$7M lost on Amazon inventory, then bankrupt by ilamont

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Sed ut perspiciatis unde.

Our Amazon journey started in January 2018 when HyperVolt released the first massage gun on the market. We were so careful with this product that we began designing our patented design in February 2019 and launched our first massage gun on Amazon in July 2019; because our massage gun was unique and high-end, we began receiving a lot of 5-star reviews from the beginning, and we were Amazon’s best-seller from October 2019 to October 2021; we received 31.000 reviews with an average rating of 4.8 stars since the beginning. In November 2021, a new brand (BUTYCE) launched a massage gun in this very competitive market. I say very competitively because the top 15 sellers had over 15K reviews on average. In December 2021, we got a fake copyright complaint, and our product was suspended. It took 3 weeks to reinstate our ASIN, and we missed Q4 sales in 2021. Then this new brand (BUTCYE) became the best seller in one day, which was impossible because his BSR (best seller rank) was over 20.000 in health and household. When we deeply researched this, we found that this person hijacked his listing with a dummy seller account and offered 95% off on Facebook groups, and he sold over 5–6K every day for a week ( this is our estimate based on Jungle Scout, Helium10, and his best seller rank).

But since his offer was fulfilled by the merchant, this dummy seller account didn’t ship any massage guns to buyers, but he still got the best seller badge, so he activated his real FBA ( fulfilled by Amazon ) offer on the main account. Selling this many units in one day and repeating this with dummy seller accounts created a halo effect on his ASIN and his ASIN started ranking on every relevant keyword on Amazon. By the time our product was tagged adult (sex toys) and we lost the indexing for at least a week, every time our ASIN was suspended, his sales improved a lot, and he started offering $40 to get 5-star reviews, and in 2 months he got 1700 reviews on Amazon. By that time, our ASIN was being suspended every 1–2 weeks due to fake complaints; here is a list of the fake complaints I received.

● Fake copyright claims

● Fake variation Abuse reports (It takes at least 5–7 days to reinstate)

Fake infringement and restricted keyword complaints ( he was adding these restricted keywords via an Amazon vendor account; (it takes 5–7 days to reinstate the ASIN

● Changing product attribute type to adult (sex_toys) ( it takes 3–5 to reinstate the ASIN)

Any more other suspensions.

When his sales on Amazon stabilized, he changed his brand (BUTYCE) to (DACORM) and launched four other massage gun listings, all with fake rebates, fake best seller badges, and offers of $40 for reviews. He received approximately 2K reviews in two months for the newly listed massage gun

https://www.amazon.com/Percussion-Athletes-Portable-Electric-Y12/dp/B09LQNGBGH/

Also, this seller managed to run a continuous 7 days deal for all his products since 2022 April.

Imagine getting a fake best-seller badge. Every week, you run a 7-day deal? and continue to suspend top sellers on Amazon? This is what he did, and he dominated the entire massage gun market.

In April 2022, I started reporting this seller to Amazon for violating Amazon policies, such as review, manipulation, etc., but nothing happened. In August, I shared everything with an Amazon account manager and started an investigation, but nothing happened; they closed the cases without solving anything. I repeatedly reported this seller via my Amazon account manager, and finally, they started investigating it. Then I started receiving threatening emails from this seller to my Amazon email address directly (normally, it is impossible to get other sellers’ email addresses). We started getting policy warnings every day, 15–20 times. Amazon didn’t take any action on these cases and closed them.

This seller still selling sending inserts and is still a best seller on 3 different massage gun