While you might think it would be great to receive a never-ending stream of free tech stuff from Amazon, a couple from near Boston who are receiving just that eventually got weirded out by the whole thing and just want it to stop.

Michael and Kelly Gallivan never ordered any of it, and after five months of deliveries — all from China and which have so far included everything from bluetooth speakers and humidifiers to phone chargers and flashlights — they’ve had enough. But ending it is proving a challenge.

With a couple of items turning up every week, the Gallivans became worried they might end up having to pay for it all. There were no sender addresses or invoice slips with the packages, making them difficult to trace and impossible to return. Amazon asked Mike for order numbers but of course he didn’t have any. All the company could say with any certainty was that all of the items were ordered using gift cards.

“[Amazon] told us to send them back to the distribution facility in Lexington, Kentucky, but by that time we’d received a lot more of these things and it became kind of like, ‘This is ridiculous, trying to carry that plan out,’” Mike told the BBC on Sunday, February 11.

Desperate to find a solution, Mike googled “unordered packages from Amazon” and several articles showed up describing a practice known as “brushing.”

The scam, which has actually been going on for a number of years, enables an online seller to submit positive reviews for their own products via fake accounts. Hiding behind one of the fake accounts, the online seller — or more likely a brushing firm hired by the seller — goes through the usual process of searching for an item on Amazon (or another ecommerce site) before making a purchase. This “normal” activity makes it harder for Amazon to identify the account as fake, and so the company fails to spot the bogus reviews. In many cases, the review will be for an item of higher value than the one sent out. Amazon is constantly battling to rid its site of fake reviews, but the rogue sellers clearly aren’t giving up.

Mike says he can’t be certain, but he guesses that his details were taken when he ordered an item online from China last spring.

Why send stuff to the U.S.?
But why are the China-based sellers sending stuff overseas? According to Forbes, this has to do with subsidized postage rates offered by the U.S. Postal Service that make it cheaper for Chinese sellers to send overseas rather than domestically.

Amazon told CBS News that it looks into every report of customers receiving unsolicited packages and will endeavor to ban all vendors and reviewers who abuse the system.

But the Gallivans’ experience now has some people wondering just how many others are receiving free stuff via Amazon that they didn’t even order, but are perhaps enjoying the unexpected “gifts” and so choose to keep quiet about it.

Mike said he hasn’t received any new deliveries in the last few days, and hopes it has something to do with the worldwide attention the story’s been getting. But who knows, in the morning there may just be another USB hand warmer or set of tent lights waiting on his doorstep.

I am with you.
I have competitors who have a similar sales rank as me, and are adding 2 to 3 reviews a month that are all 5 stars. The reviews are more like marketing brochures. I am lucky if I can get 2 a month!

Its common knowledge that reviews on Amazon are a joke now. Just google “Get Amazon reviews” and you will see.

They are probably 90%-95% phony. There are so many services that manage to pull this off, it’s impossible to list them all. Our top line of accessories was assassinated by a company that began importing similar products. One month they were not there. The next month they showed up with a new name and account and every product style we had in that line and… 453 reviews, I kid you not, most of which were “Verified Purchases”.

They had used a varieties of lead services, some of which acknowledged that they had received “consideration” for the review (i.e., been paid by money or product) but most did not. I complained and a month or two later half the reviews disappeared but the rest stayed, and they stole our search positions and our sales dropped 70%… and they are still operating. So that goes to show you how poor Amazon is at figuring these scams out. In 6 years of being the leading vendor on that product line we had received 125 honest reviews. They simply appeared one day with 453 reviews. Sigh. And my favorite part was that Amazon sent us a form letter accusing us of generating phony reviews, which we have never done… which is why we only had 125.

Obviously, those are fake reviews, and they will be blocked by Amazon sooner or later. In February 14, 2018, many fake review sellers’ accounts were blocked. They can’t get the money and the products back.

It works in reverse too. One of my products had the Amazon’s Choice badge and 4-1/2 stars of real reviews. The competition put just 9, one star reviews on it to kill it. No badge and now 3-1/2 stars, sales of course tanked.

Selling on Amazon is not for the faint of heart.

I sell about 600 units/month of a brand registry product through FBA. I have been selling this product since 2015. There have been less than a dozen product returns for this item since I have been selling it. My reviews are organic and trickle in (2-6 a month).

We are very similar and see the same rate of reviews. We too, see other similar knock off products to ours that have dozens of reviews a week, or even a day! Absolutely sellers gaming the system. We saw these same issues before Amazon changed the feedback system to “solve” the problem. Sellers were using “Free or Reduced” to game the system and get fake reviews, or as they all wrote, “my honest opinion.” I learned long ago if you have to tell me you are honest, you are not.

We refused to join in with that scam, as it tricked buyers into thinking a product is better than it was.

So, how are these sellers generating so many reviews? Is there a legit service they are using to help them achieve this? What am I missing here?

Thanks to @Planters for the Boston story. To the OP, @TNP do you get the spam emails from “customers” offering a service to increase your ranking on Amazon and get “verified reviews” every week? We do. We select “other” and ask Amazon to do something about these service companies that are breaking, or helping sellers break the Amazon terms of service.

It is so easy for us to see the fake reviews, why can’t Amazon see them and deal with it? You know, the glowwing 5 star reviews coming in like they have been shot from a gatling gun. All the early ones with photos or videos. We get one photo per 100 on our organic reviews, in 8 years of our brand on Amazon I have not seen one video from a customer.

As a buyer I now spend quite a bit of time checking for fake reviews before I buy. How many customers do that, or know to do that? The fake reviews are fraud, plain and simple.

Google " fakespot" , and you will find the answer.

Considering how much this was discussed by speakers at eTail West, I am certain that Amazon is working on it.

Son’t think it is some easy fix. ANYTHING they do, will upset sellers in some way. It’s not a small platform, with easy fixes.

The credibility of the Amazon review system is slowly but surely eroding away by a massive wave of fake reviews.

Unfortunately for now, the manipulators are winning the game but if and when Amazon decides to get a hold of this problem those manipulators may lose their entire business overnight and then maybe the honest players will be left to reap the rewards.

Keep in mind, there are some strategies that many sellers use to get reviews that are not against TOS.
I’ve seen some very crafty methods that can get you 3-5 reviews a day (providing you have sales volume).
Someone I know gets about 20+ a day (he also has about 800-1k sales a day). I know reviews are a pain in the butt to get but you have to think outside of the box and do some better customer service if you want to survive. Yeah some Chinese sellers are using fake reviews but by and large it shouldn’t matter as long as you have good strategy in place for customer service/reviews.

TLDR: Adapt or lose sales and complain