Amazon has banned thousands of top reviewer accounts, data shows

Data shows that Amazon has increased its frequency of
account closures this year.
Getty/Mark
Makela

• Amazon
  routinely removes accounts and vendors that violate its review
  policies, but new data shows that it has drastically stepped up
  its enforcement this year.
• Members of the subreddit r/TheGreatAmazonPurge
  have tracked the removal of some of Amazon’s top reviewers. A
  bot connected to the subreddit tracks the Amazon-published
  list of the top 10,000 reviewers and adds accounts to a
  list when it notices an account and all reviews associated with
  it have been deleted. 
• Since the bot started running in 2016, it has tracked more
  than 5,700 account deletions.
• Maintaining the integrity of reviews is critical for Amazon,
  as many shoppers rely on them to inform  purchases.
• Amazon said in a statement to Business Insider that it takes
  “forceful action against both reviewers and bad actors by
  banning or suppressing reviews that violate our guidelines,
  regardless of top reviewer status.”

Amazon
takes its reviews seriously.

The e-commerce giant’s efforts to curb abuse of its reviews
system came under scrutiny earlier this year
when a large number of Amazon customers found their accounts
deleted for what the company said was a violation of its
terms of service.

Amazon has appeared to step up the rate at which it bans top
reviewers, according to data provided to Business Insider by
members of the subreddit r/TheGreatAmazonPurge.
A bot connected to the subreddit has tracked the deletion of top
Amazon accounts over the last two years. 

Amazon ranks its reviewers not only in terms of the number of
reviews they have written, but also by how many customers have
indicated the reviews were helpful for them. 

The data offers a rare glimpse at Amazon’s pattern of banning top
accounts.

Samantha Lee/Business Insider

The group runs a script — or bot — that scans the
Amazon-published list of the top 10,000 reviewers and adds
accounts to a list when it notices an account and all reviews
associated with it have been deleted. The process is run manually
every day.

As of October 29, the bot has tracked 5,705 total account bans,
or purges.

The data, which stretches back more than two years, points to an
increase in the number of purges per day in late 2017, which
continued into spring 2018. The trend could indicate that Amazon
stepped up enforcement during that period.

The closures then tapered off during the summer before starting
to increase again later this year.

Samantha Lee/Business Insider

The banning of Amazon accounts has been so prevalent this year
that it became news as customers banded together in protest.

Many who were banned from Amazon claimed they didn’t know what
was going on, and that they didn’t knowingly violate any rules.
The email Amazon sends to inform account holders that they have
been banned is boilerplate, leaving some to wonder what they did
wrong.

Business Insider covered the
banning prominently, including a deep dive that
included interviews with 29 Amazon shoppers and
sellers. That reporting uncovered a vast underworld of
pay-for-play schemes by vendors who try to get positive Amazon
reviews by any means necessary, including offering free items in
the form of PayPal gifts or gift cards.

Amazon changed its terms of service in 2016 — around when the bot
was created — to ban this kind of behavior, but it still
persists.

In a statement, Amazon told Business Insider that it takes
reviewer fraud seriously.

“We know that millions of customers make informed buying
decisions everyday using customer reviews,” an Amazon
spokesperson said.

They continued: “We take this responsibility seriously and
defend the integrity of reviews by taking aggressive action to
protect customers from dishonest parties who attempt to abuse the
reviews system. We take forceful action against both reviewers
and bad actors by banning or suppressing reviews that violate our
guidelines, regardless of top reviewer status, and suspend, ban
or pursue legal action against bad actors, regardless of sales
performance.”

Amazon needs its reviews to feed its powerful
online-shopping engine.

“It’s a virtuous cycle — the more reviews, the more buys.
The more buys, the more reviews. The more buys, the higher your
rank in search and the more sales you get,” Alice Kim, owner of
online cosmetics brand Elizabeth Mott, told USA
Today in March 2017.

Getty/Spencer Platt

Reviews give customers more confidence to purchase online,
but the system doesn’t work if customers don’t trust
them. 

“We give more weight to newer, more helpful reviews, apply
strict criteria to qualify for
the 
Amazon
 verified purchase
badge, and enforce a dollar amount requirement to participate in
our community,” Amazon’s statement continued.

“Customers can report suspicious reviews 24 hours a day, 7
days a week, and we investigate each claim. Customer reviews are
one of the most valuable tools we offer for making informed
purchase decisions and we work hard to make sure they are doing
their job.”