I’m an active Amazon user, and a Vine Voice here in Canada, and I’m here to tell the Vine haters that we are not immune to this problem either. The majority of the top 100 reviewers in Canada have had their reviews taken down, and their review privileges revoked, and I imagine their Vine status as well. I’m basing the last part off of the fact that my account was recently under review, which they mentioned on my Vine queue page, which leads me to believe Amazon.ca just did their own “purge”, as Amazon.com did last year. Luckily, because I’ve always followed the rules, and removed all my “free product” type reviews myself when the rules changed and then stopped taking them, I kept all my reviews and my Vine status. Amazon knows very well that sellers have been offering PayPal refunds to reviewers, and are not taking it lying down. It’s even worse than before with the compensation, since you could buy the product, review it, get your money back, then return it to Amazon for a full refund in addition. That is ACTUALLY compensated reviews, since you get the money and the product, or twice the money and no product. Since people can essentially be truly PAID to do it now, it only makes sense for Amazon to nip that in the bud, as it would mostly only negatively effect things, and is extremely unlikely to have a positive effect.
To say that Vine Voices are immune is not true, as they are being purged along with other people suspected of breaking the rules. I agree with the criticism of many Vine reviews which are phoned in though. That being said, a lot of Vine stuff is difficult to do in depth reviews of. Things like soap and cleaning chemicals, there’s only so much that there is to say about them. More technical and complicated devices and items deserve in depth, technical reviews, and I personally always try to give them, and I believe a lot of other Vine members do too (though obviously not all).
It is a sad day, indeed.
