Customer reviews are of immense importance for businesses as they can scale them up or drown them. They reflect the customers’ satisfaction with the product and its quality and give additional relevant information about it, e.g., shipping, packaging, size, etc.
Amazon sellers, as any seller, rely on the reviews customers leave. So, you can imagine their stress and disappointment when their reviews suddenly disappear.
Well, they don’t disappear, but Amazon deletes them, and there is a reason for that. In this article, we take a close look at why Amazon deletes customer reviews and what you can do about it.
Why Did Amazon Delete My Reviews?
Did you wake up one day and find customer reviews missing… poof… gone, just like that?! That must have freaked you out. You must have wondered what happened and where did your hard-earned reviews go.
The thing is that Amazon doesn’t delete customer reviews because they like it or want to. There is a reason for that. You see, Amazon takes customer reviews very seriously. The staff reads every single review and analyzes it for genuineness. That’s what makes Amazon the #1 marketplace in the world and that’s why serious Amazon sellers try to provide the best quality products and best service to their clients.
The company has strict rules on reviews to keep its credibility at a high level. So, if your reviews, whether you are a seller or a customer, are deleted, there must have been a reason for that.
Reasons for Amazon Deleting Your Reviews
There are several possible reasons why Amazon deleted your reviews:
- The reviews are fake.
- The purchase isn’t verified.
- Review bots have been used to leave multiple reviews on a product.
- The reviews were incentivized – the buyer has paid the reviewer or given them a discount or a gift card to write a review for their product.
What Happened to My Amazon Reviews?
There are several possible reasons why you don’t see your reviews, whether you’re a seller or a customer:
Your Reviews Have Been Deleted
Your reviews may have been deleted by Amazon because you requested customers to leave a review using Amazon’s email feedback tool. That’s confusing, right? We are all puzzled, but it does happen and no one, except the guys at Amazon, knows why it happens. And, unfortunately, there’s no solution to this issue. The best would be to contact the staff directly and ask them questions.
Your Reviews Have Been Blocked
Another reason for not seeing your reviews may be that they’ve been blocked. As a seller, you’ll never notice this yourself unless a buyer tells you that they can’t leave a review for the product(s) they’ve bought. The real problem here is that if none of your buyers tells you about this issue, it will keep on dwelling unnoticed, and Amazon won’t do anything because you’re the only one who can report it. Hence, your reviews may stay blocked for a very long time.
Your Reviews Have Been Limited
While there’s no limit to how many reviews you can leave or receive, sometimes products may have a limit on the number of reviews that can be left per day. One of the main reasons for this is leaving fake reviews.
Some sellers try to get as many reviews as possible by leaving fake reviews on their products. Since their alternative customer accounts aren’t verified, Amazon deletes their reviews. The same happens when other customers’ accounts aren’t verified.
Amazon is well aware of the chance of these things happening, which is why they constantly check the truthfulness of reviews using their review checker software to verify each. If they spot fake reviews, they’ll delete them and limit the number of future reviews left on those products to 3-5 reviews per day.
Amazon Sellers Only: Your Product Listing Has Been Flagged for Unusual Behavior
If you’re an Amazon seller, one of the reasons your customer reviews got removed may be because your product listing has been flagged for unusual behavior. What does this mean?
This means that Amazon noticed something weird about the content of the reviews of your products. This happens when you use a review bot to leave multiple very similar, rephrased reviews on the same product. It can also happen when your family and friends suddenly leave 5-star reviews on the same product since Amazon recognizes this sudden increase in reviews as a bot. This causes too many unverified reviews, and Amazon penalizes that behavior by flagging your product listing. This automatically blocks or deletes your reviews.
Amazon Customers Only: Your Account Has Been Deleted or Banned
If you’re a buyer and your account has suddenly been deleted or banned, it’s because Amazon found out you’re leaving fake or incentivized reviews. When this happens, you can no longer buy a product or post product reviews on the platform.
Amazon does this to ensure all reviews are verified and truthful, thus maintaining a high-quality standard.
However, amidst the thousands of fake or incentivized reviews being deleted, Amazon can sometimes remove or block legitimate and verifiable reviews. If this has happened to you, contact their support team, providing proof of your reviews’ legitimacy. They’ll check again, and if they find everything’s legit, they’ll re-activate your account and return all your reviews in no time. If they don’t want to do that, you can open a new account and start over.
What to Do Next?
So, your reviews have been removed for one reason or another. What can you do next?
Amazon Sellers
If your reviews have been removed in any way or your product listing has been flagged, there’s nothing you can do to bring them back. You’ve violated Amazon rules, and it’s your fault.
What you can do is make sure you don’t make the same mistake in the future. If you don’t want to get penalized by Amazon for leaving fake reviews, play by the rules. Sell your products and wait for buyers to leave their honest reviews on the product(s) they buy from your store. Focus on marketing your business to get more sales and more reviews instead of using gray-hat or black-hat tactics.
Amazon Customers
If your Amazon customer account has been removed or banned rightfully, admit your mistake to yourself and create a new account.
When creating your new account, make sure you don’t use the same details you used on your previous account. If you do so, Amazon will detect the same details and won’t allow you to access your new account. Hence, you need to use a new email address, new username, different address, different payment method, and a new IP address. Also, you must clear your cookies and browsing history so Amazon doesn’t recognize your device.
Once you make your new account, don’t make the same mistakes you did before to stay clean. This means you should leave legitimate, honest, and short reviews. Also, instead of leaving an instant review after buying a product, wait for a few days after you get your product to leave one. Lastly, don’t leave lots of reviews in a short time, even if you’ve purchased all those products. Amazon may consider them suspicious and delete them.
Conclusion
These are the main reasons why your Amazon reviews have been deleted. We understand that no seller would ever want to have their reviews wiped out because they are an important part of their business. But if you don’t follow Amazon’s rules, you’ll have to put up with the consequences.
We also know that reviewers don’t want to have their reviews deleted or accounts banned either. So, you better think twice before writing fake or incentivized reviews in the future.
How do you prevent your Amazon reviews from being deleted?
It’s simple. Follow Amazon’s guidelines and play by the rules. It’s the best way to prevent deleted reviews or any other type of penalization.
