Amazon Disputes Hacker Claims Of Ranking Manipulation
Edel Dieringer
Recently One of the brands I consult for was the victim of false IP infringment claims that were made against them on their own branded products by a malicious seller who was angry they had been asked not to sell a particular ASIN because it was not a product this company makes or sells. In short it was counterfeit. The seller reported three of the top selling products and the ASINs were suppressed and the inventory at Amazon was labeled defective. For 3 weeks each product was not available to shoppers and Amazon never even sent the "contact the rights owner" email that it always does to notify someone they've violated someone's IP! The first two times It took me almost 6 days just to figure out that this was the cause of the supressed listings and defective inventory. Writing to amazons notice-dispute team was futile. They at one point told me to write to myself to seek permission to sell again since I was the agent on the claim that originally angered the seller, they were so confused they couldn't understand WE were the brand owner and that someone had falsely filed this claim. Clearly they failed to check to see if the reporting person had brand registry. But why did they not ever notify us we had been removed from an ASIN along with the fake email of the rights owner?! It happened three times and it was an absolute devastation. Hundreds of cases opened tons of hours wasted on the phone and re-explaining and explaining again and then we explaining what happened to the customer service reps one after the other, at least $200,000 in lost sales. So frustrating. I love this article but I hope it doesn't fall into the wrong hands this is basically a recipe for how to take down your competition hopefully only morally sound people read this blog!
Amazon later said that it had no policy of de-ranking lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender material, blaming the change first on a "glitch"[338] and then on "an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error" affecting 57,310 books;[339] a hacker claimed responsibility for the metadata loss.[340]