In an interview with China Central Television, Cindy Tai, an Amazon VP, confirmed that the company had banned over 3000 merchant accounts on the platform, tied to over 600 Chinese electronics brands, including popular names like Aukey and RAVPower.
The clampdown was part of an effort to clean up fake and incentivized reviews on the Amazon platform. Some of these brands are facing significant monetary challenges because of the ban - Shenzhen Youkeshu Technology, for instance, claims that Amazon has frozen over US$20 million of its funding.
The false and incentivized review issue came to a head a few months ago when a WSJ journalist wrote a column about their experience ordering a RAVPower charger. In contravention of Amazon’s ban on incentivised reviews, RAVPower had evidently included a “gift card” in the package, redeemable only if the customer submited a product review.
Since then, Amazon’s reportedly cracked down on tens of thousands of merchants. This latest wave of bans, however, is particularly relevant because relatively well-known brands and their sellers were caught.
Check out this Amazon Basics charger here