Velocity Sellers Podcast
We are Velocity Sellers, a full-scale Amazon Agency! Our Podcast features our talented and knowledgeable employees and guests, and of course our host, Velocity Pete. Join us as Velocity Pete interviews these Amazon experts on various topics that will help you boost your Amazon knowledge!
Velocity Sellers Podcast
#99 - How Amazon Sellers Can Remove Bad Reviews The Right Way
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Bad reviews aren’t just bruising your ego—they’re taxing your rank, spiking your PPC, and scaring off retail buyers. We sat down with Shane Barker, CEO and co-founder of TraceFuse, to unpack how to remove violating Amazon reviews the right way and protect your most important ASINs without risking your account.
We get specific about what Amazon actually prohibits: exact price mentions, competitor callouts, profanity, and FBA-related complaints that blame the product for shipping failures. Shane explains why only written reviews can be removed, how his team builds compliant cases, and why going “faster” isn’t worth the risk. We also explore how review averages influence conversion and CPCs, why small dips in star ratings snowball into bigger costs, and how attackers target high-LTV categories like supplements, beauty, and pet with copy-paste tactics.
You’ll learn how to spot fraud patterns such as sudden bursts of one-star reviews or repeated phrasing across accounts, and how to separate product issues from fulfillment issues so you’re measuring the right signals. Shane shares a free Amazon Review Checker that flags likely violations in your recent reviews and a new ROI calculator that models the revenue lift from removing critical reviews, so you can prioritize which ASINs to defend first. It’s a practical, white-hat playbook for cleaning up your listings, stabilizing ads, and restoring trust without shortcuts.
If you care about rank, profitability, and future retail partnerships, this conversation will change how you manage reviews. Subscribe, share with a fellow seller, and leave a rating to tell us which review tactic you want Amazon to crack down on next.
Bad Reviews Are Bleeding Sales
SPEAKER_01Are your listings plagued by bad reviews? Are you struggling this holiday season to meet your quotas, get to where you want to be because of these negative reviews? Well, I've got good news for you. Our next guest here is the CEO and co-founder of TraceFuse. It's a completely legit white hat tactic service that removes reviews that are outside of Amazon's terms of service. This is a great AI tool that we're going to be talking about, the importance of it, how it works, and also just the general importance of having good reviews beyond the simple you want that score to look good. So today's guest is Shane Barker. Shane, it's a pleasure to meet you to talk more about trace views, to talk more about the world of reviews. I admit before today, and I'm I feel like I'm gonna learn a lot today, but before today, I looked at interviews as very black and white. Um, you get a good one, you get a bad one, that's it. Um I'm excited to learn more about why that's not the case and why there is a lot more room for sellers and businesses to take
Meet TraceFuse And Shane Barker
SPEAKER_01this into their own hands a little bit and help improve their score. So, Shane, thank you for joining us.
SPEAKER_00Hey, man, Pete, thank you for having me, man. This has been awesome. I've been looking forward to this. You guys have uh been on our radar for a long time, and here we are, man. Looking forward to making some magic happen today. Amen to that.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Um, so yeah, so let's get right into it. So tell me a little bit more about the business. Tell me a little bit more about what TraceFuse does, and I want to get into the the meaty topics of you know reviews and then the world of that, that again, I'm very ignorant to that I'm hoping to change today.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, absolutely. So yeah, I'll give you a little breakdown. So um I'm the owner and founder of TraceFuse. So TraceFuse is uh uh TraceFuse.ai is the website. And really what we do, it's it um conceptually what we do is easy in the sense of what we do is it's very easy to explain. We help Amazon sellers uh remove product reviews, critical product reviews. And so we talk about critical, that means anything one, twos, or three stars. So really what we look at is we look at reviews, we look at your reviews, and if you're a seller, you sign up with us in an easy way to explain it. So we grab those reviews, we figure out which ones are compliant with Amazon's guidelines. We don't touch those ones, we go after the ones that clearly violate Amazon's guidelines. So mentioning competitors pricing, cussing, anything FBA related. So really what we're looking at are things that Amazon that made it through Amazon's system, right? Amazon has a very robust system to stop reviews. Some of those leak through, and guess what? We're gonna be on the other side of that to say, hey, this person used the F word. This person did this, mentioned an exact price. Those are the types of things that we're looking for and the software will indicate. Yeah, cool.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. No, I'm excited to get into it because again, I
What Amazon Allows In Reviews
SPEAKER_01didn't even know that. I already learned something already that uh, I guess it makes sense. You can't swear. Um, Jeff seems like a stand-up guy. I feel like he wouldn't want any swearing on his website. Um, but so so talk to a little bit more about what are the terms of service. I know I know it's a probably a bigger question than we have time for, but give me a little overview of uh more than in a little more in-depth of this is exactly what Amazon says. They don't allow this in the reviews. Um and some examples that you maybe you've seen, some funny ones if you have any funny examples of reviews that uh you've gotten removed.
SPEAKER_00We do, we do. So yeah, I mean, really at the end of the day, if you just look up Amazon's guidelines, um, that's really where you can go look that up and it'll talk about, you know, mentioning not mentioning of just pricing, but an exact price. So giving the example of like, you know, if somebody goes and puts something up for Prime and it's $30 and then they increase it to their regular price of $45. Somebody can't go on there and be like, hey, I bought this on Black Friday for $30. Now it's $45. It's not worth it, right? You can't mention an exact pricing. Um, you also can't mention competitors. So if you were, you know, Nike selling a shoe, the reason, one of the main reasons why Amazon stopped that is because people would go, oh my God, I really love this Nike Air Max, but man, I'll tell you what, I really miss is my Adidas, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, which it sounds like a positive review for Nike, but what you're really saying is like, gosh, I really love Adidas, right? So, and that's kind of like a backhanded slap, it feels like it's like, wait a second. So you do like me or you don't like me, because I feel like you just kind of said you like me, but then you're pointing the finger to go over there. So those are the main things we look at, FBA related stuff. So we're talking about, you know, Amazon, obviously, if it's Amazon's fault, what I mean by that is FBA obviously ships out by Amazon. And so if anything ships out like late, broken, or used, those are all going to be on Amazon's Amazon's responsibility. And so some of those reviews get through, and then we take a look at that. And because somebody could say, Oh, it took two weeks. I hate this product. It's like, well, no, you hated the shipping. You didn't hate the product, right? So, but people don't don't separate those. They go, Well, Amazon shipped it, it must be Amazon's product, so I have to leave them bad reviews. So Amazon very clearly says, Hey, listen, we'll we'll take care of those. Um, historically, they they haven't taken care of them for the most part. I mean, let me take that back. They definitely stop at a certain point and take care of them, and then some of them get through, as in any platform. And then, like I said, we're kind of that backup to that. And so if they did miss one of those or something
FBA Faults Versus Product Faults
SPEAKER_00like that, then we filed cases with Amazon and the clients only pay when reviews actually get removed, so not on cases filed.
SPEAKER_01Okay. All right. So that's a that's uh that I actually did know about the shipping one. Um, I have seen that before when I was doing an audit for a company. I was like, you guys have so many reviews that you should report. And it was a bulkier product, and they did FBA, so um, I could see why that you know that made sense. And it was driving their score down, which is obviously, again, going back to my ignorance a little bit, that's the the black and white issue that I saw on reviews was the only real thing is that they're driving your is your score down. But now I know a little bit about, and I'll let you go into it because I know I can see you're ready to go, a little bit about you know, the stuff with your ranking and where AI is the the Rufus is finding you. So talk me a little bit more about the importance of um having good quality reviews.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, I mean, whether it's you know AI or whatever, you know, in your minds of what that is, is we all do the same thing we go to Amazon. Whether you understand that or where you you recognize that or not, is that the minute you go to Amazon, we all look at the reviews. I mean, that's just hands down what we do, right? And so we go and we look and we say, okay, great, there's anything over 100, let's say, and it's a 4.2, 4.3, great, we feel good about that, right? So, okay, awesome. Then that just is is uh my first check to say, okay, great, do I want to actually maybe look at the reviews? Do I want to, you know, see if it's Amazon choice or whatever that may be? That's the indicator, right? And and that's what Amazon looks at as an indicator on whether they should promote your product or not promote your product. So when we talk about BSR and where you're at in there, that absolutely has to do with your ratings and your reviews, right? And one thing's uh important to indicate or to let everybody know is that we only go after reviews that are physically something written, because that's the only way that they could be against Amazon's guidelines. We can't do anything with ratings, which is unfortunate because there's some things that people get legit ratings and some people that get attacked and things happen there, right? So our software actually does indicate that as well. We look for fraud as well in that. There's a few different ways that we can we can look at that. We can talk about that here in a minute. But yeah, the the the reviews, I mean, your PPC cost is affected by you know the reviews and the reviews that you get. I mean, it just it affects everything. If you've you can have an amazing product, but if you have bad reviews, you're pretty much done for the most part, right? Like there's not right, and that's what's very unfortunate. And the unfortunate part for me, or for I guess, for any seller, is if you have a uh a product that everybody comes out with a product, you obviously want to improve it over time. Nothing's gonna come out perfect, right? And there's gonna be something wrong with it. So that's okay. That's that's just building a product, right? With the product you had five years ago and the product you have today, probably two totally different products, right? Maybe
Why Reviews Drive Rank And PPC
SPEAKER_00some similarities, but they've definitely you've you've pivoted, you've changed some you know, boxes, whatever it is. Well, what we look at with that is that you know, when those reviews come in and they they knock you down, once again, you can have a terrible product, but great reviews. And guess what? Then then you can you're gonna outsell your competitor because your competitor has bad reviews. And a lot of the times companies, people will go and attack the other company to be able to make that happen, right? So if they have a better product and stuff, and so we see that a lot more like in supplements in the US, definitely um, you know, like beauty, pet, those are the the then I think the reason why actually I know the reason why is because of the lifetime value, right? Right. So, in other words, if you're using, you know, if you have your dog loves certain types of treats, like if you're my dog's and you like a certain type of treat, my wife will there is no amount of money that she can spend, or actually, there's no limit on the amount of money that she would spend. Yeah, yeah. Something she spends a lot of cash, I guess is what I'm really saying. Um, and she can probably hear me. So we'll all probably have to have a discussion or go to counseling.
SPEAKER_01She's standing there in the door shaking her head.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, just just with dog treats in her hand. Like, don't you bring that up again on a podcast? I told you about that. It was a secret. Um, yeah, so you know, and so really what we're looking at is if my dog eats, you know, one treat a day, the bag's a dollar, you know, a dollar per treat. Let's say it's $30. Well, guess what? If my dog lives to live 10 years, 10 years times 12 is 120 times 30 is a lot of money. Right. Right. So that's really what we're looking at here is that the lifetime value, the cost of the item is not that crazy. You're not going to go and, you know, buy a, you know, let's put it this way. Let's say we both sell bikes, right? And they're really nice bikes, $10,000 bikes. Are you going to come and buy 10 of my bikes for $100,000 to give me a bad review? Probably not. That doesn't make sense from an ROI perspective, right? Like that's but now will you go if we both sell dog treats and you can go and buy 10 of them for $30, that's $300. I'm not saying that's worth the investment because that's not the right way to do anything, but that's what companies do. They look at it and say, okay, if I can just knock you down, especially before Prime Day or Christmas or anything like that, then that becomes a situation. You get knocked down. And then they also know that Amazon, if you reach out to Amazon, their customer service is not bad, but it, you know, it's not phenomenal by any means. So they also know that you're not going to probably get anybody's attention. It becomes very difficult. So for us, I always encourage Amazon or sellers to say, hey, to come to us and be more proactive than reactive, right? Like, hey, come in, let's go ahead and protect those ASINs. Because we actually monitor the ASINs moving forward. We don't not only go back and grab the reviews, but we also monitor them moving forward. The goal of Trace Use is to is to really set it and forget it. Is for you know, the you as a seller, as you know, you have a million other things to worry about, right? I mean, just and so what I my goal of Trace Fuse was to be able to make go in add your ACINs that you want, and then we go and protect those. We grab those reviews, you only pay for reviews that get removed, and then guess what? And then we protect you moving forward because I just know it's a huge pain point because that can directly affect so many things. PPC costs, your sales, you know, how happy people are. I also know for a fact, we've had customers come to us and say, hey, they had a big deal with with Walmart, and Walmart went and looked at their Amazon reviews, and there were some bad reviews, and they took them out, they were gonna put them in 20,000 stores. Now they're like, we're just gonna test 3,000 stores. So Amazon reviews also can, I mean, it's not just the, you know, your your up how much money you're making, but it also can affect somebody who goes and looks at this and says, Hey, you got some terrible reviews there. Do you think Walmart's gonna want to take you on? They assume those are correct reviews and those are valid reviews. So once again, my thing is always to be more proactive. Hey, come in, get them protected, clean those listings up. Don't wait until something hits the fan, and then all of a sudden you're two weeks before Christmas and you're like, oh crap, what are we gonna do? Right. Because I'll I'll admit our process when we file cases with Amazon, we're waiting for Amazon to respond. And that doesn't happen overnight a lot of the time. So it's a little bit of a slower process because we're obviously compliant with Amazon. We'll make sure we're not breaking any rules. And that's a little bit of a slower process. So I tell people, hey, you reach out in whatever July and we start removing reviews. Guess what? You'll be good in a few months. But if you reach out to me December 18th and say, hey, can you clean this up in six days? I mean, I wish. I wish,
Attack Patterns And High-LTV Categories
SPEAKER_00right? I mean, I wish I had that kind of magic. Yeah, my my wand is doesn't work as well these days. You know, I just I've been using it too much. So, anyways, that's kind of my point. But yeah, we're we're doing good things and we're excited about it.
SPEAKER_01Love it, love it. No, it really is helpful. One of the big things I always like to stress about why I love doing this job is I like to learn things. So that's your next step. You know, after you get past Amazon, there's only there's a large market on Amazon for whatever your product is, especially if you're in a certain type of market, but you want to expand beyond that. And we always stress to our current partners like, hey, how are your Amazon sales? But I've never, how's your Amazon? How's your Amazon content? But I've never said, How are your Amazon reviews? Um, so that's that's really again very interesting to think about as a as an extra proponent of you know, your content looks good, great, your ad spend is great, awesome. Are your reviews up the shape? So it's never something that I've thought of of as a as a component to work. I've always just thought of it you either get bad again, you either get bad reviews or you don't.
SPEAKER_00Um and I'll tell you why that is, just because people don't know about trace views because you every most sellers that I talk to that haven't had a friend that used us or is using us or something like that, is the same thing as most people like I'll tell you when I started the company, this is a funny story. So I started out powwow. This was uh in Florida. We were went to a conference out there, and I was newer to the Amazon space. And I was like, I'd go and meet people. I said, Hey, we can remove uh your critical reviews and your product listings. They're like, Yeah, we're not really into the black hat thing. And I'm like, no, no, no, like this is like legit. Like my company, we can do it. Like it's not, you know, we're not doing weird stuff. We don't collect the money through like a black out, like an alleyway and black tin windows, like, hey, give me cash. And like, we're legit. I mean, I put my face on the company for a reason, not because I want everybody to see me, but it well, I mean, I guess it is kind of I want everybody to see me, but I want them to see me in the sense that, you know, I have a long background in the digital space, right? So I wanted to validate what we were doing. There's no way I would put my name on something or start something that was going to be unethical or do anything wrong. So I thought, well, if I put my face on it, because reputation management doesn't have a great, the greatest reputation. A lot of it's kind of like feels like it's a little seedy, you don't know really who's doing the work. Right. And so I wanted to change that. I said, well, I'll put my face on it. And I've put way too much money into my personal brand. We won't go into numbers, but for me to go and ruin that over business, it over money. I would never do that. And so that's where things became interesting, but people really didn't believe that we could do this. This was five, four, for me, about four years ago. We've been around about five and a half years. We did two years of testing to figure everything out. So they didn't believe that we could do it, and so that was difficult because I was like, no, we can, and you know, but who wants to do the first dance? I mean, especially if what happens if we weren't compliant? What happens if your account got suspended? Something happened. Right. And so people were worried about that. Now we have 700 brands we work with, and we removed over 16,000 reviews. People aren't worried about that as much, but in the beginning, that was a huge factor. And I don't blame them. I wouldn't want some guy that come knocking on my door and you're like, hey, dude, sorry, buddy, like I don't know you, and you're I just uh too much of a risk. And now it's like now the big question is, oh my gosh, don't remove reviews too fast. Because we're anyways, it's it's very different. Back in the day, it was like, eh, I don't really know you, buddy. Sorry about that, you know, which I get it.
SPEAKER_01You can knock on the door, and people are saying, I don't want any snake oil, no thanks. Yeah, exactly. And I don't blame them. I was thinking the same thing when I was saying it, I was like, Yeah, it was how do you go about circumnavigating that? And I know there's like you said, there's a lot of black hat tactics out there, and there's a lot of shady things that that go on with with, like you said, reputation management, you know, to make it sound like um like a mafia business, like, oh, I'm in the waste management business, I'm in the reputation management business and stuff like that. So how do you guys differ and and what are the well, don't share your secrets, but what are the ways that maybe you really stay within the guidelines, stay within the white hat tactics?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So really there's a there's a a number of different ways. Is it first of all, we follow their guidelines to a T. So if Amazon says, hey, you can only do this, we're doing this, right? I mean, we want to make sure we've never had an account suspended. I'm very, you know, I'm very, very proud of that. Yeah, because that's that's obviously big, right? It's huge. Not something. Yeah, it is, it really is. And so, you know, the thing is I I mean, I've had clients, actually a number of clients, big, big clients with a lot of money, that have said, Hey, can you do this twice as fast or three times as fast? And my my answer to them is always no, because I don't, if it was just for money and I didn't care and I was like, I could put your account at risk, then I still wouldn't do it. That's just not the way that I work. But like maybe some people would. And I just tell them, hey, listen, like, don't, don't, if there's anybody out there that says they can do it, oh, they can get these removed in 24 hours, be very cautious of that. Right. Like it, if because if they could do it, I would know about them. And guess what? We could, I mean, there's all
White Hat Only And Account Safety
SPEAKER_00kinds of things that can happen if that was the true situation. Right. Don't get sold on something. I'm telling you, this is what the timeline is because that's compliant. If you, if your account, you want to put it at risk, you're not worried about that as much, which you should be, then you can hire another company and see what can happen there. I'm not saying there's not other companies out there that can do things similar to us. Nobody has the the history that we have and you know, the software and all that that we've we've created as proprietary to us. But um, you know, it it is you do have to kind of look at it and say, okay, like, does this pass? If it sounds too good to be true, then it's usually too good to be true, is the way I explain it to people. But I had two customers, like literally, they were offering me six figures for one ASIN saying, hey, we're we've got unlimited budget on this thing, just knock out as many as you can. And it was like, hey guys, like I I only get paid when reviews get removed. So guess what? I want to remove them as quickly as you want to give me the cash. Like, I I love that's awesome. The problem is I I pride myself on saying that we've never had an account being suspended. And if we do get an account suspended, then I can't say that. Also, I don't want your account to get suspended, right? Like it's not just about me. It's like, wait, like I want you guys to still do good as well, you know, but I know it doesn't matter. And it's like, no, it does, you guys. Like, that's you know, that's crazy. It doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_01I they would say that.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, that's nuts. No, it is crazy. Like, and and talking six figures, they're like, we have over a hundred thousand dollars for each one of these two different companies, right? And I was like, man, I literally over $200,000 just waiting, but I just can't, just for me, I it's like, yeah, it's crazy that they would even consider that. Because I'm like, why would you guys even want to do that? Like, that's because if you get it, anyways, it just didn't make sense. But I was like, hey, listen, I want, you know, like let's just we're gonna have to continue at this pace. If somebody else says they can do it fast and you want to go with them, I we don't have any long-term contracts. You can jump, ship, and try it. Just be careful, you know, trust your spider sense. If something's funny is going on, you feel like something weird's going on, you know, just don't don't don't get in trouble.
SPEAKER_01Right. And it's crazy to think that you would risk. I mean, at the end of the day, you're never gonna risk um getting rid of the reviews faster for the potential loss. I mean, the the boost in sales that would come from that cannot be anywhere close to the potential loss in sales of your ASIN getting shut down, or worse, even your account getting suspended. So I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Well, we're we're here for the long term, right? I mean, that's really the goal. Is like, and they should be too. But the thing is, so I grew up in the SEO space. So I do get there's people that would create businesses, want a game, Google, just do six months of as much revenue as they can, and then they get shut down, they don't have a problem. They would burn, you know, domain names and stuff. That's not my business. I've always done long-term business. So my thing is is like, is this going to I don't do quick sprints for quick money if it's gonna eventually jeopardize my business? Because I have I have employees, I have a reputation, I have all these things that are on my shoulders, right? We I need to make sure that they're taken care of as well. And if I start doing outlandish things and crazy things, that affects a lot of people. Affects people that you know, the sellers who that's just how they feed their family, the my employees, and I'm the one, the reason they can feed their family because of the hard work they do. So, anyways, I it's not just me, you know, out there pulling levers. I this affects a lot of people and and just my name. I my name itself and
Spotting Fraud And Copy-Paste Tactics
SPEAKER_00just being honest in how we do things is way more important than any dollar amount that I could ever make from any of that. So very honorable.
SPEAKER_01I love it, Shane. That's great. Thank you. Um, no, that's that's that is very respectable because I know there are some people. I mean, that's the reason I think you guys exist, is there are some people that'll do that in a in a black hat way, and then you they kind of get um cooked. I was gonna say a different word that wouldn't be YouTube would not like me to say. Um they kind of get cooked over, you know, and it's not that's not what you want to say.
SPEAKER_00So no, it it happens. And and you the other thing is just we also have had we've had I've had to drop a few clients on when I found out they were doing tactics that we didn't agree with. Oh wow. Um one of them was a really big client that we they sent us an email that showed that said some stuff that was about them doing things that were, in my my opinion, unethical um in in the review space. And so I just I said, hey, you guys, I you know, I don't mean to be a bad guy, but I I just can't work with you guys. Like I if you're doing things and I don't know about it, it's your business, but you just ex you just said something that clearly you were going after a competitor in the email, you didn't realize it, and you said, and I I just can't be a part of that. So that's the other hard part too, is like I don't I do very ethical business, but you gotta, I can't be a part of anything that and not just for my own reputation, but also for the business. I don't want that ever to come back on me. And if you're doing something, I get it, you're getting a little froggy, you might be doing something outside of the lines a little bit. I I just don't want to know about it. Right.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna just do my business. Right. That's honestly my dream is to get CC'd on a sort of crazy dramatic, hey, we're gonna do this bank robbery. And I'm not involved in it, but they CC'd me because they thought they got they thought the guy's name was Peter Sim, and they said and they typed in my email, Peter Sims, and then now I'm on I'm on it. And the police come and say, What do you have to do with this? And I say, I have nothing. I was just CC'd on the wrong email. That's not even I wasn't even there. I have an alibi. I'll know the day.
SPEAKER_00Just eat eating my popcorn. Right, just watching, waiting for this style go down, and I'm glad that you're here because now I'm gonna have you on my podcast. Right. I booked a hotel room right above the bank.
SPEAKER_01I look out my window, watch you guys arrest them. You're welcome. Yeah, you know. I'll tip them off. You know, that's what I'll do. That's what I'll do. I'll call the police and say, I have a great lead for you. I just want I want half of whatever they're trying to steal as the reward. No, but um it it's it's it's kind of speaking. I actually really I didn't plan this. I was trying to be funny, trying is the keyword there. Um, there's actually segues great into my next little question I had as far as these bad actors go. So there are plenty of people out there that are doing things that are not allowed. And you know, and Amazon's doing, we'll get into, I want to hear if you know about what Amazon is doing to fight abuse review. Um, but before that, what have you been seeing maybe the last couple of months, maybe the last couple of years? What has been emerging? Um, uh what has been the evolution of marketplace abuse over the last year? Have have you seen that people are doing these
Amazon’s AI, Rufus, And Enforcement
SPEAKER_01more complex forms of remote review manipulation that you guys are catching or that you're just seeing, or that people should be watching out for?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, there is. I mean, because the thing is, this is review manipulation, really anything, there's constant evolution, right? And Amazon does everything they can to whether it be AI and you know, trying to fight that. But like I said, I grew up in the SEO space. So the minute Google says, hey, we've stopped this, there's 200 people that just figured out a way around it. I mean, it's just the reality of the situation, right? There's always going to be something. People are going to, if there's money to be made, they're going to try to take advantage. Not everybody, but people do, right? And so um, a lot of the stuff that we see, you know, when we when we talked about like fraudulent stuff, when people are doing fraudulent stuff, we do see a lot of, you know, once again, people doing the like backheaded slaps as I talked about. Oh, I really like these shoes, but these are, I wish these were these are better. Right. We see a lot of that. We also now when we grab the reviews, we pull the reviews all the way back when the ASIN was created. We there's a lot of the lot of people that were attacking other people and what they were doing, they were very lazy. What I mean by that is they would have, you know, 10 comments, they would hire a VA, they would have three different accounts, and they would copy and paste those reviews. Well, we our system looks at that and says, Well, these are the exact same reviews for these three buyers. Like, there's no way that's even possible. Talking statistically, right? So in those situations, I think a lot of that has changed. I don't think they're doing that as much because now we're on it, right? Before Amazon was kind of on it, but not really policing as much. Um, and so they kind of they've said, Oh, we got through with it. Great, we can continue to do this. And so we're going, we're going to look at that and say, nah, you're not getting away with that anymore. So what we have to stay on top of is the current stuff that's happening, right? Like we have the past stuff. We know, we know you know there's a review velocity. If you're getting one one star day, and all of a sudden you get 20 in a day for three days, that flags our system, right? Everything that that what we're looking at, we're always trying to find the black hat tactics because then we want to implement that into our software to look for that. And so that's kind of what we do. Um, because it's it's nice to know what people are doing to game the system. And then we have to figure out how are we going to stop that. Because at the end of the day, I just want to even the playing field for sellers, right? I mean, they already have enough, as we talked about, to deal with. And it's it's you know, and I've seen
Free Tools: Review Checker And ROI
SPEAKER_00some amazing brands that I've talked with that say, God, I wish I would have known about you a year ago because we're out of business now, right? Like it's like it's just brutal. I mean, great, great businesses because they just, you know, if you go and you attack somebody and they you if they launch, and guess what? You go give them a one-star review, that launch is pretty much done, unless you can get that review removed. So that becomes very difficult. And I and I just like I said, I I our goal is always just to even the playing field. And if that's you're getting attacked by somebody, I want to find out who that is, and I want to flag that. And I want Amazon to know about that because you should be able to do good business, right? It's good marketing, good, you know, optimize your listings, great pictures. Just do good business. I mean, if you just do good business, there's plenty of money for everybody. I think let me check. I think Amazon, like we just had Black Friday, I think you know, a few billion or 11 billion, whatever the number is. I think there's enough cash for you, right? I don't know if you need seven Ferraris and eight houses, you know, like really there's enough. And if you just do good business, right? The problem is I believe that people started attacking and doing funny stuff and they get attacked, so you attack, and then it became this thing that it didn't, I don't think it necessarily needed to be, but it's just because of the evolution of Amazon and other platforms as well.
SPEAKER_01But it's just one of those things, you know. I don't need seven Ferraris, I need one Honda Civic, and I'm good, and I'm good. Great car.
SPEAKER_00I'm I miss my Honda Civic, man. I had a I had a Honda cord too, man. I love that thing. Anyways, great. Oh I did uh 300,000 miles all day.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah. I've got one at home now that I don't uh I don't drive as much. I let her rest, which is good. She needs a 2000. So yeah, it's a good car. It's a good car.
SPEAKER_00It's just your baby.
SPEAKER_01Um I'm hoping to put out a nice electric hybrid model. I think they have a hybrid maybe, but I kind of I'm gunning for an electric one in the next five or so years, maybe. I'll finance something. We'll see. Um, but yeah, no, it's uh you're right. There is plenty of money out there. That's the bottom line there, is that you have enough money to buy uh a nice Honda Civic, and that's I don't think a problem. So um I wanted to finish up, Shane, with uh some final thoughts just on also a little bit on you mentioned this already a little bit, but tell me a little bit more if you know about what is Amazon
Final Takeaways And Where To Find Shane
SPEAKER_01doing to fight this abuse of power? We've seen some things, and obviously, like I said, it's not even five years anymore where they wouldn't even care. Um, they do care a lot now and they're investing a lot into this. What is Amazon on their side of things doing to maybe either prepare sellers, or maybe what are you guys doing, even too, to also prepare sellers uh to is there a way to prepare them, or what are they really doing to fight this abuse of the marketplace manipulation?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, you know, Rufus and and all the, you know, the AI that they're creating and those different things that they've got going on there. Obviously, they're continuously improving that, right? And Amazon has said that they stop, I want to say it's like 200 million reviews or something, some crazy amount, right? And of course, we don't see that, right? We don't see the amount of stuff that goes through. One thing is we get mad about is the ones that do seep through. Well, imagine if there was 10 times as many or 20 times as many. So I do believe that Amazon is doing, you know, everything that they can, right? I mean, Amazon wants a clean platform and they wouldn't have guidelines and stuff if they didn't care about what was being said on the platform, right? They definitely care. For us, we're just like that backup. We're kind of like the like the backup quarterback. We're ready, like, hey, this quarterback gets hurt, something happens, somebody gets through the review system. Guess what? Then we're there to be able to make that happen. And I do believe in Amazon is beefing it up. I mean, they have um obviously the FTC, there's you know, FCC's also looking at some things as well. I think Amazon was already being proactive before that happened to be able to, you know, to be able to go through and take a look at these reviews. I think a good amount of them get stopped by Amazon. I do believe that. Um, and then like I said, we just pick up the ones after that and saying, hey, here we go. We file cases and you know, and then Amazon will go and see that and get those removed. It's a little more tedious than what I'm explaining. It's not just clicking report button and filing a case. We do have to stay on top of them, but that's what we do, right? We yeah, and we built out a program or a platform to be able to do that and once again and make it so the sellers don't have to worry about it. That really is our big goal.
SPEAKER_01Love it, love it. Wow, yeah. No, it's again, it's very fascinating, the world of reviews. Um, something that I was not privy to or something that I was not aware of as much until now, until today. So I thank you for joining us and I thank you for informing me about this. This is great. Of course, of course, man.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for having me on, of course.
SPEAKER_01Where can the people find you? I'm gonna have your LinkedIn down below, but what else should be in the description down there? Are your website? Yeah. What do you got?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. What I'll do is I'll actually even even one up here on the on. So we do have a website, obviously, of uh trace shoes.ai. But I think what we'll give to you guys too, this is gonna be something that we've created. I I talk about just wanting to help sellers. And so we've done some things to actually prove that. What I mean by that is we actually have a thing called the Amazon Review Checker. Um, and this is a free tool that any um seller can use. What it is, if you go to the website, it'll say Amazon Review Checker, and we'll give the link in the in the show notes. But what happens is you can click on that, you can go and put in your ACE and verify your email address, and we'll actually send you a report on your last, let's say, five, 10, 15 reviews, which ones are in violation. And then what you can do is you can file those on your own. So that's the exact software that we use internally for our own team. You can go and do that, and we actually even have a PDF, and I'll give we'll put the link in the show notes as well, where we file and how we file. So literally sellers can go do this on their own. Like that is my goal is you know, obviously it cuts into our business, but if you you know, for me at the end of the day, like I want people to know that when I say that I really just care about sellers, I mean, great, I want to make some money. But at the end of the day, like if you can go do this on your own, like you don't even need us, right? We've already kind of put those things together. So the PDF and the other thing is too is when they go and they sign up, or when they go and do their put in their ASIN, when they get that report in the top right hand corner, there's gonna be a calculator that we just created. We had an older calculator that was good. This one is actually crazy. It's a we call it our super RLI calculator. And what happens is you can actually put in your exact numbers. AI will give you an estimate, but you can go in and say, okay, hey, if we wanted to remove whatever 10 critical reviews, one, twos, and three stars, this will say, hey, this is gonna be a proximity. This is what the cost is, and this is when you're gonna break even, and this is how much more money you're gonna be making. And so we've created that. The goal being is that you know, does that make sense to protect that ACE and to ask for to hire us? And if you don't want to hire us, go do it on your own. Yeah. So yeah, we'll include that in the show notes. It's kind of a freebie. Everybody can go check that out. And once again, if you can't do it on your own, we'll always be here. But I'm really hoping I'll say a good prayer to the Amazon review gods that good things happen for all those sellers. Thank you for that. All that too, thank you. There's like a gang sign or something, which I do appreciate.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. No, no, Shane, I really appreciate you coming on. I really appreciate you informing me and hopefully informing all of you out there as well, everyone listening. Um, like I said, we'll have all of those links to all those fascinating tools down there in the description. Make sure to check down below, as well as Shane's LinkedIn profile, uh, so you can stay up to date on all the things, reviews, and give him a good follow or connect. So Shane, I appreciate you coming on. I really appreciate you talking to me and um we'll have to see.
SPEAKER_00Velocity Pete. This is an honor, my friend.
SPEAKER_01Absolute, absolute honor. I appreciate that. I appreciate a lot. If I had a nickel, I'd have two nickels today. Um someone said it's an honor. It's that's that's nice to start. It's nice to hear I put on a good show. So yeah, no, I appreciate you coming on, and we'll have to have you back in a in a few months, maybe, to talk more about uh the next wave of review defense, or if something crazy happens, I'll keep my nose to the ground and uh listen for any uh any related things like uh there's a giant bot farm in India pumping out fake reviews or China. Don't sue me, India or China, um, even though I know those bot farms are there. Um Probably some validity to that for sure. Thank you all for watching. I am your host, Velocity Pete, and we will see you next week.