Imyst has shops that require the purchase of an item on Amazon. Amazon is not the client. The client is the manufacturer of the item you purchase.You receive reimbursement only, no fee. It's not clear to me if the reimbursement includes shipping.

Ten days after you receive the item, you write up a preliminary Amazon review along with the number of stars you will give the item, and submit that to imyst for approval. The guidelines warn that negative reviews will "delay" processing.

How is this not a "paid for" review? Amazon's records will show that I purchased the item on my credit card, but they will not know that I was fully reimbursed only if I wrote a positive review. This seems really sketchy.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/30/2016 06:17PM by ChrisCooper.

I certainly agree that it does not pass the smell test.

Edited to add: Apologies for thinking it was an ICA violation.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/30/2016 06:32PM by Flash.

Is it a violation? If there is a specific product to be purchased that is what the shopper will review for posting on Amazon. I agree it sounds like nothing more than a paid review and would not do it for that reason alone.

I looked at it and the reimbursement is approximately $4 less than the cost of the item (vitamins). Why don't they at least offer full reimbursement?

I looked and the price of the product is $1 or $2 less than the reimbursement.

I guess it depends on the tax rate where you live. Mine would be $3.49 less than the reimbursement. Not a huge amount, but I think the msc should pay the full reimbursement.

For clarity, Amazon is not the client. the client is the manufacturer of the item you purchase.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/30/2016 06:18PM by ChrisCooper.

I didn't go through the full process to find the taxes. Mine would probably be about $2.60.

I have gotten free items to review online through other means but in those cases they never suggested that the review should be anything other than my honest opinion and I did have to state in my review that I got the item free for review. This seemed sketchy to me when I read it and the products they want you to review are weight loss/energy pills. Risking my well-being with mystery pills does not seem seem worth it just for reimbursement.

In my area, it shows as being $2 below the reimbursement with free shipping.

My concern: how do you determine the effectiveness of the product in less than 10 days. It reminds me of the book "Flowers for Algernon."

The effectiveness of the product doesn't seem to matter. I think the point of this shop is to provide positive reviews for the client on Amazon. Didn't Amazon sue the fake reviewers hired by Fiverr.com for doing basically the same thing? Note that the company that hired the folks to write the reviews wasn't sued, the person who wrote the review was. [smallbiztrends.com]

One-million foot pole for me.

This is off topic, but I wish Amazon would create the ability to filter out reviews where the person "got the product for free or deeply discounted in exchange for their honest and unbiased review". I like that a lot of them provide photos of the product, which is sometimes helpful, but the reviews are basically worthless to me. I'm going to feel much more generous about a phone charger I got for free or for $5 than one I paid $30 for (which, I'm sure is why the company does it. I don't think I've ever seen a negative review with that disclaimer and only one luke-warm review).

For that reason, I always start with 1 star and work my way up reading. I also then look through the 3, 4, and 5 for photos of the product and try to read the longer ones too. I try to read updates as well. I recently got a scale... it went haywire after a few weeks. Apparently has happened to many folks. I wrote a review based on this... suddenly, I'm getting a new scale and they want me to revise my feedback-- which I will do if they hold up past the time the old ones did but I'm still not giving a 4 or 5 star until I'm sure it deserves it. My husband says that just means I paid at least twice as much as I should of since they just auto shipped me a new scale without my asking.

That is so foul!

The shopper has to write a positive review, or risk having their payment delayed, AND the shopper doesn't get enough time to evaluate the product?

Yeah, million foot pole.

@ChrisCooper wrote:

The effectiveness of the product doesn't seem to matter. I think the point of this shop is to provide positive reviews for the client on Amazon. Didn't Amazon sue the fake reviewers hired by Fiverr.com for doing basically the same thing? Note that the company that hired the folks to write the reviews wasn't sued, the person who wrote the review was. [smallbiztrends.com]

One-million foot pole for me.

Wow. I took a cursory look at these shops, determined the products were something I wouldn't use, and moved on without reading the details. No way would I ever do something like that c

"Charlie" with Bronson was the movie.

@HonnyBrown wrote:

In my area, it shows as being $2 below the reimbursement with free shipping.

My concern: how do you determine the effectiveness of the product in less than 10 days. It reminds me of the book "Flowers for Algernon."

I fell for it. It wasn't until I started writing my "proposed" review for their approval that I felt dirty. This crossed an ethical line for me. I started reading reviews of these pseudo-drugs that others had posted on Amazon and I saw two types: First the fake ones posted by mystery shoppers that were all positive; and then the others posted by real users who talked about side effects and general ineffectiveness to deliver what was promised. Stop and think, what if you needed a product -- or your Mother needed a product, you would want to trust the reviews posted on Amazon, right?

I am returning the products I bought to Amazon and not posting reviews. I want to contact Amazon and tell them what's going on.

Amazon is banning free or discounted products in exchange for reviews. I guess this mystery shop program has ended.

[techcrunch.com]

I ended up signing up for this shop. I had to purchase memory pills. They made me sick to my stomach. I took them for two days, threw them out and cancelled my shop.

No.... it has not ended just new rules in place.

@CANADAMOMMY wrote:

No.... it has not ended just new rules in place.

What are the new rules? I wonder how they will get around the Amazon policy.

A seller cannot request a review. A review must use different disclosure words. It will all settle down in awhile. Not yet but it will..... they relay too much on reviews to disolve it.

This is Amazon's press release - 10/3/16

Update on Customer Reviews
October 3, 2016

Customer reviews are one of the most valuable tools we offer customers for making informed purchase decisions, and we work hard to make sure they are doing their job. In just the past year, we’ve improved review ratings by introducing a machine learned algorithm that gives more weight to newer, more helpful reviews; applying stricter criteria to qualify for the Amazon verified purchase badge; and suspending, banning or suing thousands of individuals for attempting to manipulate reviews.

Our community guidelines have always prohibited compensation for reviews, with an exception – reviewers could post a review in exchange for a free or discounted product as long as they disclosed that fact. These so-called ‘incentivized reviews’ make up only a tiny fraction of the tens of millions of reviews on Amazon, and when done carefully, they can be helpful to customers by providing a foundation of reviews for new or less well-known products.

Today, we updated the community guidelines to prohibit incentivized reviews unless they are facilitated through the Amazon Vine program. We launched Vine several years ago to carefully facilitate these kinds of reviews and have been happy with feedback from customers and vendors. Here’s how Vine works: Amazon – not the vendor or seller – identifies and invites trusted and helpful reviewers on Amazon to post opinions about new and pre-release products; we do not incentivize positive star ratings, attempt to influence the content of reviews, or even require a review to be written; and we limit the total number of Vine reviews that we display for each product. Vine has important controls in place and has proven to be especially valuable for getting early reviews on new products that have not yet been able to generate enough sales to have significant numbers of organic reviews. We also have ideas for how to continue to make Vine an even more useful program going forward. Details on that as we have them.

The above changes will apply to product categories other than books. We will continue to allow the age-old practice of providing advance review copies of books.

Thank you.

– Chee Chew, VP, Customer Experience

apercu Old news actually that was from Monday.... updated since....