How to Remove Negative Feedback on Amazon

In this article, we’re digging into an issue that is extremely important to all Amazon sellers – a product review! Amazon reviews are a crucial feature to the Amazon business model and are just as important (if not more) than your seller rating.

Amazon’s 5-star feedback rating system allows customers to get an immediate idea of what real customers think of your product. So, it goes without saying that a product review is an incredibly important metric on which Amazon shoppers base their buying decisions. While positive feedback is great for you as an Amazon seller, negative customer feedback from Amazon shoppers can hurt your seller account.

In this article, we’re focusing on the dreaded bad review. We’re going to show you how you can eliminate or decrease negative Amazon feedback effectively.

Bad Reviews on Amazon and Why They’re So Detrimental

Obviously, a bad review is less than ideal. But you might not know exactly how detrimental a negative Amazon review can be. It hurts your business in a number of ways. Let’s examine why it is so important for you to minimize your shop’s negative feedback rate.

Firstly, there’s the obvious point. A negative rating makes your product look bad. Customers see the negative reviews in the buyer feedback section, and they think your product is bad. In fact, one of the primary ways that people choose whether to even click on a listing is by the average review score. Aside from the average, people can actually click on reviews to read why a customer has left a negative comment. If a customer leaves a review that lists the ways your product wasn’t up to par, then that provides a resource for other customers to learn the same things.

Next, negative reviews actually hurt you via the Amazon algorithm as well. Amazon wants to promote good products. It wants customers to be happy with their experience and it does this by promoting products that people like. It really is that simple. The more people that buy your product and leave a positive review, the more Amazon wants to promote it going forward and the higher you will appear in search results. It’s Amazon SEO 101. It’s mutually beneficial to both you, Amazon and the customer.

Now that you understand the importance of avoiding negative reviews, let’s check out how you can do this.

Is There a Way to Remove Bad Reviews?

This article is based around one of the most commonly asked questions by Amazon sellers – “can I remove Amazon reviews?”. The short answer is that most of the time you can’t remove a negative rating. Amazon guidelines don’t typically give sellers the option to remove negative reviews for obvious reasons. Customer feedback is meant to reflect their perspective on the product, so sellers are not meant to have a say in these reviews, per Amazon’s policy.

That being said, there are a few specific circumstances in which sellers can have reviews removed.

How to Potentially Have Bad Reviews Removed

Let’s check them out:

Contact Amazon to Have Your Review Removed

This is a method that typically will not work. However, it can work sometimes. This is because Amazon has community guidelines which monitor and moderate content within customer reviews.

There are various criteria on which a review can be removed, including:

• A review by someone who has a close relationship or financial interest in the product.
• A review by the product manufacturer.
• Multiple negative reviews from the same customer.
• A negative review from a competitor.
• A review in exchange for a monetary reward.

There are also various guidelines that are a bit more vague and up for interpretation. These guidelines monitor content which can and cannot be posted on Amazon, and includes content about customer reviews. This includes content which is overly vulgar, content that alludes to illegal behavior, gives out personal information, threatening or abusive content, and outright fraudulent content. These guidelines are quite a bit broader, and definitely up for interpretation.

As you can see, Amazon’s customer review policy is primarily about ensuring reviews are honest and not motivated by something other than the review itself.

With all that said, what does this mean for you? Essentially, if you can convince Amazon that a customer review is outside their Terms of Use, then there is a chance that Amazon will have that customer review removed. Your best bet is to convince them that one of the reviews is fraudulent, or violates their terms of conduct.

How to Contact Amazon

If you think have a legitimate case to get a review removed, then you need to contact Amazon. The first way to do this is by clicking “Report Abuse” under the review in question. Of course, this should only be done if you actually think that the review is abusive.

Additionally, you can send an email to “community-help@amazon.com”. It is important that you are very specific in detailing why you think a review has violated their terms of service. Use exact quotes, and make direct connections to where it has violated their community guidelines (which we examined above). Basically, you want to make it as easy as possible for Amazon to identify the violation themselves, and that will give you the best chance of having your review removed.

Of course, only do this is if you actually think you have a realistic case. Spamming Amazon with deletion requests isn’t the proper way to utilize this service. Amazon knows their terms of use better than anyone and it’s a waste of their time to try to trick them into removing reviews. At that point, it’s better to ask yourself why you are receiving so many negative reviews in the first place.

Reply to A Customer

The next way that you could potentially have a review removed is to engage the user in conversation. When a customer leaves a review, you have the opportunity to reply to their review. Amazon specifically highlights your comment as the seller, and makes it clear that you are personally replying to the customer.

This actually opens up a pretty big opportunity for you as a seller. Basically, you want to use this opportunity to engage with any customer that is less than satisfied with your product and do your best to change their mind.

Clear Up Misconceptions

The first way you can do so is by clarifying an issue they may have had with your product. For example, if they are upset about a certain functionality with the product, you could attempt to clarify their issues. Let them know the ways in which they could be better utilizing your product and point out any obvious misconceptions or misunderstandings that they may have. Sometimes, it’s simply a matter that the customer is improperly using your product, which is leading to a negative association with the product.

Sometimes by clarifying this issue, you are able to let customers know why they weren’t 100% accurate in their review. If you’re lucky, they’ll either edit their review or remove it altogether, as it no longer reflects their views on your product.

Be Polite

Regardless of what a customer has written about your product, it’s imperative that you always respond in a polite, nice manner. This is always how you should engage with your customers online. Customers who leave negative reviews are already upset with you, and you won’t win them over if you aren’t nice and polite. Even when you are pointing out why their review is inaccurate, you need to do so in a way that doesn’t seem condescending. Instead, make it seem like an “honest mistake,” and that you are just offering your own input.

Often, there is the propensity for people to be overly aggressive online, because they have a perceived “anonymity.” They will write something because they don’t expect to face consequences for it. Therefore, when you, the seller, send a personal reply in a polite manner, that anonymity is broken, and the customer might realize that they were being overly harsh. This humanizes the experience and might lead them to second-guess their criticisms, and perhaps delete the review.

Additionally, keep in mind that other potential customers are also reading these reviews. If they see that you are not engaging with your customers in a nice way, then that reflects very poorly on you and on your brand. You need to build the reputation that you are willing to work with customers through their issues.

As you can see, there are multiple ways that replying to a customer’s review might change their mind, and might lead to a review’s deletion.

How to NOT Get Reviews Removed

A common tactic that is sometimes recommended by Amazon sellers, and one that might seem pretty obvious, is to contact customers to ask them to remove negative reviews. We are here to tell you NOT to do that. While it might seem like a simple way to get reviews removed, it is not advised for a variety of reasons.

Firstly, it is dishonest and ineffective. You aren’t actually solving any of the underlying issues that the customer had with your product. You’re simply asking them to delete the review. And while that may work in the short-run, it doesn’t solve any of the underlying dissatisfaction that this customer experienced.

Additionally, you haven’t solved their problem, so why would they delete their review? You haven’t provided them any motivation to actually change their views, and have just suggested a solution that solely benefits you.

Also, the customer might be offended that you would ask, and actually double down on their efforts. They could even edit their review to say that you asked them to remove it, which reflects very poorly on you as a business and as a brand.

And finally, as if that wasn’t enough reason not to do it, the customer can actually report you to Amazon! If a customer is unhappy with you pestering them to remove a review, they can report you to Amazon, and Amazon may discipline your shop. This is because it goes against Amazon’s community guidelines to harass customers into removing reviews.

So, all the being said, don’t do it. It’s much better to go through the honest channels that we mentioned above. Amazon already has avenues for dealing with dishonest, fraudulent, or abusive reviewers.

Alternative: Promote Good Feedback on Amazon

So far in this article we’ve examined different ways in which you could potentially have negative reviews removed from Amazon. As you can see, these methods have varying degrees of effectiveness and success. They are far from a guarantee and more often than not will result in nothing at all.

There is a method you can use that will result in less negative reviews, however, and that is to be proactive in avoiding negative reviews in the first place! Here are a few steps you can take to decrease the frequency of negative reviews, and even increase the frequency of positive reviews:

Follow Up

One of the most effective ways to get positive reviews on your products is to simply ask for them and there are automated tools for this. You’d be surprised how effectively you can get more reviews if you send simple, polite follow-up emails. These emails can come in many forms but generally they thank a customer for their purchase and explain how a review would be very appreciated.

People are often very willing to help if you simply ask them. Of course, this might also lead to them leaving a negative review but that is why you have to have confidence in the product you are offering. Speaking of your product offering, next we will explain how to present an offering that generates more positive reviews.

Post HONEST Product Listings

One of the main reasons that people leave negative reviews is that the product didn’t meet their expectations. You need to do everything in your power to ensure that this doesn’t happen, so that customers receive what they expect when they make a purchase from you. Your pictures have to be 100% accurate and your product descriptions have to explain exactly the functions of your product. Don’t exaggerate and don’t bend the truth.

The thing is, people ordered your product because they liked the product listing. So as long as your product is actually true to that listing, they won’t be disappointed. So, while there might be the temptation to exaggerate the truth when listing your product, you should know that it isn’t a viable long-term strategy.

Sell A Good Product

Building on our last point, you have to actually sell a quality product! This seems obvious, but you’d be surprised. Don’t sell products that you know are defective, or are so low quality that they might break within a short period of time. You need to be able to stand behind what you sell on Amazon. The customers have a lot of the power. If you sell products that aren’t worthwhile, then you’ll start to get the reviews to show it. So, while you might be tempted to save money by selling an inferior product, it also isn’t a viable long-term plan.

Conclusion

So that’s a summary of your best chances at removing negative feedback on Amazon! As you can see, it is far from an easy task, and there isn’t a reliable way to do it consistently. You are much better off doing all that you can to avoid negative reviews in the first place. Reviews are meant to provide an honest depiction of the product, and you can’t avoid them from revealing exactly that in the long run! So be honest, be upfront, and only sell products that you can truly stand behind!