The seller was caught with fake reviews, and the e-commerce company WB issued a fine of nearly 10,000 yuan

Recently, Russian e-commerce company Wildberries (hereinafter referred to as "WB") has cracked down on sellers' false review behavior and has imposed penalties on sellers.

A seller recently posted a screenshot on the forum of a letter from WB officials, which said: "We have identified 52 fake reviews from your products. As a result, you will face a fine of 100,000 rubles (about 8,699 yuan)."

Seller screenshot

The seller was not convinced. He said that there was no content about "comment penalty" in the contract with WB. In addition, the seller was also interested in the calculation method of the 100,000 ruble fine proposed by WB, because it was not mentioned in the contract.

It is worth mentioning that this seller is not the only one who was caught and fined by WB. Another seller also received a letter from WB, but the fine was relatively low.

In response to the seller's questions, a WB staff member said : "We have the right to decide on our own the punishment for violations. There are no rules and no calculation coefficients. The platform strictly prohibits brushing reviews. This is related to the reputation of the platform and the rights of consumers."

The staff member also said that false reviews are not welcome on any platform, and platform owners reserve the power to set rules and impose sanctions.

The sellers punished this time may have had a fluke mentality. It is reported that the phenomenon of false reviews has always existed on WB. On a Russian forum, a user has been carrying out an activity since January this year to expose false reviews on the platform, but the sellers who were exposed have not received any punishment so far.

The user said that compared to WB, another Russian e-commerce platform Ozon's handling of fake reviews is more "reasonable." The user said that if Ozon finds fake reviews on a product, the platform will delete the reviews and "lock up the account that posted the reviews" instead of closing the store.

This is not the first time that WB has implemented this behavior without prior notice. During the Double 11 promotion last year , WB suddenly notified sellers that they had to offer a 25% discount on all products, a move that caused dissatisfaction among many sellers. After a WB seller named Alexander Blokhin talked about this on Facebook, his store was blocked by WB.

As soon as this incident happened, AliExpress Russia took full advantage of the situation and issued a notice that starting from the "WB discount blunder", sellers who open stores on AliExpress Russia will receive product discounts subsidized by the platform when participating in Black Friday, New Year and other promotions, without the need for sellers to advance payment themselves.

WB may be so arrogant because of its status as the largest e-commerce platform in Russia. However, with the competition from AliExpress Russia and Ozon, if WB continues to maintain this style, it will be difficult to retain sellers.

Russia

Wildberries

E-commerce