Maybe that, to some degree. But amazon.de has a lot of problems, too.
There are a lot of fishy listings, but it's also often quite easy to detect those fishy offers, because the German text is usually full of grammar and spelling errors, and often obviously a result from Google translate, and often not even fully translated, with larger parts still in (shoddy) English. Outright counterfeit products seem to be somewhat rare still, at least from what I observed, but there is quite a number of low quality knockoffs.
Or e.g. multiple journalists reported on review-rigging operations - usually organized through whatsapp, and using regular folks for a few bucks as "mules", to get some coveted "verified buyer" reviews. Or bait-and-switch listings, where they had an original listing which gathered some good/ok reviews, and then they repurpose that listing for another product, while keeping their stars.
Or e.g. there was a report about one guy who got like 10 - 20 packets a day with junk he never ordered, every day, over months. Apparently some shady sellers got hold of his info, and were using him as a "garbage bin" for excess stock[0]. While he wasn't charged for any of the products or shipping, he still ended up in a situation where his door bell rang a few times a day, and he ended up throwing away most of the stuff, having to properly dispose of it. And when contacted, amazon just told him to throw away the stuff he doesn't want. It's unlikely he was the only involuntary garbage bin victim.
[0] It wasn't clear why they did that. Maybe to inflate sales numbers to get higher ranked in the amazon search? Or because just shipping it through amazon to some random people might be cheaper than just keeping that stuff in the amazon warehouse or disposing of it properly?
I don't agree. It's extremely obvious when a listing on Amazon.de is sketchy because the German used is quite bad compared to normal listings.
I'm also quite skeptical of most positive reviews, because it's a known problem in Germany too. I don't think most people are aware of that though and still believe high ratings still mean anything.
There are a lot of fishy listings, but it's also often quite easy to detect those fishy offers, because the German text is usually full of grammar and spelling errors, and often obviously a result from Google translate, and often not even fully translated, with larger parts still in (shoddy) English. Outright counterfeit products seem to be somewhat rare still, at least from what I observed, but there is quite a number of low quality knockoffs.
Or e.g. multiple journalists reported on review-rigging operations - usually organized through whatsapp, and using regular folks for a few bucks as "mules", to get some coveted "verified buyer" reviews. Or bait-and-switch listings, where they had an original listing which gathered some good/ok reviews, and then they repurpose that listing for another product, while keeping their stars.
Or e.g. there was a report about one guy who got like 10 - 20 packets a day with junk he never ordered, every day, over months. Apparently some shady sellers got hold of his info, and were using him as a "garbage bin" for excess stock[0]. While he wasn't charged for any of the products or shipping, he still ended up in a situation where his door bell rang a few times a day, and he ended up throwing away most of the stuff, having to properly dispose of it. And when contacted, amazon just told him to throw away the stuff he doesn't want. It's unlikely he was the only involuntary garbage bin victim.
[0] It wasn't clear why they did that. Maybe to inflate sales numbers to get higher ranked in the amazon search? Or because just shipping it through amazon to some random people might be cheaper than just keeping that stuff in the amazon warehouse or disposing of it properly?