Joined Nov 2016
L4: Apprentice
Forum Thread
Amazon 3rd Party Merchant: Ultraloq moderator warned me for a deal that I posted
October 9, 2021 at
09:44 PM
I made one of my first deal posts today because I saw a really great pricing on a great, highly rated, well-known smart lock on one of the largest platforms we have to buy things, call Amazon.com. I was kind of surprised to see that it wasn't getting upvoted or really getting comments at all. I then realized that I had a message showing that I had been warned by a moderator for posting the deal that I posted. The reason was,
"Amazon 3rd Party Merchant: Ultraloq
Lifetime Seller Rating: 676 (must have 1,000+)"
Can someone help me unpack this?
I see all kinds of deals that aren't that great about really small products on here all the time. I posted a well-known smart lock on Amazon, and a moderator took issue because something about the seller being a third-party merchant? Does anyone have insight about this? Why would we be discouraged from sharing excellent deals on SD just because it's not from some huge company?
I hate to think of all of the excellent deals that exist out there that I'm not seeing on Slick Deals just because SD has some arbitrary threshold for how big the company needs to be. That should be up for me to decide. I might be into some niche company in a niche category that will never get to a 1000 seller score (not even sure what that is). 44% off on a reputable smart lock on a site with a well-defined return policy, even for a third-party sellers, that isn't on sale very often, is something I would think I should know about. It's not like Ultraloq is some unknown entity.
Anyway, I would love to hear feedback from others. This was a bit discouraging to see. I always came to this site because I thought it was the de facto place to find the best prices on things, but now I realize I'm only seeing a very limited subset of deals. If there are any recommendations for other sources, I would welcome those as well.
"Amazon 3rd Party Merchant: Ultraloq
Lifetime Seller Rating: 676 (must have 1,000+)"
Can someone help me unpack this?
I see all kinds of deals that aren't that great about really small products on here all the time. I posted a well-known smart lock on Amazon, and a moderator took issue because something about the seller being a third-party merchant? Does anyone have insight about this? Why would we be discouraged from sharing excellent deals on SD just because it's not from some huge company?
I hate to think of all of the excellent deals that exist out there that I'm not seeing on Slick Deals just because SD has some arbitrary threshold for how big the company needs to be. That should be up for me to decide. I might be into some niche company in a niche category that will never get to a 1000 seller score (not even sure what that is). 44% off on a reputable smart lock on a site with a well-defined return policy, even for a third-party sellers, that isn't on sale very often, is something I would think I should know about. It's not like Ultraloq is some unknown entity.
Anyway, I would love to hear feedback from others. This was a bit discouraging to see. I always came to this site because I thought it was the de facto place to find the best prices on things, but now I realize I'm only seeing a very limited subset of deals. If there are any recommendations for other sources, I would welcome those as well.
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"Amazon 3rd Party Merchant: Ultraloq
Lifetime Seller Rating: 676 (must have 1,000+)"
Can someone help me unpack this?
I see all kinds of deals that aren't that great about really small products on here all the time. I posted a well-known smart lock on Amazon, and a moderator took issue because something about the seller being a third-party merchant? Does anyone have insight about this? Why would we be discouraged from sharing excellent deals on SD just because it's not from some huge company?
I hate to think of all of the excellent deals that exist out there that I'm not seeing on Slick Deals just because SD has some arbitrary threshold for how big the company needs to be. That should be up for me to decide. I might be into some niche company in a niche category that will never get to a 1000 seller score (not even sure what that is). 44% off on a reputable smart lock on a site with a well-defined return policy, even for a third-party sellers, that isn't on sale very often, is something I would think I should know about. It's not like Ultraloq is some unknown entity.
Anyway, I would love to hear feedback from others. This was a bit discouraging to see. I always came to this site because I thought it was the de facto place to find the best prices on things, but now I realize I'm only seeing a very limited subset of deals. If there are any recommendations for other sources, I would welcome those as well.
there have been similar inquiries in this forum, so rather than look to reinvent the wheel, this is one of the really nice explanations from schooby, one of our community managers. it includes a link to the discussion thread for the 3rd party amazon rules. quoting it here for your convenience
I appreciate that you took time to write up the deal and wanted to share it with the community, we thrive on members doing just that.
We also work diligently to combat shilling in order to protect the integrity of the site. We do our best and sometimes members aren't always happy. I apologize for that.
This policy is not new at all. We spent the better part of a year going over how to remove most shills and Amazon 3rd party spammers without hurting new legit merchants. We analyzed a lot of our own data and then leaned toward making sure we were as favorable to new merchants as possible (meaning much more manpower in banning shills) before we implemented this policy over 4 years ago. https://slickdeals.net/e/9051583-amazon-3rd-party-merchant-policy-is-back-in-effect
We even tried to rescind this for a while while relying on a different tool to help identify ratings but found it wasn't as trustworthy as we had hoped and had to go back to this which is when the thread was put back in place 4 years ago.
Obviously, this is not a shill company, or a new company with low sales or a low seller score. It might be helpful to rexamine how to prevent shilling without a huge swath of false positive moderation removing good deals from the SD community. The deal was shared on other platforms, but it would be nice to make SD a single place for all deals, not just the mainstream deals from the mega sellers, if that makes sense.