By humans, for humans.
Guaranteed.
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
News from the Seller Community
The latest must-know info on Policy & Tactics, AI, plus Review news from the world of eCommerce.
From the eCom Growth Show Podcast
What does it really take to succeed on TikTok Shop? It’s not as simple as sending products to creators and waiting for sales to roll in. See what actually works.
Upcoming eCom Events
What not to miss, plus what’s coming next.
Black Hat Watch
In addition to review sabotage, there are other key ways the criminals of the online world seek to hold you back.
This Week’s Dad Joke
Don’t miss it! 😁
From Our Sponsor: eCom Triage
Negative reviews kill your listings and your Amazon rating. One more bad review can cost you tens of thousands in lost sales.
- Conversion drops
- Ads get pricier
- Ranking slides
- Competitors steal market share
We get rid of the reviews that shouldn’t be there.
Our 4-step process:
- Scan & Classify
- File Real Violations Only
- Escalate Where It Counts
- Track & Report
eCom Triage removes negative reviews from your ASINs.
Learn how:
News from the Seller Community
Policy & Tactics
This week I want to tell you about a client who walked me through their channel strategy, and share what they’re doing.
It comes down to the goal of owning your customers.
As we know, Amazon owns everyone who shops at your Amazon store. This brand I spoke to, however, approached things from the following logic:
Amazon is your storefront, not your relationship.
From the start this client has been using Amazon to protect the brand and catch high-intent buyers who already trust the platform, then moving ad dollars toward their own site to actually own the customer, name, email, address, the whole file — which Amazon will never divulge.
Sellers who treat Amazon as the whole business end up renting their customer base from a landlord who can change the lease terms whenever it wants. Sellers who treat it as one channel among several keep the leverage.
AI
The world of AI continues to move fast, with the three biggest players announcing new releases recently back to back.
- Anthropic released Claude Fable 5.1, its most capable model yet, live on Claude.ai, the API, and all three major clouds.
- Google answered the next day with Gemini 3.8 Flash, priced at $0.75 per million input tokens for near-frontier coding and agentic performance.
- OpenAI began releasing its newest version, GPT-6 Astra, the Daddy of AI.
Reviews
You built your review count over years, and Amazon can erase two thirds of it in a week.
A seller this week watched Amazon delete roughly 200 reviews off one listing and 18 off another, both around the same date, with no warning.
Amazon appears to run an annual sweep for review manipulation, and it doesn’t work by catching one bad review in isolation, it connects dots across your whole account: IP addresses, social media links, plus patterns between who bought and who reviewed.
Old tactics don’t get a pass either. Reviews traded years ago, or handed out to friends who then asked their friends, can still be the trigger today, even if you stopped the practice long ago.
If you’ve ever taken a shortcut on reviews, even a small one, assume Amazon still has the record.
My point in this is more cautionary: There’s not much you can do about anything you might’ve gotten away with to date, but what you can do is do things the right way going forward.
- Deliver an incredible product
- Deliver incredible service
- Get help removing bogus negative reviews
That’s your modern-day roadmap to success.
From the eCom Growth Show Podcast
Episode #87
Turning Dreams Into Reality With TikTok Shop
In this episode of The eCom Growth Show, Danan Coleman interviews Tommy Lynch, founder of Cult Content, about what it really takes for ecommerce brands to succeed on TikTok Shop.
Tommy’s journey into social commerce started with short-form content and eventually led him to generate more than 100 million views for product brands before building a full-service TikTok Shop marketing agency.
But his perspective on TikTok Shop goes against much of the hype surrounding the platform. Success isn’t as simple as sending products to creators and waiting for sales to roll in. Brands need patience, capital, strong creator relationships, and a clear understanding of TikTok’s role in the broader customer journey.
Click the Play button above to watch.
For our full selection of episodes click here 👇
Upcoming eCom Events
Saudi International Digital Marketing & E-Commerce Expo (Sep 13-15)
Discover business operations to keep pace with the future of e-commerce, and Saudi Arabia’s own Vision 2030 digital transformation initiatives.
Amazon Accelerate (Sep 22-24)
The largest Amazon Seller event in the US bringing sellers from all over the world. And I (Danan) will have the list of parties on the event listing soon!
PS: Check our ecom.events page for the parties and after-hours events happening at Accelerate. There are a lot. Scroll by date to see all that’s happening.
Amazon unBoxed 2026 (Sep 28-30)
Amazon Ads unBoxed 2026 is Amazon Advertising’s flagship annual conference, bringing three days of product announcements, expert-led sessions, hands-on training, and networking.
White & Private Label Expo New York (Sep 30)
Attendees can explore the latest products, technologies, logistics solutions, and industry trends while gaining practical insights from expert-led educational sessions.
For a full list of industry events visit Ecom.Events:
[ Ecom.Events ]
Black Hat Watch
Review Sabotage & Other Tactics
A common tactic of bad actors is to flood a competitor’s listing with fake one-star reviews or “poison pill” phrases (like “caught on fire” or “contains banned ingredients”) to trigger an automated suspension by Amazon’s bots.
Tactics besides review sabotage are also used.
The Bad Guys Are Creative
Other ways they try to suppress your success:
- False Infringement Claims: Competitors file fraudulent trademark or intellectual property reports to get a rival’s ASIN or entire seller account temporarily shut down.
- Malicious Listing Edits: Hackers or unethical competitors exploit system vulnerabilities to change a product’s title, images, or description to vulgar or policy-violating content, causing Amazon to ban the item.
- Click Fraud: Bad actors use bots or hire people to repeatedly click a competitor’s sponsored PPC (Pay-Per-Click) ads to drain their daily advertising budget.
- Inventory Hoarding / Ghost Address Scams: Competitors buy out a rival’s stock using fake accounts and then return everything at once to cause artificial stockouts and ruin inventory metrics.
The Truth
The truth is these tactics are employed because the criminals using them cannot actually beat you in fair competition. Like taking out the knees of someone who’s just plain faster and better than you, these tactics are a lazy way to make up for their own failings.
Playing unfair is in their nature, and it’s how they win (when they do).
But there are ways to handle them.
The Good News
It’s a shame we have to spend time and energy not only on our own success, but also on batting back the ones that would try to get in our way.
Fortunately there’s help. If you’re being hit with negative reviews, regardless of the black-hat posting them, eCom Triage finds the invalid ones and removes them.
See how we can help.
This Week’s Dad Joke 😁
My neighbor has been mad at his wife for sunbathing nude.
Personally, I’m on the fence.
