Amazon astroturfing

[unixronin]

After buying an anti-snoring mouthpiece from a third-party seller on Amazon, reader Bob received an email from the company offering him a free mouthpiece in exchange for a five-star review.  He noted this attempted bribe in his Amazon review, and Amazon deleted it.  Twice.

[...]

(via randwolf)

Comments

[otherbill.livejournal.com]

The product in question is here (http://www.amazon.com/Quality-Tonight-Anti-Snore-Guarantee-Silence/dp/B001IVF8TS/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=hpc&qid=1240518205&sr=8-9).

A few points:

• The product is no longer available. The question of who marked the product as unavailable (Amazon or the seller) is an unknown, as are the reasons why.
  
• Amazon product reviews are just that, product reviews. This was an issue with the seller; there's a separate area for seller reviews. As such, Amazon had a clear reason for removing the reviews.
  
• Admittedly, the previous point gets murky when a product is only available from one third-party seller.
  
• While Amazon did remove the reviews, there is no indication that they ignored the concerns raised therein. After all, the product is no longer available.
  

[otherbill.livejournal.com]

(Then again, there is admittedly no indication that Amazon delisted the product over the astroturfing concerns, either. I suspect we'll never know.)