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Nasir and Matt close out the week by talking about Amazon's recent suit against companies that are offering paid positive reviews to products sold on Amazon. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name’s Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. NASIR: I almost forgot what we were doing. MATT: Uh… Uh… Uh-oh. He froze. You froze for a minute. NASIR: Oh, I froze? In real life or what do you mean? MATT: It’s like you were starting the intro and then you just froze for a second. NASIR: Oh, yeah. MATT: You caught it. Don’t worry. NASIR: Okay. Yeah, exactly. I froze for a second. I was trying to think so… But, anyway, we are doing a podcast this time around and we’re covering an interesting topic, I believe. MATT: Yeah. I realize on Wednesday we should have done something tax-related since it was Tax Day. Oh well. Too late. NASIR: That’s true. MATT: No, we mentioned something in the Amazon… or not that. Amazon’s what we’re talking about today. The Kickstarter thing about taxes, yeah, so I think we’re covered. NASIR: Yeah, but I’m sure everyone feels the same way. Like, Tax Day is a depressing day. No one wants to be reminded. In fact, on April 15th, assuming you make your payments and so forth, you just want to be done and done with it. MATT: I like it. I look forward to it. NASIR: Really? Yeah. Unless you’re getting return, I suppose. I suppose that’s fun. MATT: Well… NASIR: It’s been a while for that though. MATT: Yeah, you shouldn’t but, Amazon, that’s what we’re talking about. It looks like Amazon has finally – after twenty years of business or twenty years of allowing people to leave reviews for products – it’s finally had enough and it just filed its first lawsuit against, I guess, a few companies for selling fraudulent positive reviews. I think I’m still okay because you know how I run that negative review website so people can come in? NASIR: Yeah. MATT: I just leave negative reviews for products. NASIR: I think that’s available. I think you can do that. MATT: It probably is. NASIR: If you’re selling a product on Amazon that only has a few competitors then, man, that would be evil but it’s definitely doable. MATT: This isn’t exactly what I think we were planning on talking about next week with the negative SEO stuff but it’s kind of related in terms of just unfair business practices that harm the business of a competitor but we’ll save that for next week. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: So, this lawsuit was just recently filed in Washington State Court against these websites that are buyamazonreviews.com, bayreviews.net – I don’t get that one. Is that a typo? Maybe “buyreviews.net”? It has to be a typo, right? NASIR: I think it’s a typo, yeah. MATT: Buyreviewsnow.com, buyazonreviews.com, whatever. Buy Amazon Reviews, you can have unlimited four- and five-star reviews this week. Our skilled writers look at your product, look at your competitors’ products, and then write state-of-the-art reviews that will sure to generate sales for you. It seems like a very questionable thing. I mean, I looked to the Amazon customer review guidelines which, to me, aren’t very extensive or they need to be more detailed, but it does prohibit. It says, “Who can create customer reviews? Anyone who has purchased items from amazon.com. All you ask is you follow the rules below.” Technically, I mean, without reading the rules below but, technically, you can say, “Hey, I purchased something from Amazon. That entitles me to leave a review on anything,” that’s how I can read that, but there are a little bit of safeguards in the things that are prohibited below. But (1) Amazon needs to improve its review guidelines and (2) these companies probably should word things a little bit better as well. NASIR: You write the guidelines are not that great. This kind of goes to the whole reviewing process online and the reason why this has become an issue is because these...