Have you ever been in a situation where your Amazon reviews suddenly disappeared? It can be quite nerve-racking, primarily if you’ve worked hard to build up several reviews and ratings on your Amazon account.
Unfortunately, it is a common problem that many sellers face when trying to write reviews or sell on Amazon. While it may seem like all your work is lost forever, there are ways to deal with the issue of Amazon deleting or blocking reviews on your account.
In this article, we will look at what causes Amazon to delete or block reviews, how to tell if Amazon has deleted your reviews, and what steps you should take if Amazon has deleted all your reviews.
What to do in this situation?
This article will be beneficial if you also face the same situation where Amazon has axed many of your product reviews. I am going to talk about Amazon reviewing policy, as well as the possible reasons why Amazon has deleted your review.
I will also discuss your steps to ensure your review stays intact and Amazon’s early reviewing program.
So without any further ado, let’s get started.
Contents
Why is Amazon Deleting or Blocking My Reviews?
Amazon has a strict policy when it comes to reviews on its platform. As an Amazon seller, you must know the number of reviews you write and ensure they are legitimate, verified, and trusted by other customers. If Amazon detects that you are using a review bot or any other system to manipulate your reviews, they will delete or even block your account.
Furthermore, if you write too many reviews quickly or look suspicious and unverified, Amazon may delete them without warning.
As such, Amazon sellers need to be cautious about how many reviews they post on Amazon and adhere to the guidelines set out by Amazon when it comes to writing reviews. Otherwise, they could find themselves in a situation where all their reviews get deleted.
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to recover deleted reviews from an Amazon account. However, you must contact Amazon Customer Service to see if they can help you recover the deleted reviews. However, they may be able to provide you with a copy of the review or at least tell you why it was removed.
If your Amazon reviews have suddenly disappeared or decreased in numbers, here are some probable reasons:
Fake Reviews (From Family and Friends):
Asking friends, family, and other known people to write a positive review is one of the most common practices. Not only on Amazon, but all eCommerce platforms are also filled with manufactured subjective reviews to present the product/seller in a good light.
How Amazon does it is unclear, but if you ask people to write a favorable review and Amazon connects the reviewer to you, they might take down the review.
A shiny 5-star review from your friend that merely says “I love the product,” “Useful,” or “Amazing product” will not help Amazon customers to decide on the Product.
Also, remember that a buyer is likelier to trust a 3-star review with genuine product feedback than a one-liner 5-star review. Also, too many positive reviews may create suspicion, And Amazon may dismiss them.
Bulk Reviews:
Bulk reviewing is one of the easiest ways to get more reviews quickly. There are many freelancers that you can hire to post up to 10 reviews per Product every day.
While bulk reviews may elevate your product rating quickly, the chances that Amazon might delete them all at once are very high. As a result, the company has a zero-tolerance policy for bulk reviews.
Bulk reviews are easy to detect since Amazon collects the IP addresses of everyone registered on the website. However, if too many reviews have been posted from the same IP address or the same device (mobile phone, computer, tablet), Amazon will yank all the comments.
Technical Snag:
We can’t disregard the possibility of a likely technical issue from Amazon’s end behind the disappearance of the reviews.
Sometimes, sellers report the missing reviews but can see them after a few days or 2-3 weeks.
Favored Reviews (Gift Cards):
Many sellers have started offering gift cards to buyers who have purchased an item to encourage them to leave a positive review of the Product.
Amazon monitors every transaction over the platform, including gift card transfers. In this case, Amazon will delete the review, as such transactions are considered a bribe, especially when the gift card costs more than the item.
Buyers’ Account Deleted:
Sometimes, you don’t find an item review that was there a while ago simply because the buyer has deleted his account or Amazon has terminated his account.
What to Do If My Amazon Deleted All My Reviews?
Let’s have a look at some steps you can take if Amazon has wiped out chunks of your reviews:
Follow Amazon guidelines:
The easiest step is to go by the rule book. Reviewing the Amazon Review policy to understand what is allowed and what’s not is important.
Suppose you are paying for reviews, hiring reviewers to leave repetitive reviews, and connecting buyers to modify negative reviews into positive ones. In that case, you will likely get yourself under Amazon’s radar.
If you still see your reviews disappearing without reason, focus on getting more positive reviews through genuine processes such as encouraging customers to leave informative feedback, resolving customers’ issues, and improving your product quality altogether.
Amazon’s Early Reviewer Program:
Suppose you are a registered brand seller on Amazon. In that case, you can take advantage of the Early Reviewer Program, in which Amazon will ask customers to leave an honest review for 12 months, or at least 5 reviews, whichever comes first.
You must be thinking – How the Review Program works? Amazon offers buyers small stimulus/gifts in exchange for a legitimate review. This is similar to you paying customers to write a biased review, but since Amazon initiated it, you can be sure of the rightfulness of these reviews.
The program costs $60, which is not much for genuine product reviews. However, there is no guarantee that all your reviews will be positive. Some of them can be very critical; in that case, you have no option but to improve the quality of your product/service.
Send Fewer Review Requests:
If you are using Amazon Autoresponder to get your buyers to leave a review, sometimes you end up having plenty of them, which will result in an unusual activity in Amazon’s eyes regardless of the intention of reviewers.
If you get bulk reviews quickly, the Amazon Review Activity program might treat it as a faux activity and suspend your listings.
To avoid this situation, send fewer requests to your customers or at least a sensible gap between the requests.
For example, if you sold 50 items daily, send 10 review requests for 5 watches rather than all 50 at once.
What Does It Mean to Have Your Amazon Account Wiped?
Having your Amazon account wiped means that Amazon has removed all of your reviews from the site, including reviews you created and those left by other customers. This can be a significant setback for sellers on Amazon, as reviews are one of the main ways to get people to trust and purchase your product.
Not only will a wiped account mean no more reviews for your products, but it can also mean that any feedback tool, such as Amazon FBA, will be unavailable. This can be incredibly damaging for business owners who rely heavily on having thousands of reviews in exchange for their products on Amazon.
It is important to note that buying reviews or receiving reviews one exchange for compensation or discounts is against the terms of service of most review sites and should be avoided. This can have serious legal consequences and diminish the credibility of your reviews, ultimately leading to lost customers.
Related Read:
Amazon’s Review Policy: The Final Word
Customer reviews play a big role in shaping your Amazon business. They elevate your status as a reputed seller in the eyes of customers and Amazon. While having a lot of reviews is beneficial, vogue reviews may put you under heavy scrutiny and eventually cost you your seller account.
Here are some quick tips:
- Rely on genuine and unbiased customer reviews rather than fake manufactured reviews. As I mentioned earlier, you are better off with less positive and informative reviews than hundreds of useless one-liners that would confuse the buyers.
- It’s always a good idea to have backup selling options on other platforms, such as eBay or Shopify, in case of account deletion.
I’m a professor, serial entrepreneur and e-commerce expert with a passion for creating successful online business models. After achieving huge success in the Amazon FBA business, I decided to make it my mission to help my fellow sellers do the same through enjoy-aiia.com .