Help Needed: fraudulent advertising campaign
Hello everyone
I am aware that this is a special case that rarely occurs.
During my routine account balance check yesterday evening, I was shocked to see that it was in the red.I then noticed that there seemed to be an advertising campaign running in the USA and Canada.
I had never run any advertising campaigns with 100% certainty and the advertising campaign itself was obviously not created manually, but seems to have been generated by a tool or algorithm.
The keywords, ASIN targets and budgets used are clearly irrational for everyone and no one would set up this campaign that way.
Nobody but me has access to this account and, as mentioned, I had NEVER run an advertising campaign before and therefore never checked it (the ad had been running unnoticed since October).
Amazon has now fobbed me off with a standard answer that says: "We have verified that these ads were created by your account and therefore have to be paid for."
This is without realizing that, as already mentioned, these ads could never have been created manually. Even the name of the campaign is suspicious.
ASK:
Has anyone ever experienced something similar and could give me a tip on how I could sort this out with Amazon? I am simply turned away with the same standard answer and my questions/concerns are not answered.
Thank you all for your kind help, this is creating heavy financial issues for me.
Here are some screenshots of this suspicious campaign:
3 replies
Seller_NbYSGJ8Tehgbv
Amazon likes to attempt to generate extra cash by having "Amazon Advertising Representatives" create advertisements for you. They love to email you and claim there is come kind of benefit with their advertising campaigns (there is not).
Google does the same thing. I have heard horror stories on each side.
While Amazon auto-defaults these campaigns as "paused", its extremely easy to turn them on...and this is Amazon's goal.
Therefore, I am 100% certain that Amazon will not sort this out/refund you. They will argue that their automatically created campaigns default as "paused".
They do this a lot. For Black Friday, they defaulted the suggested bid to Black Friday bids 2 weeks in advance. Everyone had extremely high bids due to pursuing suggested bids as normal....but many sellers were unaware these were Black Friday bids.
Answers to your questions for the campaign that was created are below
"Random generated add campaign name" - This is a sign that this campaign was generated by one of the the advertising employees.
"Completely irrelevant ASIN targets" - These targets are automatically generated based on the copy of your product. The automatic ad that was generated dedicates around 100 impressions per target...and it then abandons that target and moves on. That is why you see so many targets.
"What should that even be and who would add such a keyword target?" - These are ASIN targets generated by your automatic campaign. This means that your product appeared on the detail page of those ASINS in an attempt to win you market share.
"Why would anyone add his own product as a target?" - Some sellers do not want any other item to be shown on their detail page...so they add their own items as a target. However, this is an automatic campaign...and this was auto detected by the A9 algorithm to see if a sale can arrise from it.
"Never ever would I (or anyone) add this as a keyword target" - Amazon is detecting what people are searching for and matching it with your item. This is exactly how I scrape for new keywords. Automatic advertisements have the ability to tell us what people are searching for at the present time.
"Don't even know what these are" - Neither do I. I leave it on and if it performs poorly...I lower the bid until its performing appropriately.
Seller_qlgySprDUekJj
What an outrage
After asking again to be forwarded to the legal department, I only received the standard answer for the second time:
"Our system confirms that you placed this ad yourself and the $2,000 will be deducted from your account."
Then the case is closed and cannot be reopened. No information about a legal department contact, no evidence of Amazon's claims that were requested, nothing!
In my 55 years, I have dealt with many companies around the world, but I have never experienced such audacity. Doesn't Amazon have to abide by the law and can simply make a claim and basically accuse me of lying? All this without having to bear responsibility?
I'll just call it what it is: Theft, fraud and false statements against me. This would actually be legally relevant and should be dealt with in court.
But Amazon knows that you can try it with the "little" people, who wants to go to court against that?
It's a shame to have to make his opinion heard in this forum, but the "loss" of such a sum is not easy to accept.
Does anyone else have experience or an idea?
