice
DB DEGBIT
ProCase
Soulcker Amazon’s Choice
MoFut  Amazon’s Choice

Reviewer Trafalgrim Rated:

Fern & Willow
Homder  Amazon’s Choice
ZAMAT  Amazon’s Choice
Simdevanma
La Milano 2
Leviton 2 times Electrical switch Amazon’s Choice
Faranzi Amazon’s Choice
IBL  Amazon Choice
MoFut 2 times Amazon Choice

Reviewer MBueno Rated:

Faranzi Amazon’s Choice
Casmonal 2 times  Number 1 New Release
Travelambo 2times
Toughergun 2 times
Homder  2 times Amazon’s Choice
Fern & Willow 2 times
ZAMAT   Amazon’s Choice
Venus To Mars Amazon’s Choice
DB DEGBIT
Aumox
Boncas  2 timesAmazon’s Choice
XIRON Amazon’s Choice

Reviewer Travelin’ Rated:

Casmonal  2 times Number 1 New Release
ToyerBee 2 times
La Milano
Fern & Willow 2 times
DB DEGBIT
ZAMAT   Amazon’s Choice
RayLove
Vine Nutrition Hair grow Amazon’s Choice
Alpenglow Solutions
La Milano

Reviewer Mariana López Rated:

Toughergun
Fern & Willow
DB DEGBIT
Homder  2 times
NOW Foods 2 Amazon’s Choice

Reviewer Stephen Rated:

Fern & Willow
Homder  2 times
La Milano 3 times

Reviewer bonnita345 Rated:

Homder  3 times
Boncas 3 times Amazon’s Choice
Fern & Willow
La Milano 2 times
Oprol
ZAMAT   Amazon’s Choice

Reviewer Jon S. Rated:

Fern & Willow
XIRON
Homder 1# New Release

If you know about any Amazon fake review issues, please send it to: CommunalNews1@gmail.com