Amazon shut down 50,000 Chinese sellers for “platform rule violations” that caused Shenzhen – “Mainland China’s cross-border e-commerce capital” – to suffer heavy losses. A few days ago, Shenzhen urgently held a symposium to understand the situation and come up with a support plan.
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Amazon recently “cleaned up” its global seller platform to deal with piracy and counterfeiting issues this year, with a large number of Chinese stores being targeted. close the door. In the media world, about 200,000 accounts have been blacklisted by Amazon. According to statistics from the Shenzhen Cross-Border E-Commerce Association, in the past 2 months, more than 50,000 Chinese sellers have had to close, the industry’s initial estimated loss is more than 100 billion yuan.
Among the closed stores include companies in the top “Five Big Tigers across the border of Shenzhen” such as Zebao, Patosun, Aoji, Youkeshu, Tongtuo, Apeman. According to Ms. Wang Xin (Wang Xin), executive chairman of the Shenzhen Cross-Border E-Commerce Association, this is Amazon’s biggest blockade in the past 5 years, and Chinese sellers can be said to be the majority. .
Jiemian News reported that on August 13, the Shenzhen Municipal Chamber of Commerce held a symposium on cross-border e-commerce enterprises in Futian district to hear reports from related companies on the recently tried to “close the shop (store)” of an Amazon seller in Shenzhen, and understand the impact of this incident in detail, and will research and come up with appropriate solutions.
According to the notice document obtained by the media, this symposium was based on the request of the senior leadership of Guangdong province, the investigation team of the Guangdong Provincial Department of Commerce went to Shenzhen to find out.
According to a person knowledgeable about the matter, there were about 20 to 30 shops participating, including big sellers like Saiwei, Tongtuo, Youkeshu, Aoji, etc. At the same time, there were also some small and medium sellers who were not invited.
The main purpose of this meeting is to gather company information and understand the situation, including: what specific losses occurred after the store was closed, such as the amount frozen by the platform. Amazon platform, number of products, number of related transactions affected, number of employees laid off, etc. What is the current difficulty the company is facing and whether this year’s performance can be can it be maintained? What “self-help” measures have been taken, such as judicial litigation, foundation complaints and offshore stock clearing…, or what help is needed from the government?
According to mainland media, on Amazon, 70% of sellers come from China; Among China’s cross-border e-commerce, sellers in Guangdong can account for 70%, of which 50% come from Shenzhen.
According to Caixin.com, on July 21, a person close to Amazon said that most of the stores blocked this time are businesses that repeatedly violate and “intentionally violate”.
According to reports, Amazon’s failure to comply with strict regulations, mainly related to “fake reviews”, is what the mainland e-commerce platform calls “swiping credit applications”. : refers to the practice of enhancing one’s own credit level in the form of fictitious transactions, fake reviews, as well as removing unfavorable reviews in the field of e-commerce, for the purpose of increasing competitiveness. compete with itself, thereby disrupting the normal order of the competitive market.
Ms. Wang Hinh, president of the association, said, this is the fifth time Amazon has closed stores to fight Chinese sellers.
However, this time the situation was different, according to the sellers, the reason the shop was closed was mostly due to “violating the rules of the platform”, most notably the seller sent a small card with each product. To ask customers to give good reviews for the shop.
Since the beginning of May this year, a large number of sellers on Amazon have been closed. Some sellers say that half of Shenzhen’s stores on Amazon could be closed.
On May 20, Amazon officially released a “Letter to All Amazon Sellers”, which is said to be a response to the store closing incident. At the time, Amazon’s platform policy explicitly required sellers not to abuse reviews, and for this reason some of the seller’s rights were suspended; Amazon emphasizes that the platform’s rules and policies treat all sellers the same, regardless of the size of the seller’s business or location.
Amazon has also released an open letter asking sellers not to cheat the review system. Again, the platform has invested a lot of resources to prevent fake reviews or fake praise.
Another scam in China’s e-commerce industry is that sellers pay people to pretend to be customers, in order to boost their store’s rankings and sales, as well as fraud about good reviews. . Paying someone to pose as a customer is often combined with having empty packages delivered to them by truck or courier.
On Mainland Internet forums, netizens are talking about this topic. Many netizens pointed out that Shenzhen has rushed to hold a symposium to address the closure of Amazon stores, showing that the impact of this wave is beyond imagination. There are netizens who mocked the emergency meeting in Shenzhen making sense: “This is the government’s preparation to intervene and explain how to hire people to pose as customers without penalty!”; “A place where powerful businessmen gather, for money, all tricks are used.”
