Variation Abuse For Review Harvesting

I’ve recently come across several listings where the reviews don’t match the product page…you probably know the story…using dead products as children in a variation family to grab the product reviews. The dead products don’t show up as variations, only the scammer’s product, also a variation child but a live listing, appears. The ratings for all of the dead listings are credited to the remaining live listing.

Using the Variation Wizard, I can see the parent SKU and all children, active and inactive. I can even download the flat file for alteration/addition, etc.

So I am wondering, when I see one of these variation violations, what would happen if I uploaded a flat file to delete the parent listing so that the child listings are restored back to being unrelated products? Would that work? Would I get in trouble for doing that?

I’ve reported until I’m blue in the face and they don’t do anything. Some of these products look downright dangerous when you read the more recent reviews that usually DO match the product…buyers are noticing this as well and leaving scathing commentary about Amazon letting this happen in their product reviews.

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I got warned once for correcting titles of my asin’s to adhere to style guides, so could you get in trouble? Yep! Should you? I mean I don’t think so, but I assume the scammer seller will cry to seller support

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This is amazon
Anything you do to try to correct the actions of malicious actors seems to get blamed on you.

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Assuming you created the parent it would delete the entire variation relationship and shouldn’t cause any issues with Amazon. At least I’ve not seen it happen to my recollection.

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i din’t create the parent or children.

Meanwhile, in case you missed it:

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