In part 1 of this series we discussed Amazon Competitor Sabotage using Paid Bad Reviews.  Part 2 outlined how evil Amazon Competitors can Take Up Your Inventory so you can't sell it and in part 3 we went over the new diabolical Amazon Competitor scheme using Fake Positive Reviews on your products so today we are going to delve into the fourth part of our Amazon Competitor Sabotage series and learn about Hijacking Listings. 

Have you ever seen those listings on Amazon where the photo shows one thing (a sheet of stickers, a garden hose, a pair of salt & pepper shakers) yet the title says something totally different? When the title claims to be for a $500 Shark Vacuum or a $1,500 Pitboss outdoor grill, but the image shows the pepper shaker, it’s safe to assume nobody will ever buy it. If you’re like most people you just glance at the weirdness and keep scrolling. But did you know this is actually NOT a lazy seller who carelessly uploaded the wrong image; instead it’s a diabolical Amazon competitor sabotaging their fellow sellers.

But wait, the situation gets worse: Many people shop without reading whatsoever. So when the photo shows the salt & pepper shakers and the price says $9.99, the person simply clicks BUY NOW. Next thing they know they end up with a weird piece of automotive tubing and they are furious… here comes the bad reviews!

Or, how about this one: Have you ever looked at an Amazon listing and the reviews don’t match the product at all? Yep, this poor seller was also a victim of an Amazon Scam. Worst of all, in all of these situations the seller usually has no idea that their listings are going down in flames. At the end of the day a seller who once had an outstanding business ends up with a pile of crap listings, few sales and a lot of angry buyers.

You’re probably wondering “How on earth can anyone mess with someone elses listings? Are they literally hacking into their account?” - Nope. No hacking required for this evil trick! How this occurs is a competitor with an Amazon Vendor Account claims your listing. Once the listing is claimed they can do anything they want to it. One of the most popular tactics is to switch the category to “sex toys” so it becomes essentially invisible in Amazon searches and will never again appear as a top seller, let alone in the category you want it sold it. With a few clicks of a mouse a rotten competitor can wipe your listing off Amazon.

But claiming your great listings is just one way a dishonest competitor can destroy your Amazon account. Another way they can accomplish the same is to locate your “inactive listings” (these are those listings that have sold out but the seller has not deleted them from Amazon, so the listing is essentially “there” but not “alive” because it has Quantity 0 in stock… hopefully this makes sense. Anyways, most sellers on other sites do not delete old listings because, what’s really the point? Seems like a waste of time, eh? Well not on Amazon. In fact, on Amazon it’s super simple to locate inactive listings by simply Google searching for “site:amazon.com currently unavailable [your -target-product]”

Once the corrupt competitor has access to these inactive listings they can alter them, steal them and rake up tons of awful reviews by hijacking them. 

HOW TO CURVE LISTING HIJACKING

If you have an absolute ton of old listings mixed in with inactives mixed with current stock, this is way too hard to monitor.  The best thing you can do to prevent this is to permanently delete old listings that you know will never be restocked.  This will allow you to monitor your current stock better.  

Additionally, most Amazon pros watch their listings like a hawk.  Daily they cruise through their offerings and look for swapped images or other oddities.  They also monitor purchases and review to make sure they are not having their merchandise taken up by dishonest competition or becoming a victim of Fake Bad Review or Good Reviews (yes, you read that correctly; a newer tactic is to sabotage a competitors account through GOOD reviews - be sure to read about this!).