Amazon bans reviews in exchange for discounted products

[Stoked]

I know some of you guys sell on Amazon (and some don't) but just in case it's of interest Amazon has changed its TOS to state that you can no longer offer reduced or free products in exchange for reviews unless it's part of Amazon's own Vine program.

The exception to the rule is books, which to me is a little odd.

So far it seems the UK review guidelines have not been updated but I expect that to change.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/03/amazon-bans-incentivized-reviews-tied-to-free-or-discounted-products/

[Dave]

Personally I hope Amazon goes bust. Killing small businessses plus they can get away without paying taxes etc

[Joe@ScoreStore]

Personally I hope Amazon goes bust. Killing small businessses plus they can get away without paying taxes etc

That would be a happy day!

[R.O.T.]

Personally I hope Amazon goes bust. Killing small businessses plus they can get away without paying taxes etc

Amazon, eBay and Google. The world would be a better place without all of them.

[GreatLight]

Amazon, eBay and Google. The world would be a better place without all of them.

It's not just them, it's the Greed and want to control it all!!

We can but dream.

[Stoked]

I don't think we'd have a business if it wasn't for Google, and Amazon is helping at the moment. I cut my teeth selling on Ebay as a younger man so I can't really say it's all bad.

[GreatLight]

I don't think we'd have a business if it wasn't for Google, and Amazon is helping at the moment. I cut my teeth selling on Ebay as a younger man so I can't really say it's all bad.

In the early days I would agree, Google's product ads where reasonable, Amazon limited then number of sellers on a product, Ebay had a broad following, now Google's model is all about extracting all it can from every source, Amazon are worse, if you have a profitable volume product they will sell it themselves, Ebay seems to have been left with those that expect something for nothing, then moan.....

You are right most of us would not have or had a business if it wasn't for Google and EBay, but they are getting greedier which hurts smaller sellers with low budgets a lot more.

(Just an grumpy old seller....)

[Prettycool]

I've said this before, I think Tesco's' Asda & Sainsburys have really finished the high street butchers, bakers & green grocers and now Amazon are other major stores are taking over Google rankings online. Try Goggling just about everything and I'm sure Amazon will be on the 1st page along with other large stores who have unlimited budgets for seo and adword campaigns.

[R.O.T.]

By using Amazon, eBay, Google, etc. All we are doing is giving them the cash that they will use to eventually drive us out of business.

"Yet another grumpy old seller"

[Prettycool]

By using Amazon, eBay, Google, etc. All we are doing is giving them the cash that they will use to eventually drive us out of business.

"Yet another grumpy old seller"

So what can we do?

[R.O.T.]

Good question, I've never tried Amazon but I ditched eBay many years ago and concentrated on my own website when they started trying to dictate what I could and couldn't do in my own business. I stopped Google adwords about a year ago and while I did notice a small drop in orders the money it saved me was more than the profit I would have made on those orders.

With the money that saved me I have done some direct mail shots and a couple of door to door leaflet drops both of which have given a better ROI than any amount of Google Adwords. But it is different for all businesses. I do think though that now online advertising has got so expensive the more traditional methods are worth looking at again.

[Prettycool]

Agree Chris, we sell on Ebay but our prices are higher then our site and only because with the api link it only a push of a button to list on. If they developed a link on Amazon tomorrow I still wouldn't sell on their because of their copyright rules. We have a tiny adword campaign which I've decided to stop as I believe there's very little roi on this also.

Another grumpy old seller!

Paul

[Stoked]

I've said this before, I think Tesco's' Asda & Sainsburys have really finished the high street butchers, bakers & green grocers

That's definitely true to a point but actually there are some really great examples of all those traditional stores doing better than ever. The ones who were finished off (in my opinion) are those who failed to adapt to the times, and didn't meet the the needs of their customer base. The blame lies as much with the high street stores who thought they could do the same things and stay open in the face of a changing market as it does with the supermarkets.

If you're trying to complete with Amazon, Google, Ebay, Tesco etc on price and convenience of the same products you're going to lose. So you have to do something different I guess, go niche, become and expert, offer a higher quality product, they can't compete with that.