Jim Henry

Amazon delivers about 14 million packages a day through its Prime program and some of them are going to people who haven’t ordered anything. It’s the latest scam involving the online retail giant and it’s called “brushing.”

Amazon allows third-party merchants to sell their products on the Amazon site. Those items turn up in the search results as customers shop. Sellers know that having their products appear in the first few search results greatly increases their chances of getting an order.

That “pecking order” is largely determined by customer reviews. The better the reviews, the higher a product appears in search results, with priority given for “verified sale” reviews. That is, reviews by customers who’ve actually purchased the product, and that’s where the scam comes in.

Unscrupulous third party sellers hire people, called “brushers,” to purchase their products through temporary, fake accounts. Then the seller writes fake, positive reviews about their own products.

To complete the process and get the higher “verified sale” ranking for those reviews, the items have to be delivered to a real address. The scammers don’t want to raise suspicion by having hundreds or thousands of items delivered to *their* address, so they have the items delivered to random addresses.

Often the unwilling recipients will get dozens and dozens of unsolicited products over the course of several months. Some people may not even report the deliveries to Amazon.

This might seem like a victimless crime, but that’s not the case. The real victims are customers who buy shoddy products based on fake reviews.

There’s another downside for unwitting recipients. Their personal information may have been compromised. A third party seller (and a shifty one at that) now has their names, shipping addresses and maybe even their Amazon account information.

If you find an unsolicited package from Amazon on your doorstep, call customer service at (888) 280-4331and notify them.

Amazon is well aware of this brushing scam and tries to stamp it out wherever it can because it compromises the integrity of their business model. Their system depends heavily on truthful customer reviews. Third party sellers caught falsely inflating theirs are banned from using the site.

Also, change your Amazon account password and consider freezing your credit at the three reporting bureaus, Experian, TransUnion and Equifax. It’s free and you can do it online.

The only bright spot in the brushing scam is that by federal law, you’re allowed to keep unsolicited items that appear on your doorstep, *without* paying for them. You can hang on to them, donate them to the Salvation Army, or toss them. Just don’t pay for them if you’re asked to send money. That could just be part of *another* scam.

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Unscrupulous third party sellers are hiring people to purchase their products through temporary, fake accounts...

MANAGE | Jul 8, 2021

Beware of Amazon Brushing Scam

By: Jim Henry

Where Faith Meets Finance

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