What you need to know
- It seems Amazon has removed RAVPower accessories from its store.
- The move follows shortly after allegedly removing two other popular accessory makers due to "fake" reviews.
- RAVPower has allegedly sent customers gift cards to incentivize product reviews.
Popular accessory maker RAVPower appears to have been removed from the Amazon online store as the commerce giant continues cracking down on retailers.
While an official reason has yet to be confirmed, the most likely reason is due to RAVPower allegedly providing customers with gift cards to incentivize positive online reviews. WSJ journalist Nicole Nguyen first noticed the removal of the listings, which happened shortly after she published an article detailing her experience with the company.
According to Nguyen, RAVPower included a QR code with her purchase of a charger which offered a $35 gift card. The offer required her to send a screenshot or URL of her review, after which she was sent the gift card. Nguyen ran the story on June 13, just a few days ago as of writing, and it seems Amazon caught up quickly with the accessory maker for violating its policies.
A cursory search for RAVPower products on Amazon brings up no results, and the Amazon storefront for RAVPower is also ineffective, with broken or missing links and any remaining links pulling up "currently unavailable."
RAVPower makes great products, including some of the best GaN chargers, so it's surprising that the company would have to resort to these tactics. We've reached out for a comment but did not immediately receive a response.
The move comes just a month after AUKEY and Mpow products went noticeably missing from the online store, allegedly due to fake reviews. Amazon said in a statement that it wishes to protect the integrity of its store with genuine product reviews and that it will "take swift action against those that violate [its policies], including suspending or removing selling privileges."
Amazon did not comment on the RAVPower removal but did point us to a blog post posted today regarding its expectations on product reviews.
To help earn the trust of customers, we devote significant resources to preventing fake or incentivized reviews from appearing in our store...In 2020, we stopped more than 200 million suspected fake reviews before they were ever seen by a customer, and more than 99% of reviews enforcement was driven by our proactive detection.
The removal of RAVPower accessories comes just days before the Amazon Prime Day event begins.
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