Mystery Seeds Raise Questions About Online Sales Tactics in China -- Update
31 Julho 2020 - 05:42PM
Dow Jones News
By Jon Emont
Questionable online sales tactics used by some foreign merchants
have been brought into focus after the federal government said this
week that mysterious seed packages arriving from China may be an
e-commerce scam.
The U.S. Agriculture Department said that "suspicious,
unsolicited packages of seed that appear to be coming from China"
are potentially part of a brushing scheme. In such a scheme,
sellers or their accomplices ship out packages containing
lightweight goods of trivial value, which can then be used to log
fake sales and generate fake positive reviews that can draw in more
customers and boost sales.
Over the last decade, online marketplaces like Amazon.com Inc.
and others have signed-up Chinese manufacturers and merchants that
sell products directly to Americans. Some e-commerce sellers and
experts have linked these sellers to dubious sales tactics, like
brushing schemes, on the platforms.
E-commerce sellers and merchants based in China said that while
seeds aren't known to be used to fill packages in brushing schemes,
they are lightweight and cheap and can be easily mailed to hundreds
of people.
The seed packages have attracted the attention of government
officials world-wide. Some, including state and federal officials
in the U.S., have asked those who receive unsolicited packages not
to plant the seeds out of fear they could introduce invasive
species or spread plant disease.
Howard Thai, the Shenzhen, China-based head of Signalytics, an
e-commerce consulting firm, said that while he didn't know who sent
the seeds, it was possible the organizer of any scheme had
miscalculated and was unaware that seeds would cause alarm. "If you
put sand in there it's different," he said. "The people doing it
are not that smart."
Mr. Thai said that those doing brushing schemes will often send
items they hope the recipient will enjoy, to prevent those
receiving the packages from complaining about receiving a random
package.
E-commerce experts and sellers in China say that an entire
ecosystem has sprung up to assist Chinese sellers who are seeking
positive reviews for their products as a way to boost sales. On
Weibo, China's Twitter-like service, e-commerce merchants connect
with those willing to provide reviews through the hashtag "Amazon
Review," seeking out people with American addresses who can provide
"real person" reviews.
On another website, amz123.com, Chinese posters provide
evaluations of brokers and individuals they have paid to give
positive reviews for their Amazon products, sometimes complaining
that their product didn't receive the reviews they were promised.
Weibo and Amz123.com didn't immediately respond to requests for
comment.
Amazon has said the seed packages didn't appear to be part of a
brushing scheme. "These appear to be delayed packages due to
Covid-19, not brushing," a spokesperson said in a statement
Wednesday. Amazon didn't respond to a request for comment
Friday.
Many seed recipients say they didn't order any seeds, according
to state agricultural officials. The Wall Street Journal spoke with
several recipients of mysterious seeds, some of whom said they got
unsolicited seeds after ordering and receiving other seeds, or had
different seeds on their Amazon wish lists. Still others found
small packets of seeds in packages of other goods they ordered,
such as clothing.
One resident of Washington interviewed by the Journal said she
had received corn, broccoli and cucumber seeds she had ordered from
Amazon earlier this year, but that last week a package had arrived
from China with small cream-colored seeds that made her nervous and
want to burn them.
Western e-commerce companies have for years sought to recruit
Chinese merchants to their platforms, as a way to boost product
variety and provide cheaper products, though there have been
challenges, including counterfeit products.
In 2017, one frustrated Chinese seller emailed a senior Amazon
executive, writing, "Many companies have sprung up in the last
couple of years" that deliver "illegal service to businesses
requiring a quick and dirty way to boost their products' popularity
on Amazon," according to emails shared with the Journal. The
Chinese seller wrote that algorithms alone would be unlikely to
catch mischief, as "Chinese sellers are too smart and easily detect
out the loophole of the Algorithm." It was unclear from the emails
shared with the Journal how Amazon responded to the seller's
concerns.
An email from a former Amazon senior vice president to other
Amazon executives in 2015 about the company's efforts to promote
sales from China mentioned there were unusual aspects to the market
there. His email, released by the House Committee on the Judiciary
during hearings on tech companies' market power, said there were,
"Lots of competitive dynamics between sellers that make this a very
different animal for us." The email said that the company was
building "local TRMS" and other services to "aggressively better
serve this population of sellers." TRMS refers to Transaction Risk
Management Systems, the Amazon organization which builds fraud and
abuse risk-management tools for the company.
In a statement last year, an Amazon spokesperson said the
company was taking steps to prevent abuse in its store. "Bad actors
that attempt to abuse our systems make up a tiny fraction of
activity on our site. We use sophisticated tools, including machine
learning, to combat them, and we are making it increasingly
difficult for bad actors to hide."
China's Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that mailing labels on the
seed packages were forged and that the country has asked the U.S.
to return the packages to China for investigation.
Qianwei Zhang contributed to this article.
Write to Jon Emont at jonathan.emont@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 31, 2020 16:27 ET (20:27 GMT)
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