Fighting Fake Reviews on Amazon

Chris: [00:00:00] Hey everybody, welcome back to Seller Performance Solutions. That's the ecommerceChris website for Amazon brand owners and sellers and everyone trying to figure out this Amazon ecosystem. Among them, Shane Barker of TraceFuse, who's been helping people try to figure out this giant mess of problems and solutions for a long time now, how many years have you been doing this?

Shane: Yeah, we've been about five and a half years ago.

Chris: Okay.

Shane: Yeah. Is when we started. Actually, we started the process of trying to figure it out took us about two years, and so we've been Live to the public for about three and a half years. Three and a half, four years.

Chris: Yeah. And of course the topic around product reviews never goes cold.

This is always hot, whether it's LinkedIn, podcasts, events, webinars, whatever. Do you think it's changed a lot in the last, like nine to 12 months, or do you think the core themes are kind of the same and it's just tweaking strategies or do you think [00:01:00] this is the year things really turn over for the whole discussion of how you get reviews?

Or how you deal with negative ones, you know?

Shane: Yeah. I think the thing is is, I mean, we see a little bit of change in how people are doing things. What I'm talking about, it's more like the fraud side of things and being attacked and what that might look like. Historically, I think people were a lot lazier.

They would hire VA, give them a few comments to write. They'd copy and paste it. I mean, that was a strategy. I think they're getting more intelligent in the sense that they're knowing, hey, now we know, they know what we're looking for. Like if you're a fraudster or somebody's gonna scam somebody, I've been on hundreds of podcasts and we've talked about what we look for, right?

Well guess what? That gives them some intel. And then we're always looking at what is the next thing that somebody's doing. So what's crazy about it though is if you're a seller and you're listening to this, which I'm sure obviously Chris, you got a huge following. At the end of the day, there's always gonna be those past reviews that have, that Amazon didn't do anything about.

Right? I mean, there's some that they catch. Which is millions a year or whatever the number is that they tell us. There's some that definitely make it through. And so for us, we're still working on so many of that from the old [00:02:00] strategy. Right. I mean, we can go back to when that ACE was created.

So if it was five years ago, you probably have five years of reviews that need to be taken care of. And then moving forward, we're always looking at the new strategies, the new black hat tactics or what people are using to be able to game the system. Yeah. And our goal is always to be able to figure that out and then be able to reverse engineer it and then include that in TraceFuse so that we can continue to protect sellers.

Chris: Yeah, the black Hat stuff has opened up wide now that Amazon's acknowledging how much Black hat's going on and also building teams around preventing it. It might not be great, it might not be robust, but at least there's something there where two, three years ago or back, four or five years ago when you started, it wasn't like that at all.

Shane: Yeah, it's on the radar for sure. And I do believe that Amazon wants to curb that as much as possible. But once again, they're also a huge platform and I think they're doing what they can. But at the end of the day, we're always gonna be there to be, we always say, we're like the backup quarterback, like if Amazon goes through and does everything they can and they get hurt, something happens.

We come in and we'll be able to take a look at those reviews and figure out what we can do to get the ones [00:03:00] removed that obviously violate Amazon's terms of service.

Chris: Yeah. And you work predominantly in the case system, which is different. We're kind of a compliment to what you do because we're doing escalation emails for people that contacting higher ups to get some of these egregious cases reviewed again or reviewed properly.

So I mean, in terms of the cases, would you say it's people kind of fumbling out of the gate the way they initiate them to begin with and that's what just gets them on the wrong? Path and you're helping people with that? Or are there other factors at play with how the cases are being handled that are different than let's say 12 months ago?

Shane: I mean, the way that we're handling the cases for the most part are the same. Really what's, and I've heard you talk about this a lot, is just a lot of people when they go to file cases, they file 'em wrong. Right? That's a problem. And that's the reason. That kind of touched on it earlier.

We did almost two years of testing, right? To be able to figure that out. We talked to people like yourself and people that are mentors that have been in this space, either worked at Amazon or have been doing this for so long. The goal there was to be able to file [00:04:00] cases the right way, because you can have all the information in the world, and if you file the case wrong, you've touched on this, you know that that's then, and you keep filing, you keep filing, you're gonna make Amazon mad. There's a certain way that you need to get things done. And Chris, you've known that. I won't say secret sauce, but it is a secret sauce. There's a strategy to it, right? At the end of the day, you guys have been hugely successful at that. So, we're always watching what you guys are doing as well, just because you guys have been so successful at doing that.

We wanna make sure that anything that we're filing, anything we're doing with Amazon is doing it the correct way. And so, we're both have that common goal in mind.

Chris: I think there's this going to be a separation. On the one hand, people went from the VAs, what you just talked about, having their VA do this kind of copy and paste stuff, and maybe they're going to AI now, so there's no VA, but it's the same kind of thing.

Without the right tweaks. I think people on the other hand, they're starting to understand strategy means something and you're not just throwing stuff at the wall.

Shane: Yeah.

Chris: And that's good news, because before that, it was, like you said, the VA approach of just [00:05:00] try to wear Amazon down.

Well, Amazon tends to wear you down. You don't wear them down.

Shane: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the key is what people realize. And if you're a seller, hopefully if you've been selling long enough, you realize this, that. Amazon doesn't really need you as much as you need them, which is a tough pill to swallow, right?

Yeah. At the end of the day, what we look at is, type products. If you're selling something that's not unique to Amazon, like you sell, these are the mugs that you sell, and there's 20 other people or 2000 other people that sell those mugs. Amazon says you gotta do this, and if you don't, guess what?

We're just gonna go with the next guy. So it's, you gotta realize that as a seller is like, Hey, not that Amazon doesn't love you, but at the end of the day, they don't necessarily need you. Right. Like you gotta really understand that like you are a guest on their platform. Yeah. Not to say that Amazon can't do some things better, I mean they're a huge platform.

There's a lot of people, there's a lot of moving pieces. That doesn't mean they're perfect. That doesn't mean Walmart's perfect. That doesn't mean tiktoks perfect. Like there's definitely nuances to the way that everything is being done. But at the end of the day it's, you know, I mean you gotta, if you're gonna be jumping on Amazon, as a seller, hopefully this isn't new information, but [00:06:00] you gotta be willing to take a few punches and accept it and you gotta get up and kind of clean your face up.

Say, okay, there we go. That was okay. Now we gotta go in for round two and three and four and six and 12 and 18, you know?

Chris: Yeah. I just hope people understand that when they get these fake negative reviews, whoever left it there understands the ecosystem, understands what cords to pull, at what point.

They've studied it, they've investigated it, they've tried it, they've done trial and error. And so it's not a random thing, and that means you have to up your game to counter that. As opposed to just like, oh, let's just flag it and get it to Amazon. Maybe it flies. Maybe it falls. I mean, no, the people who started this whole thing by leaving you a crappy review already understand how this works.

Shane: Yeah, they're well seasoned. I mean, I don't know any of these groups, but I would tend to believe that there's groups that, that actually, as we get rid of negative reviews, obviously there's big groups that are not just a putting up a review, oh, terrible product, but actually leaving, I'm saying somewhat of an educated [00:07:00] review, right?

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Shane: And we've seen that with supplements. We've seen that, historically for a long time. But we're starting to see more stuff now. It's like, oh, I, you know, or a pet product, oh, I tried this, little foofy, my dog tried this treat and had to go to the emergency room and lost his leg and now wears an eye patch.

And his, life expectancy was 20 years, now it's gonna be six months.

If I'm an owner, , I have a dog, which, you know, my dogs are loved. My wife loves my dogs more than most humans. I mean, she likes humans, but dogs are really the core. Humans are one thing.

Chris: Yeah.

Shane: Yeah. Dogs are easy for the most part, but if you're an owner and you read that and there's just a treat that you wanted to buy for your dog, are you gonna take that, the Pepsi challenge, right?

Are you gonna look at that and go, well, that's probably just a fake review. Let me do that. So we're seeing the reviews that are a lot more sophisticated, right? I don't think it's the, Hey, I'll write a bad review. Give you a product bad, write a bad review for $20. You get the product free, or whatever the the terms were out there. I believe now what they're doing is they're saying, Hey, I believe there's companies out there, um, once you don't know of any of them, but I do believe that it feels like it a [00:08:00] lot of them have like an equation to what works now. Because when you see that, you're like, oh my God.

How do I verify that Foofy didn't go to the emergency room, that poofy doesn't wear an eye patch and doesn't, you know, being a little facetious, but we've seen some pretty crazy stuff. So now we gotta look at that and say, okay, then how do we fight that now? How are we able to prove this?

Before we would just say, Hey, this buyer bought our products four times, gave us a one star review. That's not statistically possible. Yeah. We're not gonna keep buying products that we hate. Now we have to look at the other angle and, okay, now how do we prove that this is not true?

Because the Black hatters know the Amazon guidelines. They know what works. They've tested, as you said. So now they're going, well, that didn't work. That didn't work. Ooh, this did work. Let's do more of that. Right. That's the issue.

Chris: Yeah. And we should, you did a post on LinkedIn the other day about this.

The buyer who kept buying, even though they hate the product. that's the thing, like if people think, give them an inch, they'll take a yard and they get away with stuff like that, they try to get away with a bunch of other stuff.

And that's the idea. I'm trying to pound into people's heads, like, draw the line, not just for this, for anything, abuse or attack [00:09:00] related with your brand on Amazon. Draw a line in the sand today. People kind of make excuses to me. I mean, especially like when I'm at events. We just did this meetup event in New York recently and Vegas for Prosper Show and wherever I am, I always tell people like, deal with it now.

Don't make excuses for why you don't need to do it. Don't say, oh, this is just a one-time thing. You actually don't know unless you can see into the future or you're clairvoyant. You don't know if it's a one-time thing. They might be coming back this time next month.

Shane: Let's put it this way.

If it worked, you don't think they're gonna come back. I mean, really, let's just do it logically. Like it's like if something worked right, if I was able to go into your safe and steal a thousand bucks from you, you can notice you don't think I'm not coming back next week to steal another thousand bucks.

Like I couldn't get in your house fast enough. Not that still money from your Chris, if I was able to get in your safe.

Chris: I don't even have a safe, just so everyone knows.

Shane: I know. You know, I know. I looked, I mean, I, that's, I mean, from research I've done.

Chris: That's a fireplace behind me. That's not like a giant, it's not really a giant [00:10:00] combination safe, just so people know. Yeah, I keep it in the chimney just so you know.

As long as you never start a fire, you can keep as much cash in your chimney as you want, I guess.

Shane: That's awesome.

Chris: Soft target versus hard target. If you look soft to all these people, they're going to keep.

Coming back for more, like you said.

Shane: Yeah. That's the hard part is, and they're continuously getting educated on the new ways. I mean, there's strategies, not ethical strategies, but strategies behind that. And there's people that don't have a problem with the ethics and just say, Hey, listen, this is a money game.

And guess what? If they can come and crush you and then crush the next person and the next person, you gotta stand up for yourself. Right? Yeah. It's kinda like the bully you gotta figure out, what are you gonna do to stop this? Because it's not going away. You're just because you're ignoring the bully doesn't mean that tomorrow the bully's not gonna be there.

Right? Like I always call it, you know, the ostrich in the, in the head, in the sand. Just put your head in the sand, like, that's fine for a little bit until you pull your head out. You're gonna have the same problems and you can put your head back in, but then you're gotta pull it back out. It's you're, you're not getting rid of [00:11:00] the, not looking or educating yourself on what is going on is not the solution, right? That's gonna be the demise of your product and expecting Amazon to react to everything that you do, that also could be a demise of your product, right? You've gotta go and, get yourself, people like yourself and people like myself at Trace Fuse and a lot of great other people out there that have sold on Amazon, that know the industry.

And you just gotta listen. You don't know what's going on. You gotta educate yourself, get in these communities and figure that out.

Chris: Yeah. I mean, what mistakes do you see people making? Is it just using AI the wrong way? Is that the main thing or is it, services that are just kind of copying and pasting the old fashioned way with VAs?

What are the one or two major flaws in, in process you see people doing?

Shane: Well? I mean, first is a, just filing wrong, right? I mean, you see that all day long, just putting the wrong information in a case filing, which, you know, Amazon, they're looking, most people at Amazon aren't gonna look at this if you're not hitting.

Certain things. It doesn't click for them, they're just, it's gonna get ignored. I mean, that's really what it comes down to. The other side is, is great, you can use ai, but if it doesn't [00:12:00] fit with the format, it doesn't fit the way that Amazon wants it. It's once again, it's only as good as the email that you're sending out, which is worth like a penny.

Right? So, I mean, that's the problem is like you can go and try to figure it out. If you went on a public forum, you see thousands of people using the same template, guess what? Amazon's gonna know about it. Like it's not, this isn't a new thing. This isn't a private template.

At, at the end of the day, there is a format, there's a way that you need to file things. As I said earlier, we learned it only through trial and error in the beginning, which took us a long, long time. You obviously have worked at Amazon. You obviously have a long history of doing this. You're the number one person in the industry doing it.

It's a no brainer, but at the end of the day. The other thing that I see that's really, really crushing people is filing too many times. Like you look at Amazon and Amazon, you assume that Amazon, you know, if you go and knock on the door 50 more times that Amazon's gonna open the door and be like, oh my gosh, I didn't know you were there and thank you for knocking on my door so many times.

Like, you can get in trouble for that. Like that's not the way that it works. You kicking on the door doesn't make it so that Amazon goes, oh, did you need some fresh [00:13:00] baked cookies Come on in for some milk? That's not gonna happen. Right. What you're gonna do is get blacklisted.

Chris: That's where your work and ours overlaps a lot, is talking to people about why did you send for us?

It's like an appeal for reinstatement. Why did you send the same or similar things to all these different places without changing it? Without changing your ways? And the answer, I guess, is the same every time, which is, I was hoping that the 15th time would be different.

Shane: Yeah.

Chris: Frustration. And I didn't know any other way of doing it.

Yeah,

Shane: yeah, yeah. Exactly. Well, and that's the thing, you only know what you know. Right. And so I'll tell you, that's one of the biggest things, even outside of the Amazon space that I learned as a, you know, as an entrepreneur and you know, and all these types of things, is that, guess what? Like I. When I was younger, I was, you know, call it Shane, 1.0.

I was, I'll do it myself. Oh, I can save some time. Oh, it's not a problem. I'll save some money. In fact, I have a post coming out about that. It's like, oh, it took me 20 hours to figure out, man, I saved, thank God I didn't give Chris his thousand bucks. Right? Yeah. It's like, [00:14:00] man, I saved all kinds of, oh, actually, but I'm $500 an hour times 10, so I actually lost $5,000.

Right. Plus the time and everything else. So the way I look at this is like, Hey, listen, if there's somebody else that can do this, if you wanna go save money, if you don't have the money, I get that. If you do have the money. You gotta figure out where do you wanna spend your time? And if it's going and figuring out what Chris does, you only have what, how many years of experience in working at Amazon and also doing this.

So, you know, I mean, you could 17, wait. Yeah. I mean, you could figure out what Chris does. 18, actually 18 years of experience. Yeah. You could totally figure that out in an hour or two, maybe, maybe 30 minutes. I don't know.

Chris: I don't know if it's that. I think it's just they think I can save time and money by using ai because AI of course is so, is so rich and powerful now, and it's just like.

It's not that advanced yet, you know?

Shane: Well, and also AI is only as good as the information you put into it.

Chris: Yeah.

Shane: So this is the thing, if you put the wrong information, or this is what you think, how a case filing should be done, doesn't matter what you give to ai, it's not gonna be right because you don't even understand the, the basics of how [00:15:00] to be able to file the case.

So,

Chris: yeah,

Shane: you know, once again, AI is, as I talk about this with AI and all the other stuff. You put in a bad prompt, you put in something that's wrong, AI's gonna give you the wrong information. I'm not saying AI's perfect 'cause it absolutely is not where, we're not that stage where anything you put in is absolutely magical and perfect, but that doesn't mean we get the same thing with ours.

People are like, well, how you know the AI that you guys use? Well, what we use, we started it three years ago before AI was even popular. This is not, we don't go, just grab one quick prompt and throw it in there. Right. I mean, at the end of the day, we're constantly testing new things and figuring out ways to file with Amazon.

'cause things change, right? Yeah. So what you're looking at is like. That prompt and you going in and trying that. I don't know of anybody that I've talked to that has viewed a AI and had success with it. 'cause most of them reach out to us and say, Hey, we tried ai, it didn't work. And I always ask 'em, Hey, how are things going?

Were you able to move any reviews? And most people say no. I've had maybe one person that said like 1%, which I was kind of debating whether that was true. But you know, I was like, Hey, that's awesome, right? Yeah. But you know, I'd love for sellers to have more success with it. The problem with it is, is the [00:16:00] system changes and the target moves.

So that becomes very challenging. That's the thing, right? That's the

Chris: thing.

Shane: Yeah.

Chris: That's the thing. If AI was so wonderful, I wouldn't hear from half of these people. They're coming to me. Yeah, of course. Because it didn't work.

Shane: That's exactly it. Yeah, that's exactly what it, it.

Chris: You know,

Shane: rock, rock on. But guess what?

Yeah. The, the minute that that gets figured out, they're gonna change something. They're gonna have to do something new. So it comes down to having that knowledge and you know, AI's not always gonna pick up on the new things that Amazon's doing. Guess who will somebody like yourself that has a pulse on what's going on, right?

When you're in there every single day seeing what's going on, AI's not gonna be in there every day seeing what's going on. You're in the trenches, seeing what's going on. You're seeing the emails, you're seeing that like. There's some value in ai, but it's not going to replace what, what you can do because you have the knowledge.

You've been doing this for so long, you understand. You have certain people, you have connections. You have people that you know, like these are all valuable assets that AI doesn't have access to.

Chris: Yeah, the AI tools, I mean, there's no degree of strategy.

Shane: Yeah.

Chris: For second, third, and fourth. It's not playing chess [00:17:00] with ai.

You, you might be playing the actual game of chess, but not Amazon chess.

Shane: But, and then what about responsibility? If something bad happens and it was an AI thing, it's on you. Yeah. Guess what? If you do it and they're paying you, guess what you gotta perform. So there's also that, that other side of it is AI's not gonna go, Hey, sorry about that, and give you your money back.

AI is ai, right? Like so you, you have to look at that. For me, I look at the the thousand things that a seller has to do. And if you wanna go figure those all out and try to figure it on your own, you have time. Uh, I don't think it's the best way to do it. Old Shane used to do that, and I'll figure it out.

I'll save a buck. And now the new Shane, I can't delegate fast enough. You know, I'm like, man, I wanna get this off my plate. Like how can I continue to grow my business and keep that going? And that's, I look at people like yourself and that's why we sent you guys so many people and 'cause we know you guys will crush it, like it's a no brainer for us.

Chris: Yeah. Thank you for doing that.

Shane: Yeah, of course, man.

Chris: So if people want to, speaking of us, referring people to you, if people wanna reach Shane 2.0 or 3.0, whatever version you're on. Yeah. Best place to find [00:18:00] you.

Shane: Yeah, yeah. If you wanna meet. I am. I have to check today. I think I'm at 4.0 today, which proud of Okay.

You're. I know what that means though. I mean, two and three were just a mess anyways. But anyways, yeah, we're for today so I'm a better person so, um, no. What they can get in contact with us is obviously trace fuse.ai and that's T-R-A-C-E-F-U-S e.ai. And then you can also reach out to me directly. It is just shane@tracefuse.ai reach out to us.

Also, we have an Amazon review, a free tool that they can go in and put in their ASINs. You go to the website up top, they can put in an asin, get a report. ROI calculator all the fun stuff for free, doesn't cost anything. And they can take a look at that and see if it makes sense to go after those reviews and be able to knock those things down to get your star ratings back up and get your BSR where it needs to be.

Chris: Awesome stuff. All right, thanks Shane Barker for joining me today, salt Performance Solutions and we'll, I think this is your second podcast, so we'll definitely have you back again in the future. Anyone has any questions for Shane, you know where to reach him now. And thanks again for listening in. We'll catch you next [00:19:00] time.