This is fairly typical of my dealings with Amazon - I love their selection, I love buying from them, and they generally take care of me, but their online customer service is total crap. I don't know if their email is outsourced to Bangalore or they have a stupid AI (it's hard to tell the difference) or what, but I have only once gotten a satisfactory (or even relevant) response from them.

However if you call them or otherwise manage to get into contact with a real human being the outcome has always been highly satisfactory.

So congrats on this one Amazon and you might consider taking another look at your crappy online support, which is like a huge hairy wart on the tip of your shapely nose.

@oldtaku:

I actually have had success into contacting Amazon via email, where on the phone it went nowhere.

Their removal of the price protection policy has since made me discontinue the Amazon Prime. I found that a good reason to shop with them, without it, they aren't much different than local stores.

That and they don't manage their third party sellers very well. There seems to be a good number of people selling bootleg DVDs. When I mean bootleg, ones never even released on DVD. Yet they can managed to catch and delete this review?

For those who missed my comment on the previous post, here it is again:

Do note there are TWO PLACES to post reviews on Amazon.com. You can post a review for the product OR you can post a review for the seller.

This was a case of the buyer being mistaken where to post his review on the "bribe". He should be posting that on the seller feedback, NOT the product review.

However, Amazon customer service should've told the buyer where the appropriate place to leave feedback in regards to the bribe is.

For example I chose a random product:
Product Reviews: [www.amazon.com]
Seller Feedback: [www.amazon.com]

Peg also said while Amazon should be paying attention to complaints like this from any venue, the most effective way to tell them about problems with third-party sellers is via the "Report A Community Rules Violation" page: www.amazon.com/gp/help/reports/contact-us

You know, even just tacking this on to their auto-response to complaints against sellers in product reviews would be an improvement.

But their review guidelines should be updated to include the fact that seller reviews should go elsewhere. I just went to a page to leave a review for a product (just to see what it looks like) and although there's a link to some rules the one about seller reviews isn't there.

@krunk4ever: I'm sorry, but I disagree with you. There is absolutely no point in posting seller feedback if that feedback is not visible on the product page.

@oldtaku: I have had satisfactory luck with their email customer service but it took forever to get a reply. Their phone customer service was horrible. I would not have called but there were issues and things I didn't order were being charged to my card. The CSR was combative and it took forever for him to get around to actually solving the problem.

Amazon has got to clean up their act with 3rd party sellers. If they don't they will start to suffer the same problems that Ebay did with people leaving after being burned by questionable sellers too many times.

It took me months to get a product from a 3rd party vendor that Amazon showed in stock. I had to file a refund request with Amazon before they would respond to an email. Only two orders with 3rd party vendors actually had the item in stock.

@consumerfan: Agreed. As a consumer, I'd want to know if my buying the product would open me up to email bribery.

@bohemian: I already purchase from Amazon itself only -- no dodgy third parties for me.

Good for Amazon.

I'm glad to hear they have a policy in place to check the misbehavior of errant third-party vendors.

@oldtaku: It looks like you're saying Bangaloreans aren't real people. Just saying.

@MMD: It might....depending on the seller. There are some product with over a hundred sellers. Do you really think its appropriate to put this in the product review?

Of course not. No sane person would. This goes in the seller review. If people are too lazy or dumb to check out the seller (WHICH YOU HAVE TO DO IN ORDER TO SELECT A PRODUCT THAT ISN'T SOLD BY AMAZON) then you deserve what you get.

This is a good outcome. What about the recent instances of people getting banned for returning too much? Just curious for a follow up!

This is exactly what I said happened and exactly what I predicted Amazon would do about it. Sometimes companies do not do things to screw us. Sometimes they just screw up.

@krunk4ever: But the seller of this product was also the manufacturer... so I think he did the right thing in the first place.

@krunk4ever:

That issue has been brought up and discussed. The problem though is OP(from what I could gather) had already rated seller highly and couldn't go back and update it after the bribe email. He THEN put it in product reviews and was told(correctly) that it couldn't go there. The bigger issue is the CS person should have escalated the bribe issue, but didn't.

I am glad to see Amazon is trying. I am a little surprised this issue came up,because I see the seller feedback in product reviews all the time.

@consumerfan:

The problem is the product and the seller are two different things. In this case they are the same, but who is to say in the future another company or Amazon itself will not also offer the product?

That is why the quality of the product must to the only review in product reviews. You do not want a crappy seller to bring down the product itself. It is not helpful. You are making two decisions-to buy the product or not, and then where to buy it from.

Separating the two is in general the best way to handle it, and that what Amazon was attempting to do.

@frank64: Sorry, I meant my above post to reply to krunk4ever.

Thank god for this, because there isn't a convenience store in the known universe where I can buy a vibrator, gallon of milk and firewire sync cable for a 3G ipod.

You know, this happens ALL THE TIME at Amazon (pay to play). A few years ago I did alot of christmas shopping on Amazon and ended up getting alot of stuff through their affiliates (before I knew better). In some cases, the shipping costs for the items was as high as the price of the item that I was getting. When I left negative comments in my review EVERY ONE OF THEM contacted me and agreed to reverse the shipping and credit my CC if I removed my review or edited it to remove the negative comments.

The rating and reviews system at Amazon is what helped build the trust, loyalty, and usefulness of the brand back when the web was young. They should always remember that the integrity of that system is at the core of the success of their business and take all necessary steps to protect it.

@ShadowFalls: @bohemian: Amazon.com gets millions of new 3rd party sellers a year. something around 1% of them are bogus or disreputable. They do their best to find and remove those but it's a lot to sift through. That's why they have the "Report A Community Rules Violation" page to help find them. Also if you are really worried about the 3rd party sellers only buy from Amazon itself like j-o-h-n does.

Seems like a huge kick in the nuts to everyone who said that Amazon acted appropriately yesterday.

That wholly useless musing aside, I'm glad to see that Amazon did the right thing here.

@oldtaku: A couple of years back, Amazon corrected an issue I had in a hugely satisfactory way. Now it seems that I'm going through hell just to get them to deliver something I ordered from them a month ago. Something has changed somewhere in the meantime, and it's not working out well for Amazon...

@Cyberxion101: Shit. I totally forgot to mention that the satisfactory conclusion was a result of Amazon's awesome (at the time...) phone support. Reaching someone who can help me over the phone has been an exercise in futility, and e-mailing these folks just produces a canned response. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, or maybe it's an indication that the company's customer support has gone down the crapper in the last couple of years.

@frank64: If the results are the same, the distinction is pointless. That said, as long as it leads to improvements in the future, it can be pretty easy to forgive them for their mistakes.

@frank64: IIRC, you were already called out on this one. IN THIS CASE, the buyer was 100% correct to post about the problem in the product ratings, because the manufacturer contacted him about astroturfing. He was reporting misbehavior by the manufacturer. The fact that the manufacturer is the seller isn't even relevant.

Glad I could help! I wrote the executive team on OP's behalf and got this response:

Hello,

Thank you for calling the article to our attention. It is against our policy to have merchants solicit favorable reviews in exchange for gifts and we have suspended the merchant responsible for the scheme. Additionally, it is not our policy to arbitrarily delete reviews that fall within our guidelines. We've corrected that problem as well and will work to ensure we do better next time.

We appreciate your feedback and hope to see you again soon.

Please let us know if this e-mail resolved your question:

If yes, click here:
[www.amazon.com]
If not, click here:
[www.amazon.com]

Please note: this e-mail was sent from an address that cannot accept incoming e-mail.

To contact us about an unrelated issue, please visit the Help section of our web site.

Best regards,

Adele S.
Amazon.com
We're Building Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company
[www.amazon.com]

@Cyberxion101: Well, the results aren't the same really, There is no seller feedback in the product review section. The resolution was actually better because all the suspect reviews were taken down and the seller suspended.

Also, when people suggested a nefarious reason for Amazons actions, I think it was important to really look at the issue from the company's point of view. It actually makes it easier to come to a satisfactory resolution. It goes against the blame the company dogma, but that is OK in my book.

@consumerfan:

I guess I don't get it.

When looking at an item on Amazon that is listed by a third party seller, if I click on the seller, I can see the seller's reviews. Why should it be on the product page? On the product page, I expect to see reviews of the product itself.

The same product is often sold by several different sellers.

This probably won't stop me from buying from them. Thanks to Consumerist commenters, I know how to check out the reviews for shills and other squirmy info.

@Cyberxion101: No one was in complete agreement. We all agreed there was a legitimate issue about the bribery. We just correctly thought that the product reviews were not the right place to deal with it. No kick in the nuts for us.