March 10, 2022

How to Delete an Amazon Review: 3 Best Ways

Amazon sales continue to grow yearly, and according to a report by Fox Business News, there are currently over 2 million third-party sellers on Amazon. Third-party sellers accounted for more than half the sales volume in 2021. So there’s a lot of competition for you as a seller. To win the day, sellers must build a solid reputation by dealing with negative product feedback as soon as it gets posted.

Learn how to deal with the negative reviews customers leave. Here you will find out how to delete an Amazon review and improve customer loyalty.

Amazon - Annual net revenue

Staying on top of your ratings can be challenging, especially if you have multiple products or a large volume, but letting 3-star or lower ratings remain can be devastating. You need to handle negative reviews fast, and it’s vital to understand how to remove an Amazon review. Step one is to determine if you can ask Amazon to remove it or if you need to handle the problem or complaint and then ask the buyer to remove it.

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How Does It Work?

When you make a sale, and the buyer receives the product, they can leave product reviews. When they give you ratings of three stars or less, it can damage your reputation and hurt future sales. Your rating as a seller not only includes your average number of stars, it considers what percentage of your reviews are positive.

When you receive a negative rating, ask three questions.

  1. Was it posted by a genuine buyer? Or could it be a competitor posting?
  2. Does it violate Amazon’s review policies?
  3. What is the complaint or problem? And is it solvable?

In the case of number one or two, immediately request that Amazon remove the review. As to how to remove an Amazon review, there are several ways to do it:

  • Go to your seller’s account page.
  • Click on customers and orders on the left side of the page
  • Enter the Order ID
  • Click Next
  • Provide the reason for the request

You can also email the support team at community-help@amazon.com. Provide the ASIN, time, date, and name/pseudonym of the customer, along with a link to the review. Give them a brief but clear reason for removal.

The third way for Amazon review removal is to navigate the review itself on the product detail page and click report abuse. It’s wise not to overuse the abuse reporting option, however.

If you get a refusal and you feel strongly about your case, you can open a Seller Support ticket to give it another try. If the review doesn’t qualify for removal, learn how to ask a customer to remove a negative review after addressing whatever complaint they have. If the complaint is valid, handle the problem as quickly as possible. Once it’s resolved, commenting on the review, telling readers you have handled the situation would be the best option.

What’s the Difference between Product Reviews and Seller Feedback?

While you may think of reviews and feedback as the same thing, there are two different features for Amazon sellers. Product reviews appear on a product page. By scrolling down, you see ratings and comments for the product itself, written by buyers. These qualify for Amazon review removal if they violate the rules.

Amazon Feedback allows clients to talk directly to sellers about every aspect of the sale, from ordering and delivery to customer support. A seller needs to go to their page to read what customers say.

A buyer can choose to “Leave seller feedback” or “Write a product review”
A buyer can choose to “Leave seller feedback” or “Write a product review”

Are All Negative Reviews Bad?

While no one likes getting negative reviews, and understanding how to remove reviews from Amazon is important, not all negative ratings and comments are bad. They often provide an opportunity to improve your product, packaging, and service. By handling a negative review intelligently, you can also gain a positive review from the same buyer. They can amend or remove their rating or add a comment that can help readers see you have acted responsibly.

When sellers first launch a product, they may be unaware of a product or packaging problem. Perhaps there’s an error in the description about a particular size. If an item arrives broken, and no one lets a seller know about it, there’s no opportunity to improve the packaging. That’s the worst scenario in any business situation. You want buyers to let you know when there are problems so you can fix them.

By apologizing for a broken item or missing piece, thanking the customer for their business and helpful feedback, and by fixing the problem, that buyer may leave a positive comment about the customer service you’ve provided or remove the original negative review.

Over time, analyzing negative reviews can help you improve your business. For example, if product quality comes up repeatedly, consider a change. For example, if things arrive broken, adjust the packaging. See what the pattern is and react to it.

If you’ve ever looked at ratings and comments for a product you are considering buying, and they were 100% positive, you might have doubted the validity of the feedback. The same can happen for your product, so welcome the occasional criticism. It makes the positive ones seem real. Handle the complaint, but don’t think every negative review a customer leaves is a problem for your long-term success.

How to Manage Negative Amazon Reviews

When you do get reviews of three stars or less, know how to remove an Amazon review.

Your rating as a seller not only includes your average number of stars, it considers what percentage of your ratings are positive.

There are three ways to remove seller feedback from Amazon:

  1. Ask Amazon to remove it. If it breaks the rules, you can ask to have it removed. Become familiar with what is and isn’t allowed, and contact Amazon fast if you find something you think qualifies for removal.
  2. Follow this advice on how to ask a customer to remove negative reviews. Solve the problem first. Don’t immediately approach the buyer about review removal. That tells them you care more about your business than you do their satisfaction. Determine what the complaint is and determine what the buyer would like you to do to resolve it. Then see if they would feel comfortable taking the feedback down.
  3. Add service from an Amazon Feedback software company to handle requests for you automatically. Companies such as Sagemailer,  Feedback Five, Kibly, and others offer several services to help sellers stay on top of their reviews. You can have them signal you whenever you get three or fewer stars. They know how to remove reviews from Amazon and will contact the company if that’s appropriate. They may send the buyer an email to see if the problem has been resolved and ask for an update or removal altogether.

How to Comment on a Negative Review

Rather than considering Amazon review removal or asking a customer to remove it, you can comment on it. This is a particularly useful way to handle a customer complaint if you can’t get a customer to respond to you.

  • Log into your seller page.
  • Go to Comments
  • Find Review
  • Click Add Comment
  • Within the comment, identify yourself clearly as the seller. Let them and everyone else know if you have tried to reach them. Answer any question that a customer may have. Give any kind of valuable information you have that could help.

Why Should You Be Proactive?

Being proactive about product reviews people leave includes two practices. One is to try to prevent negative customer experiences, and the second is to react quickly when they happen.

Prevent Negative Reviews

Instead of worrying about how to remove a review from Amazon, sellers should do whatever possible to prevent problems from the start. Before launching a new product, do testing and research.

Test your product yourself and get others to evaluate it. Work out the bugs and make changes if needed.

Evaluate its packaging to make sure it arrives in good condition. Ship it to yourself and a few friends and see how it comes.

Check your description for accuracy. Don’t guess the size or take the supplier’s word for anything. Instead, get the product in front of you and do the work yourself.

Don’t overpromise. There’s a difference between advertising a product’s advantages and promising more than you can deliver.

Act Fast When They Happen

One key to success is knowing how to remove a bad review from Amazon, and the other is acting quickly on negative ones people leave. To work on them, you need to know about them.

If you don’t have time to check your reviews daily, consider adding a Business Alert on your Amazon page:

  • Go to Tools
  • Choose business alerts
  • Click explore
  • Then add product
  • Then hover over “set alert” and decide what number of stars should cause an alert to be sent to you

Amazon Review Policy

When you get feedback you don’t like, to know how to remove a bad review from Amazon, you must decide whether it has violated any policies. If it has, ask Amazon to remove it.

For example, if it wasn’t written by a customer (it might be from a competitor), you can request removal. The same customer can’t negatively review the same product more than once, and competitors can’t review your products. You can have them removed in both these cases but be sure to have the evidence you need for proof.

Amazon also has rules about what information can be included in a customer review. If the review covers any of these, you can request that they be removed. See below for the subjects that are not permitted.

For the review:

  • It must be about the product and not about you as a seller or any other subject.
  • It can’t be harassing, threatening, or inflammatory – no profanity or hate speech.
  • It can’t be libelous. Libel laws prevent a buyer from lying about your product to damage your reputation.
  • It can’t contain nudity or be obscene in any way.
  • It can’t promote competing products or contain website URLs for other products.
  • It can’t include any personal contact information.
  • It can’t request or offer compensation for reviews.
  • It can’t contain information about other product options or compare prices.
  • It can’t talk about product availability.

FBA Sellers have a few different rules for review removal. Because Fulfilled By Amazon sellers don’t handle their own packing and shipping, Amazon takes responsibility for any fulfillment problems. If a negative customer comment addresses packaging or delivery problems, Amazon automatically removes the review and posts a comment that takes responsibility.

How to Ask Customers to Remove Negative Reviews

The buyer can remove any negative review that doesn’t qualify for Amazon review removal. The best way to get them to do that is to handle the problem as quickly and fairly as you can. Apologize, express concern for the customer, and determine what the buyer would like you to do to resolve the problem. Tell them you will change how things are done if that’s appropriate. Once you have fixed the problem to the best of your ability, comment on the review, describing to all readers what you have done.

Summary

Seller ratings matter to the success of your enterprise, and every business gets a few negative reviews. Preventing them by providing good products and services helps, but negative reviews aren’t always bad. They can give credence to the good ones and tell you how to improve your product, packaging, and service.

When you get three stars or less, know how to remove a review from Amazon and act fast. If reviews break Amazon’s rules, you can ask the company to remove them. Otherwise, do what you can to make the buyer happy by addressing the complaints. If you feel you’ve done what you can for the buyer, ask them to take the rating down or amend it. If you’ve tried every way, you know how to remove a bad review from Amazon, comment to let readers know you care and that you tried to fix a problem.

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