How Negative Reviews Hurt Your Brand (And What You Can Do About It) — Shane Barker | Why Bad Reviews Kill Sales And Boost Ad Costs, How To Tell Fake From Real Feedback, How Amazon Rules Allow Review Removals, Why DIY Review Removal Is Difficult (#390)

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In this episode, we explore the impact of negative reviews on Amazon sellers and how to effectively manage them. 

Our guest, Shane Barker, CEO and founder of Trace Fuse, shares insights from his 20+ years in marketing and his pioneering work with the first Amazon TOS-compliant negative review removal system. 

Shane discusses the challenges sellers face with unfair and fraudulent reviews and offers strategies to protect and grow your brand on Amazon. 

Visit the TraceFuse Amazon Review Checker at https://tracefuse.ai/amazon-review-checker/ 

Topics discussed in this episode:

• Why negative reviews impact more than ratings - affecting BSR, PPC costs and sales by up to 50%. 
• How Trace Fuse removes Amazon TOS-violating reviews while staying compliant. 
• What competitor attacks look like - strategic negative reviews before Prime Day or product launches. 
• How to differentiate between valuable negative feedback and fraudulent reviews. 
• Why proactive review monitoring prevents sales losses before they happen. 
• What makes supplements, beauty and pet products most vulnerable to review manipulation. 
• How Amazon's review guidelines determine which reviews qualify for removal. 
• Why DIY review removal has such a steep learning curve with Amazon. 
• How Trace Fuse achieved 13,000+ review removals for 500+ clients. 
• What sellers should consider before investing in professional review management. 

Links & Resources 

Website: https://tracefuse.ai/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tracefuse/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shanebarker
X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/shane_barker
Instagram: http://instagram.com/shanebarker

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to another episode of the e-Commerce Coffee Break Podcast. This episode, we're going to find out how negative reviews hurt your brand and what you can do about it. Joining me today is Shane Barker. He's the CEO and founder of Trace Fuse, the first Amazon TOS compliant negative review removal system.

With [00:00:20] over 20 years of marketing experience supporting Fortune 500 brands, Shane has been recognized as a leading influencer. His recent focus is helping Amazon sellers combat negative reviews. Through Trace Juice's, innovative Whitehead solution, and we want to dive into this right now. Hi Shane, how are you today?

Doing awesome, man. I'm super excited about being on your podcast. I've been hearing it for a while and [00:00:40] finally gonna be a guest. So, you know, dreams do come true. Excellent. Let's start. And first question is, many sellers live in a fear of negative reviews. We know that positive reviews, everyone wants to have them, and that's a good thing.

But negative reviews can be a pain in the neck. Tell me about it. What's the influence there? Yeah, I mean [00:01:00] really at the end of the day, I think, you know, a lot of people know that, you know, negative reviews obviously hurt your product listings. Um, that's kind of a, a given. But what I don't think sellers know is that there's an opportunity to get them removed.

Right. And I think that was the big thing when I started the company almost, we launched about two or three years ago. A lot of sellers were. They were kind of giving me the side eye a little bit, [00:01:20] right? Because usually reviews, um, it can be a black hat tactic or it could be something that, you know, it's only done in China or you know, you're in an alleyway where if somebody gives you money and you run off and you take care of the reviews, um, I wanted to add some legitimacy to the review.

You know, being able to remove reviews. And so my goal was, is to start the company and I have a long, long history in the digital [00:01:40] space, so I've been. Digital marketing for 25 years plus. And I used to teach at UCLA, so I thought, well, what I'll do is I'll start this company and I'll put my face on it. Um, because I think a lot of the times, you know, a lot of the reputation management companies or review based companies, um, they kind of, I'm not saying they hide, but you know, for me I wanted to say, Hey, listen, you can look me up.

You can know that I'm not doing [00:02:00] anything funny. When we first launched, we launched at Powwow in Florida. This was a, like I said, two or three years ago now. Um, and everybody just was like a little suspect of it, which I get. And so we had to work and get over that hurdle. Which was a big hurdle. You know, you got, you, you wanna be the, you know, you trying to get that first customer to, to give you the chance to, to do all the things that you've done for your other customers that you were working [00:02:20] with behind the scenes.

And then, man, things just really took off. I mean, I am super proud to say as of today, we have 500 clients that removed over 13,000 reviews. So it is, um, I'm not gonna say it was easy. Uh, I'm not gonna say. You know, you guys see I'm wearing a hat today. If I take this off, I'm, I'm virtually bald because of the experience, but that's okay.

You know, I'll go to Turkey or something and get a hair transplant or something [00:02:40] one day. But, um, you know, but for now it's like, yeah, it's been a, a long, long journey, but it's been awesome. Okay, now let's talk about negative reviews. Uh, often there's the advice is you need to have some negative reviews. If you only have five star reviews, that looks fake.

Uh, but there is actually more to the story than just having negative reviews from legitimate [00:03:00] customers. How do negative reviews affect your clicks, your sales? Gimme the bigger picture. What's the problem here? Yeah, I mean, negative reviews really, you know, the core of Amazon is their review system, right?

I mean, at the end of the day, if they didn't have reviews there, we wouldn't as consumers just go and buy something, right? I mean, I can, I've done it a thousand times where you do, my wife's done it probably 10,000 times. [00:03:20] Hopefully she doesn't hear this podcast. She's a big Amazon supporter. Uh, you know, and it's very easy.

You go and you look at it, and if they have good reviews and they have over a hundred reviews and looks like a great product, and if they're a 4.3 and you see the four and a half stars, great. You're gonna click and buy it. Right. Um, we also know that Amazon has a great process for returning things. So it's very easy to do, you know, if you need to return something if it's not a good product.[00:03:40] 

Um, I, and I think a lot of people don't realize all the things, and I mean, only it doesn't just affect sales, right? I mean, it affects your bsr, it affects your star rating. It affects your PPC costs. It affects, you know, social proof conversions. It, it, there's so many things that it. Effects. And I think sellers don't realize that, you know, maybe they kind of get it.[00:04:00] 

They go, yeah, I don't know why this is going on or why this is happening. The issue that we really run into is that, you know, most of the stuff that we remove, the, the vi, the Amazon reviews that we've, that are in violation of their, their terms of service or their guidelines, those are the main things that we go after.

But we also go after fraudulent reviews too. So that's the other thing that's hard is like these reviews affect so many things. [00:04:20] And unfortunately, there are some sellers out there that don't do business on the up and up, and they'll attack you and they'll give you bad. One star reviews and, um, that can really crush you during a launch that can crush you during, before prime day, before Christmas, before summertime, like whenever your your big sales times is.

Unfortunately, from a. I'm not gonna say from an ethical standpoint 'cause I don't [00:04:40] think it's ethical at all. But from an ROI standpoint, you know, when you have like supplements and stuff, people will go and buy, you know, your creatine, buy 10 of them, give you a one star review, it crushes you. You reach out to Amazon, they either respond or they don't respond.

The response time isn't always that great. Um, and that becomes very frustrating. And so guess what happens your next time you're like, you know what, I'm not gonna. Get [00:05:00] screwed over before prime day. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go do what somebody else did to me before they do it to me. And so it turns into this thing.

I'm not saying in every category, and I'm not saying everybody does this, but there's only so many times that you can be punched in the face, you know, feel like you're getting punched in the face before you start to go, you know what, I'm gonna go take karate classes, or I'm gonna be ready the next time I get punched in the [00:05:20] face.

So. Once again, I'm not condoning to do anything that's against Amazon's guidelines or anything like that, but it just becomes a, sometimes an unfair playing field. And our goal is to, to level out that playing field to help people remove those, those bad reviews. And even the ones that violate Amazon's guidelines, which, um, you know, can happen a lot and a lot of people don't even know that's possible.

I wanna dissect a [00:05:40] little bit the terms of service of Amazon. You said there's different levels to reviews. There is the legitimate review, somebody was just not happy with your product, and then you have a competitor who has some kind of a bad plan. Tell me how that turns out. I. No, great question. So, at the end of the day, I mean, you know, I, I'm not, we didn't create this company to get rid of every [00:06:00] single bad review, right?

I mean, I think there is absolute value in having negative reviews. Um, some people might disagree with me, but there's, there's valuable lessons to be learned, right? If somebody keeps saying there's an issue with whatever that is, you know, something's making 'em feel a certain way, then you need to probably take a look at that.

I mean, we all, most of the time, 90, obviously 98% of the time, if you launch a product [00:06:20] anywhere. It's not gonna be perfect, right? We might think it's gonna be right. Our lunch, I, we spent two years on this, and then either consumers are gonna love it or hate it. Um, what you have to look at is like, okay, what do you need to do to look at those negative reviews?

Take those in stride. Understand that. Try not to be too emotional. 'cause it is, you feel like it, they're attacking your baby, right? The thing that you've created. But how do you turn that into something [00:06:40] positive, right? Like, I'll give you an example for a restaurant. You know, if you're at a restaurant and all of a sudden you see 20 reviews that say, oh my God, the waitress is, or the, the hostess, Jennifer, was extremely rude.

Guess what? Jennifer's probably rude, right? Like at the end of the day, right? Like I'm, you know, if it happens that many times what we look at when it comes to Amazon reviews is if there's, somebody says there's a problem [00:07:00] with the review. Maybe somebody says, oh, it tastes like this. And if we get a lot of reviews that say that, we'll actually take a look at that and then we'll assess.

Is that a true review or is that something that. Can cause other people not to buy it, right? So if somebody says, oh my God, this tastes like poison, right? And everybody goes, yeah, it does. And you have 10 people that say that. First of all, how [00:07:20] many people have tasted poison, right? To know that this tastes like poison?

Like I would think that would be a one time and you wouldn't be able to tell anybody about it. But at the end of the day, what we look at that and say, okay, is that truly an issue? The product or is this somebody figuring out a way that nobody else is going to buy this? Right? And then everybody else is jumping on that.

And that is attack from a competitor because nobody wants to [00:07:40] say to, to try something when they said, oh, this gave me diarrhea for two weeks, and 10 other people said that, are you willing to roll the dice and say, you know what? I'm gonna go buy that product and I'm gonna take off two weeks and I'm gonna see if it gives me diarrhea.

Let's just see if that happens. Nobody says that. And so you look at that and you go, well. I'm not gonna go with that creatine, right? 'cause this might happen. I'm gonna go with the other one just [00:08:00] to be safe. And so that happens a lot. Sometimes it's constructive criticism and then sometimes it can be attacked.

So our goal is to take a look at that and say, Hey, I. Maybe you need to improve your product, right? Because you keep hearing these same things, or this seems a little suspicious that 10 people got diarrhea for two weeks. That just seems a little out of the ordinary. We call it my spider sense [00:08:20] tingles a little bit.

And then we're gonna go in and assess that and see, we look at the buyer's account to see if there's anything on a fraudulent activity or if they were only giving one stars to our clients and five star to other clients. Or if they only give one stars and five stars. Which could be an indicator. This isn't an absolute indicator, but it's a, uh, some of the variables we look at that maybe they're getting paid to write [00:08:40] reviews 'cause they're only doing ones and five stars.

Um, usually there's some gray area with products, right? I mean, if you try 20 products, there's gonna be something you're like, I kind of liked it, but here you go. It's a two star. If it's only ones and fives. That's usually our first step into really doing a deep dive into the seller. Or to the buyer, excuse me, into the buyer.

Now obviously [00:09:00] Amazon has a way on how you can report these incidents. Um, you said that can be quite lengthy, can be complicated. Amazon is a beast. There's a lot of steps involved in there. And obviously it, let's say about like Friday, things are urgent. How do you approach this and how do you approach this on scale?

Yeah, I'll, I'll tell you. So we were, [00:09:20] we had to test this before we went live with it for about a year, almost two years. So for us, it was, um, I honestly thought it was gonna be easy to, to figure it out. Um, and once again, two years of testing, so it wasn't as easy. I, I was telling everybody, oh, three months, we'll have this figured out.

I didn't. I went in a little naive thinking that, you know, hey, it's [00:09:40] gonna be easy. We filed some cases, Amazon's gonna respond. This is gonna be awesome. You know, we're, this is gonna be great. Well, Amazon, once again, as you said, is a beast, right? Amazon's a huge, huge company. Um, I think they do the, the as good a job as they can, but once again, there's a million moving pieces to Amazon, right?

There's so many different things that are happening, new initiatives, new people, turnover, [00:10:00] people being hired. A lot of things happen there. And, and I think they do the best job that they can, but they're not cleaning up everything. Right? Meaning, the thing is, is the minute that Amazon cleans up one thing and stops a, you know, a Facebook group, that's, you know, once again in sanitizing people to write reviews, there's 10 more that pop up, right?

So it's not a, and I, and I, I use this in another [00:10:20] podcast. I, I said cockroaches, and I don't mean that in a bad way, like, but it is like, you know, the minute you kill this cockroach. You have 10 more, right? It's this weird thing, and it's the same thing with this. It's like I used to, I grew up in the SEO space, so you know, the minute that somebody was trying to do some black hat stuff and everybody was using it, and I never used it, but let's say they did, then all of a sudden the minute they stopped that there was, there was a new way of doing [00:10:40] something to get in around the system for you, if that is your thing.

And so that's, that's the hard part, right? I mean, you get to a situation where you're. You're, you're, you know, people are trying to game the system all the time for us. We don't wanna game the system. You get bad reviews. Guess what? That's the reality of, of launching a product. I tell sellers like, listen, if you don't, you're gonna get bad reviews.

So if you, if that's gonna like. [00:11:00] Cause you to go into a three day depression 'cause you get a bad review, whether it's a competitor or not. It's just the reality of the situation, right? So what I always tell 'em is, hey, be more proactive, right? Like we have a monitoring system that says, included in our service, click that monitor button.

Now if anything bad comes in, it's against Amazon's guidelines or you know, something fraudulent. We're gonna be filing [00:11:20] cases on it. Right? And then also get more, which is. This is a, a captain obvious moment. Get more fours and five stars, right? Doing whatever you can to really build up that wall so that if you do get a bad review that comes in, it doesn't crush you.

But the hard part is, is like, you know, this happens to a lot of sellers, is that you have a launch, you go ahead, you put all your time, your money. You spend three, four months and you get everybody [00:11:40] excited and the launch goes and then boom, you get hit with a one star and your launch is. Done. So that's the hard part is that was one of the reasons why we created the monitoring, is because people were getting attacked and they said, Hey, I just put all this money and time into this launch, and somebody gave me a one star review.

Had a guy literally that I talked to today, he's like, we launched, hadn't even sold a product and we already got [00:12:00] a bad review. Well, how do you give a bad review if you didn't write, like, if you didn't buy the product? So that's, that's becomes the problem, right? It is capable. You're capable of attacking somebody.

Even before they, even the product was being purchased. So what we look at is we go, okay, what can we do to try to, even the playing field on that, right? What can we do to be able to come in and say, Hey, let's [00:12:20] file on this. Assuming there's something against Amazon's guidelines. We don't file cases that are just to waste Amazon's time because, hey, this is a review that doesn't make sense.

Now if we can prove they didn't buy it. Obviously that's, uh, we have a leg to stand on there, right? Because that can be something that's like, Hey, how could they even have this? I haven't shipped one yet, right? Like, here goes the dates, here goes the log. I mean, right? [00:12:40] That's that. Just make, that doesn't make sense that they're able to do that or they say they were able to do that.

So those are some of the things that we take a look at. I mean, our goal is to even the plane field, but once again, our goal is not to clean it up and so that you have zero reviews or zero, you know, critical reviews, one, twos and three stars for things that are. Unethical or that maybe that are attacking your brand, then great.

Those are the things that we look at. And then [00:13:00] obviously anything that violates Amazon's guidelines, that's pricing, cussing, mixing a competitor, all the things that that play into that. I like that you highlighted that you can learn a lot from negative reviews just to get a better product, get your better marketing and all of this.

And I think that's very important for our listeners to understand. A negative review is something as an entrepreneur, as a brand that really can [00:13:20] help you to get better. Obviously, the risky ones are the ones that hurt your business. Now, a lot of listeners out there might think about doing their review management on their own or have done this so far.

Why is this risky for sellers and um, how? Do you remove this quicker and better than them? Yeah, absolutely. I actually encourage [00:13:40] all sellers to try to do it on their own. I mean, I, I absolutely do. I mean, obviously we have a service that is. Made it extremely easy. So now all they have to do is activate an asin and then we, we grab those reviews, we throw 'em our AI software, and then we just find out what's compliant or not.

And then we actually file manually. So there's no automation on Amazon. Um, I, we actually have, so it's so [00:14:00] funny. So I'll, I'll tell you about this. So we have a, a. A new tool that we just came out with is an Amazon review checker. And so what that does is right now our service to Trace Fuse is you give us your merchant token, you come in, you have all your ASINs in, then you get to pick the ASINs that you wanna, you know, activate.

And then for us to go after 'em, very, very easy to do. But what we've done is we created the, and I'll [00:14:20] give you the link, we'll put it in the show notes, but what this is gonna be, it's Amazon Review Checker. What that is, is they can put in their own ASIN for free and what it'll do, it'll run it through and usually the, the report will get back to 'em in about an hour or two, depending on how big the ASIN is and how many reviews.

What we do is they can run their own report and, uh, that actual report. What it'll say, we'll pull all the reviews, we'll pull the reviews that [00:14:40] have the highest likelihood of being removed. We actually put why they're non-compliant. So we'll actually put why they're against Amazon's guidelines and which guidelines, and they actually can grab that report and file that with Amazon.

So my goal is, I mean, a lot of people, if they were in my position, I dunno about a lot of people, but I'm saying other people probably wouldn't give that up because that's kind of our secret sauce a little [00:15:00] bit. I mean, there's. A hundred different things that need to line up to file a good case with Amazon.

So I think that's another part of our secret sauce, is you can file cases, you can click the report button, but to do it the right way, um, you really have to mess up. Like a thousand times or 10,000. Like, that's what we did in the beginning. Like, honestly, I wish those numbers were, were I was lying to [00:15:20] you.

Like we, there was so much things that were happening and we were like, man, we're not gonna be able to figure this thing out. I mean, it's a, it's a moving target. And when we did, I just, you know, I, I just almost, I think I cried for a week. I was like, yay. You know, I mean, it was like, 'cause there was so much work that went into it.

But our goal is once again. The, you can, you can put in that ace and you get a report, you can [00:15:40] file that with Amazon. You can click the report button and you can go ahead and file that. Our goal is to make it so that they can do it on their own, obviously, which really cuts into my business, but I don't mind that.

I just want sellers to, to, to, you know, even the playing field, as I say, right? If they can't do that, and you go in and you file your cases and 'cause the issue is there's so many places you can mess up where Amazon might not [00:16:00] respond to you. So that becomes a little bit of an issue or becomes a big issue because once again.

It's like building a, a, a house on a foundation that isn't that steady, that's sturdy, right? So then you start building these things up and then guess what? The house ends up falling in this situation. There's so many things that need to be done, but we provide a lot of that. We try to provide a lot of that data, and if they have, you know, like SAS core, [00:16:20] something like that, they can provide that to the reps.

There's a lot of different things they can do, but my goal is to, for them to take that report and be able to go do it on their own. And if they can't, I'll, I'll always be here. We'll be here to help 'em if, if they can't do it. Yeah, I think someone should not underestimate the learning curve to do it the right way.

I think a lot of, um, listeners out there have dealt with, I don't know, Facebook ad [00:16:40] support or payment service providers. Once you're in support, you know, life will be difficult for a while and then to get it through the right way, um, that can take a long time because of course we have. Not figured it out yet.

Now, tell me a little bit, you gave a couple of examples and you have filed tens of thousands of reviews by now and worked with [00:17:00] hundreds of brands. Tell me some success stories or case studies of businesses and what kind of difference they saw. Yeah, and so we, um, actually if you, on our website, uh, trace hughes.ai, we actually have, um, underneath there we have our testimonial section.

And so what I did, because obviously the, you know, the review management. Uh, reputation [00:17:20] management, um, area of businesses. Some people can review it as, you know, think of it as being shady. Once again, as I told you, I put my face on the company. I wanted people to know, Hey, what we do is nothing but legit business.

And what we did here is we actually have video testimonials. We have about 13 of them. Clients that have had amazing results. Some of them, you know, dropped down to a 4.3 and or [00:17:40] dropped to a 4.2 from a 4.3, which crest your sales anywhere from 10 to 50%. I have other people like, uh, uh, James that does, uh, organic muscle.

He was being attacked by competitors, which, you know, the, the supplement space can, can be a very. Aggressive category. Um, you know, it's got lots of money to be made there and, you know, lots of, you know, people that are buying supplements, high lifetime [00:18:00] value, but also because of that, there's a lot of people that are doing, you know, egregious things that really, from an ethical standpoint shouldn't happen.

Um, but there's a lot of different things. I mean, some people just wanted to clean up their listings 'cause they were gonna be selling their brand, right. And somebody said, Hey, you know, we, your multiples could be higher if you got your, whatever, your 4.1 to a 4.3, so great. It's [00:18:20] like getting, it's like going for a, a car loan when you have bad credit.

And then guess what? They send 'em over to us. We repair the credit for them, which really, these are, you know, fixing the, the, the listings and then going back and then, and doing that. So, mm-hmm. There's so many different reasons why people would need to, some people are, you know, going into v you know, going into, uh, going into Prime day, and so they're like, Hey, we really want to clean these [00:18:40] listings up.

You know, we're at a 3.9 and we need to get to a 4.0 to be able to do PPC. So great. There's so many different things and I, I. Some sellers realize some of them just wanna remove reviews, but other ones are, are a lot more strategic because they know that things are coming up, events are coming up, or something like that.

My goal, and what I'm really trying to educate Amazon sellers on is being [00:19:00] proactive instead of reactive. Right? Like the, the analogy I always use is like, you know, it's, you know, now cars have alarms, but this was a great analogy probably a few years ago. But what it is, is like, you know when somebody comes and breaks into your car and steals everything, and then you go put an alarm on your car, that's awesome.

But you just got all your stuff stolen, right? Like, I'm not saying it's not the right [00:19:20] time, but again, imagine if you would've had that alarm on your car before they broke in, and then they would've ignored your car and went to the car next to you. Well, assuming you don't have a laptop out and you know, thousands of cash and lay it all over your car, then nobody cares about the alarm.

They're gonna break in anyways. I do the same thing with reviews, is like, Hey, with our monitoring service. Why don't you guys come in and protect those ASINs? [00:19:40] Right? Because what happens is now you, when you activate those ASINs, they're being protected. And if it's, you know, a month before prime day and you start getting these crazy reviews coming in, our system detects that.

And we're gonna be filing cases assuming there's something against Amazon's guidelines or fraudulent. So I was trying to think about how can we stop? It's one thing to have the past reviews. We can clean those up. We can, you [00:20:00] know, file cases all the way back to when the ASIN was created. But hey, once we clean 'em up, what are we gonna stop this from doing?

From happening in the future? Right? Or at least know that you're protected there. And so people really love that. That was something that we've kind of learned through this, you know, through having 500 clients, they said, well what about the future? Like, how do we protect ourselves? And so we created a monitoring thing, [00:20:20] and now what we're doing, this is a, nobody even knows this.

I'm telling you for the first time we're tying in, we're gonna start tying in sales, um, as well and start maybe looking at saying, Hey. If there's an issue with this and hey, this one looks like this one is, you know, this one's starting to slip a little bit. 'cause usually you get one, one star and you got 5, 5, 5, 1 stars, right?

And we're looking at your competitor, they're getting a lot of five stars. We're gonna be working on an [00:20:40] algorithm that's gonna be able to take a look at that and say, Hey, you have about two weeks until this thing drops and you looks like you're gonna lose about 30% of your sales. And it's like, wow. It's not just removing reviews, now you're being proactive and going, wow, I, I need to protect this thing now.

'cause I don't want that to happen. So it's kind of the future. Now I like the approach, um, to be proactive on working on this. [00:21:00] And you are already building a business on someone else's land that's Amazon. And obviously you wanna play by the roots, and you wanna make sure that your foundation is solid there.

Now who's your perfect customer? I. Yeah, I mean, really for us, I mean really any Amazon seller is a perfect customer, but really the, the ones that we see crazy success with, [00:21:20] definitely in the supplement space, like probably out of our, all of our clients, our 10 biggest clients, probably nine of 'em are in the supplement space.

Um, just because of, once again, high profit margin, um, you know, easy to ship. Um, you know, the lifetime value is very, very high. People, you know, if I use the same creatine for, you know, a year, then they, and whatever that can be, you know, a few thousand dollars. [00:21:40] Um. Also in the, uh, beauty, beauty space. 'cause once again, high profit margins, easy to ship.

Same thing as pet. 'cause you know, people, you know, people are crazy about the amount of money they will spend on a pet and, you know, between toys and food and everything like that. Um, really any Amazon seller is a, is a good client for us. Um, but really those three categories are ones that we've [00:22:00] seen.

When we talk about a 10% success rate, we've seen up to 15 20, 1 of our clients received almost a 30% success rate. So what I mean by that is we say 30%. That means on the cases that we file, we see 30% of them, uh, those reviews being removed. Um, so we don't file, if you have a hundred critical reviews, we don't file on all 100.

We're not gonna waste Amazon's time or waste. [00:22:20] We only go after the ones that clearly are in violation of Amazon's guidelines or that clearly we have a smoking gun. We're like, Hey, this is fraud and we need to file a, a case obviously through, um. You know, through, there's certain channels to be able to get that done.

That would be like an escalation case in that situation. No, it makes total sense. Talk to me about the onboarding [00:22:40] process. Obviously, people should come as early as possible and with a plan for the future, but I, I reckon a lot of people come when things are on fire. What, what's a typical onboarding process?

Yeah. Yeah, it is. It's like when the things are on fire, they're like, I need a fire extinguisher. I'm like, well, we talked a month ago. You wouldn't need the fire extinguishers you up, but that's okay. I'm here to help everybody. We have. Fire extinguishers for everybody. Um, [00:23:00] yeah, I mean really our onboarding process is super simple.

I mean, they actually could just go to the website, um, up on the top right hand corner as get started. They can watch a demo video and then they can go in and put in the merchant token, um, and then they can go ahead and sign up, or I. What they can do is they can sign up for a demo and I actually do all the demos.

'cause I really enjoy talking with sellers. I do a true [00:23:20] assessment of what they've got going on. Um, you know, out of 10 sellers, there's probably at least one of them that I'm like, Hey, this might be a little too early for you. Right? Like, I had a guy today didn't have a lot of reviews. We have the monitoring, which can be very valuable.

But I also know that he put a lot of money into start his brand. Right? And I don't, I know I don't want the poor guy that finally makes a dollar. You know, the minute you make a [00:23:40] dollar, you have 10 people that all want a quarter, right? And that's what it feels like. You're like, man, I just gotta get over this hump.

And so I always tell people, Hey, listen, like in that situation, brand new, you know, we have an onboarding fee and the monitoring fee, it's a one-time fee that we charge. But I told him, I was like, listen. Why don't you get some more working capital, get some more things going. You're probably not gonna get, you know, a [00:24:00] thousand critical reviews in the next month.

Sign up for us in another month or two. Like, we'll be around, you know, I had a, I had a, a nice promotion that I was given to 'em. We'll give, I'm gonna give it to your audience to two reviews removed for free, and then we talked about that. So, you know, we'll, we'll put that in there. So if anybody reaches out and says that they heard about us through your podcast, obviously they're gonna get those two reviews approved for free.

But I really wanna assess their situation. I, I've [00:24:20] started multiple businesses and I, I don't. I treat everybody like they're my mother and I, what I mean by that is I really like my mother, so I don't mean that if I hated my mother, that would be, and I wanna make sure everybody knows that. But no, it's like I, you know, if it was my mom's business, right?

Like, and I don't want, nobody wants a mechanic that screws them over. Nobody wants, you know, somebody that tells you, oh, you have to get [00:24:40] this, you know, your AC goes out and you need the AC unit, and the next guy comes says, no, you just need this. $20 part. It's not, you don't need a new AC unit. So I look at it the same way I wanna do ethical business.

I'll assess the situation, we'll take a look at the reviews and I'll tell 'em, Hey, yeah, there's definitely something here. No, there isn't something here, right? Like, and so, uh, my goal is to, you have a lot happier [00:25:00] clients when you set up proper expectation and when you review things ahead of time. Now we do have the caveat of Amazon, right?

I can't guarantee Amazon's gonna remove review. It could be blatantly against their guidelines. That doesn't mean they're gonna move it. I can't guarantee that. We do certain things that Google is gonna make you number one, instantly, right? I mean, there's, there's bigger powers out there. We do know how to make it so that they'll be a [00:25:20] lot closer to accepting something like that, but there are no guarantees.

So I let people know, Hey, listen. Like at the end of the day, if I could get things done faster, get reviews removed faster, guess what? I get paid. Because we're a performance based company, we only get paid when reviews get removed. So that is my goal. If I could cut that timeline down from. Two weeks to one week, I would absolutely do that.

But there's [00:25:40] also, you know, we can only file so many cases. We wanna make sure we're fully compliant with Amazon. I've had, last week I had two clients, big clients that were like, Hey, can this go any faster? And I'm like, I wish it could, you know, but we're only filing five to seven cases. We're very conservative on the way that we do things with Amazon.

We don't ever want to put an account at Jeopardy. We never have and never would. Um, [00:26:00] but obviously we have to be, you know, it's a slower process, but it's great once reviews start coming off. Once again, you'll see on the testimonials that people really, really love the service and it's a very unique service and this is the only thing we do.

We don't do SEO, we don't do, you know, optimization for listings. We only focus on reviews, you know, in the US platform, obviously, and, and then Canada and UK we're [00:26:20] eventually gonna be branching out to some other platforms. But those three other ones we're starting with for now. I like that you're doing the onboarding calls because people get just so much more than just the details.

You are a entrepreneur, somebody in the digital space for 25 years, and with that comes a lot [00:26:40] of experience and knowhow, and I think that's the most valuable thing that you as a founder or as a starter, or even as a grower growing business can have on your side, somebody who can support you with a lot of experience and.

You in the right direction and also helping you with that. I, I really like that. So before our coffee break comes to end today, Shane, is there [00:27:00] anything that you wanna share with our listeners that we haven't. No, man, this has been awesome. I'm, I was once again honored that we were able to, to get on the podcast today.

We do have that special offer for everybody in your audience. And what we'll do is, um, they can click on the links down below. There's the, the Amazon review checker link that obviously they can click on that, they can go run their ASINs. It's not, it's totally free. Once can [00:27:20] go try to do it on your own. I have no issues with that.

You don't have, you're not able to figure it out and not able to get Amazon to respond. Obviously, we'll always be here. Um, I'll give people my email address too, if they ever wanna reach out. It's just Shane, S-H-A-N-E. Trace Fuse, that's T-R-A-C-E-F-U-S e.ai. You can reach out at any time and we'll also include a, a [00:27:40] link down below where you guys will get the two reviews removed for free.

Then obviously you're offering to your audience for being a dedicated uh, listener to your, to your podcast. Cool. I will put all the links in the show notes. Then you will be just one click away on hope. Everyone who's selling on Amazon will reach out to you, because that's not only time and money well invested.

You don't want to get in trouble there. Thanks so much for your time [00:28:00] today. Thank you.