I Am No Longer Permitted to Review Products on Amazon
I recently went to leave a review for a product I bought on Amazon and received this message, “Sorry, we are unable to accept your review. You are no longer permitted to review products on Amazon because you have violated our Community Guidelines.” There are so many things about this that offend me, it is hard to know where to start.
- They don’t bother to contact people and let them know this happened. I had no idea they did this to me or why.
- They deleted all reviews I’ve written in the past.
- They make it almost impossible to contact someone about it. When you go to write a review you get sent to a link of the community guidelines which is not helpful at all.
I’ve been reading up on this and apparently this is a thing. If a person leaves a negative review for a business the business might complain to Amazon and amazon bans the person who leaves the negative review. In my case, I don’t see this as happening as I don’t recall ever leaving a negative review. Most of my reviews have been on books I’ve read and are usually positive.
I’ve also read a report on the Wall Street Journal about Amazon employees deleting negative reviews for bribes. But I also don’t think this applies to me. As it would be an individual review versus all my reviews.
So, on a Sunday afternoon I started the online chat process which went something like this…
Initial Question: Trying to write a review and was told this… “Sorry, we are unable to accept your review. You are no longer permitted to review products on Amazon because you have violated our Community Guidelines.” Why? as all my reviews have been honest and I don’t recall ever saying anything rude or offensive.
05:05 AM PST Amazon: Milo, I have checked your concern and I can understand that you were not able to provide review for the item.
please do not worry, I will definitely help you with this
05:05 AM PST Me: I see nothing in your community guidelines https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201929730 that I have done to violate those
05:09 AM PST Amazon: Okay, No worries and Just to confirm, Have you received any Email regarding this from our review specialist team before?
05:09 AM PST Me: no. this is the first i’ve been made aware of this, so what exactly did I do that violates your guidelines that caused me to be banned
05:09 AM PST Amazon: Okay, No worries, I will definitely help you with this and Are you able to wait a few moments while I check this for you?
05:10 AM PST Me: yes
05:13 AM PST Amazon: Thank you for being on hold.
05:16 AM PST Amazon: Milo, I have checked your concern and issue from my end and the issue that you are facing is just for a temporary purpose and it may be due to some website error or technical glitch and it can be fixed but please do not worry, for this too I have forwarded your concern to our review specialist team from my end and they will also get back to you within next 24 hours Via Email and once they contact you, you will be able to provide review for the items again and also the review which you have posted before will also appear in your account again and there is no need to worry for this and your account is completely safe and fine and it is just for a temporary purpose, and I assure you, you will be able provide review for the items as soon as possible once they contact you
05:17 AM PST Amazon: and there is no need to worry for this and your account is completely safe and secure
and also as for this inconvenience caused to you, I am also going ahead and I am issuing you $10 promotional credit as a goodwill gesture from Amazon for the apology
05:18 AM PST Me: ok.
05:20 AM PST Amazon: Thank you so much Milo and There is no need to worry for this and your review will be automatically get appear in the website page and in the account soon and Everything is fine with your account
05:20 AM PST Me: ok. I’ll wait to hear back then. thanks
05:21 AM PST Amazon: You are most welcome Milo and I really appreciate you for your co-operation with us and as for this inconvenience caused to you, I have also issued you $10 promotional credit as an exception from my end and Yes definitely you can and there is no need to worry for this and I assure you, it will be fix as soon as possible,
05:21 AM PST Me: ok
Four Days Later
It wasn’t 24 hours like promised but I did receive an email.
We believe that an unauthorized party may have accessed your account. To protect your information, we have:
— Disabled the password to your account.
— Reversed any changes to your account made by this party.
— Canceled any pending orders.
— Removed any Community Content submitted by this party.
There was more in the email but you get the point. So, apparently my account was hacked and it wasn’t a technical glitch like the person on the chat said. Also, when he said that all the reviews I previously wrote would be back – they are not. Any reviews I previously wrote are gone, but on the plus side, I got a 10 dollar credit 🙁
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Me TOO!!
Yep – me too. I haven’t left any negative reviews either, although my “banning” happened after I griped on their Facebook page about “2-Day Prime Shipping” actually being “2-Day shipping to your local USPS after we spend a few days locating it in a warehouse somewhere.”
Well same here, on amazon Canada. I went to give feedback (positive as always) on a recent purchase and I got the, “Sorry, we are unable to accept your review. You are no longer permitted to review products on Amazon because you have violated our Community Guidelines.”
I have no idea why, I have never left nasty or negative comments, maybe some not over-favourable but certainly nothing nasty or hurtful. I tried to contact Amazon but there is no way to do so.
Oh well, now I don’t have to leave feed back…. it’s all good 🙂
I too have had my reviews banned by Amazon, which I find kind of funny as I’m an Amazon employee. At least they didn’t ban me from the building but it wouldn’t really be a loss. I have left some negative reviews of products, only being honest and that’s what the reviews are there for after all, but nothing that should violate any TOS and I haven’t had any dealings with vendors or anything, at least not where we communicate or I review them personally. I did have my account hacked several months ago but to the best of my knowledge there was no review activity, they just tried to order a bunch of crap .
Ha. that is funny.
Yes it’s happened to me too! Very confusing, no decent explanation why!
I got ripped off when a seller sold me a knock-off controller, not even the same as in the picture. I think i said “you sold me a knockoff piece of shit” So… I’m the victim.. and Now I can’t warn others. Seller offered to send a genuine product if I removed my review and keep the knock off as an appology, but never did send me the genuine one. I was reported and now I can’t review products or sellers. How does this help Amazon? or me?
Same here. Never left anything offensive or out of line, I may have told a reviewer once or twice that leaving a one star review because you don’t know how to put something together or operate something is not a reason to down-rate a good product – and only in extreme obvious cases like “I bought a quadcopter and it crashed into my ceiling because I don’t know how to fly it, so it is a garbage product”, and I suppose that could be seen as confrontational, but I’ve never been nasty about anything… More just hoping that a little future self reflection from the kinds of people that blame others for their misfortunes could protect good manufacturers from inaccurate poor ratings. But, I suppose it’s like trying to fight off a hurricane with a fly swatter – a pointless venture anyway. Oh well, it got me banned from ever posting another review, and we buy a tremendous amount of things on Amazon monthly, so I suppose it isn’t my loss, but a gain of a lot of time spent honestly providing feedback for Amazon.
The interesting thing about these comments it is it people getting banned for leaving positive reviews. I have a negative review on one of my books by a person who clearly didn’t read it and simply doesn’t like the title, but Amazon won’t do anything about that!
I have bee. notified that I can no longer permitted to review purchases. I have never given a negative rating, failed to successfully paid for an item or violated any community standard rules.
Yep, that sounds about in line with what happens to others.
I second that. And I’ve heard that so-called “community” isn’t really a community or even directly a part of Amazon.
I only review items I like, because I return the ones I don’t. Evidently I left too many five star reviews (?Who knows?) because all of my reviews over the past two months or so have been removed and I can’t review new things, either.
Same here, but no one would give me any details on what I supposedly did. I read the rules and found absolutely nothing where I broke the rules.
Here’s the kicker… they have also blocked my ability to ask questions about an item I want to buy! That i do not get at all.
I was given an email address on the awful red message that shows up when trying to leave a review, and also for asking questions about an item I’m considering purchasing… and that email isn’t working and says it’s an email that doesn’t accept replies. Only I didn’t send a reply but wrote to help@amazon.com as was listed at the bottom of the message telling me I’m blocked from giving reviews. So they offer a way to contact them via an email address that doesn’t work.
I called customer service at Amazon and spoke to someone who gave me the same cookie-cutter answer that did not include why they blocked me. Only that I was flagged to have broken the rules for leaving a review, which according to their own community rules I actually didn’t.
This is infuriating given the massive amount of money I’ve spent there, even for big ticket items such as a professional, gym-quality exercise bike that cost a small fortune. I buy less than 20% of what I used to since I was blocked about 3 years ago. I keep trying to write, calling customer support to no avail.
They forget, or don’t care, that those of us who write the reviews are customers.
I’ve yet to read anything on any forum that suggests they have actually made an infraction that led to being blocked. And the complaints are pretty much all the same about this issue.
I wish there were another source like Amazon where they offer the same experience etc but don’t treat its customers like something nasty stuck right the bottom of their shoe.
And then there’s that expensive fee for being a Prime member…