Amazon’s steps follow an earlier action taken in April, when Amazon sued several websites that sold fake customer reviews.
Advertisement
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) has tried to stop fake reviewers for a while without having much success. It also indicates that there could be monetary damages for these Fiverr users, as Amazon asks the court to make the defendants pay the court costs, attorney’s fees, and “additional and further relief”. Amazon also said most people offered their undercover investigators five star reviews for $5 each.
The o nline retail giant said in the lawsuit, filed in the United States on Friday, that its brand reputation is being tarnished by “false, misleading and inauthentic” reviews.
The defendants are identified as John Does 1 to 1,114 in the lawsuit.
A few have even arranged for empty boxes to be sent to them so they could appear to have bought the products they reviewed, Amazon says.
This time, Amazon is going after reviewers soliciting business on Fiverr, an online marketplace for freelancers.
“Fiverr has a take-down process we have used, but it doesn’t solve the root cause”, Amazon said in a statement.
Amazon made it clear that the lawsuit isn’t aiming at Fiverr, which offers a number of writing services.
“We continue to use a number of mechanisms to detect and remove the small fraction of reviews that violate our guidelines”, said Julie Law, a spokeswoman for Amazon.
A number of British authors are among those who may have their books withdrawn by the online retailer and potentially face legal action if they are found to have paid for the fabricated comments. Fiverr confirmed that it is working with the retailer to put an end to the problem.
Advertisement
“As Amazon noted, we have worked closely together to remove services that violate our terms of use, and respond promptly to any reports of inappropriate content”, Fiverr said in a statement. Sadly, over the years there have been many documented cases in which people try and game the system with paid reviews.
