Do you think that if you are a trusted Chinese gadget manufacturer and Amazon has banned your user reviews, then do you just give up? File a lawsuit? You can also change one letter of your name to try and get back on Amazon.
Sunvalley, the parent company of popular brands RavPower, Vava, and TaoTronics, seems to have chosen door number three.
Recently, we spotted all three banned brands on Amazon's storefront in the most blatant of disguises: Vava had changed its names to Vav, TaoTronics was now Taotronic and RavPower was just Rav.
They are not the only ones. Choetech, a banned brand, didn't need to change a single letter at all. It was just there.
These listings were not discovered by Amazon until we brought them to their attention on September 17th, almost two weeks ago. The company finally removed them yesterday because they were in fact bad actors trying to avoid their bans.
The Verge has the complete statement from the company.
These brands were blocked, along with their product detail pages and the selling accounts that perpetrated their policy violations. These bad actors are motivated and employ various tactics to avoid detection in their efforts to harm honest customers, sellers partners and Amazon. There are many proactive controls that prevent most of these bad actors from succeeding. We will quickly investigate any attempt by a bad actor to reenter our stores that we have not caught and take appropriate action, including continuing to improve our proactive controls. Customers can reach Customer Service 24 hours a day via email, phone, or chat to discuss any concerns they may have regarding a product, or their shopping experience.
Amazon does not have a ban-dodging policy as other platforms. Although the company does not allow you to have more than one seller account, this doesn't mean that it doesn't apply because Amazon has removed these accounts from the site. This new statement clearly states that the deterrent does not end once a company's first seller account has been removed from Amazon. They are supposed to be gone.
Amazon must be more aggressive if this is the intention.
Between the time that we reported the items to Amazon and when they removed them we purchased all of the items shown above, had them shipped and verified they were legitimate. While we waited for them to ship we discovered more sellers selling these banned products that we didn't report to Amazon. These sellers are still in operation today.
Let me show you how easy is it to find a brand that has not been banned. Another picture of the Choetech wireless charger is here:
Look closely at the top left. Amazon suggests that I choose a charger with a similar design. Let's get on with it.
It is similar because it's the same product that Choe Technology sells. Choetech.
We ordered the no-name charger on Amazon just to make sure. It's here, Choetech logo included:
You will see a sticker in the upper-right corner. It says that this is a 100% official product. You can even get a Choetech Scratch and Check Label to make sure it is authentic. It was so official that I couldn't help but smirk at it.
It is worth mentioning that 12 Choetech products are listed in the first search results if you type Choetech into Amazon. Although Amazon employees are not always available to whack every mole, it is reasonable to assume that Amazon's search engine could know exactly how to direct customers to its banned brand.
If you were wondering, these products did not come with a blatant offer to give money in exchange for review insert cards like those I'm soliciting for a future article. However, three of them came with a card suggesting that I sign up for their VIP program.
P.S. P.S. - Amazon might want to check out Kaloxi. It looks like it could be a direct competitor for TaoTronics. To the Amazon rep that canceled iSmart before my attention, kudos!
Sunvalley did not immediately respond to our request for comment. We were not able to reach Choetech via email.
