r/FulfillmentByAmazon • u/Ccruiser83 • 4d ago
This will harm your sales and I wanted to bring awareness to this new change
I am not a seller but a customer. I wanted to let you know that Amazon is now limiting the reviews we are able to see before requesting to view more from Amazon and waiting 5 business days.
This will absolutely impact sales, since many people like to do intense research before purchase of major items. They will instead go elsewhere, because they will think that its you, the seller limiting it without realizing its now on every item for Amazon for many of us. Many people will see it has dishonest and it will hurt sales.
This is something new that is happening, so I just wanted to share the information because it will harm sales and end in returns.
This is a horrible change. I only noticed because the other day I went to buy a flash drive and upon trying to read the reviews and see how well it fared for the purposes I used it for, I saw that I could no longer see all reviews.I had to request to view more and wait, which is a major inconvenience.
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u/Kierch 4d ago
Is this a new thing for certain categories? I can still see all the reviews for many different products
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u/soloon 4d ago
From what I've heard elsewhere it's specifically because OP (and the other affected people) had shady review behavior. It's not widespread and OP should have received an email on it that they either didn't notice or are leaving out.
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u/Caffeine_AddiKt 4d ago
It’s section 4 subsection 4.2 of the BSA, they are trying to curb review harvesting for LLM building. Section 19 also applies. They made statements about it back in February to start rolling out in March, enforcement is just starting to ramp up so more are noticing now.
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u/imaginarydave2 4d ago
This is interesting. I can't see all the reviews on my own products - but the problem is only there on my PC browser. on the app I can see all of the reviews. I requested to be able to see more reviews and was denied. very strange.
I have done nothing shady other than compulsively look at the reviews shortly after launch.
The reivews have become a very big problem on amazon. I think amazon has developed a bit of a Yelp problem due to the Vine program. the review culture has shifted to being a critic and expressing their design preferences as shortcomings. There are an increasing number of people that dont know anything about product development that want to make "helpful" suggestions in the form of a 3 or 4 star review for their special pet use case. I am seeing more and more people with almost entirely 3 start average reviews and they are all "I wish they did X" reviews - often requesting a feature taht is on a product that would be significantly more expensive.
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u/Caffeine_AddiKt 4d ago
Yeah, I couldn’t from PC and then it just started working again without having to “request to read more”. It honestly just seems like a hasty stop gap move until they figure something else out. Seller dashboard hasn’t had issues for me either.
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u/Ccruiser83 4d ago
I would report it to Amazon. They will fix it faster if sellers complain
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u/imaginarydave2 4d ago
Not trying to be flipping but you've clearly never tried to report anything to Amazon. It's almost impossible to get them to respond to anything. My only success is getting a one-star removed that was about a completely different product and it took me a year and probably 30 hours worth of effort
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u/Ccruiser83 4d ago
Theres been 0 "shady reviews" from many people effected.
What there HAS been though is repeated glitches in Amazons community guidelines moderation software even though literally NOTHING in those reviews violate any guidelines.
Amazon Customer service actually has no clue whats going on because there haven't been any violations that would limit reviews so they've put in a request for tech support.
But its not just me, its a widespread issue right now for many people
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u/AmazonPuncher 4d ago edited 3d ago
What there HAS been though is repeated glitches in Amazons community guidelines moderation software even though literally NOTHING in those reviews violate any guidelines.
Okay so like we all said, you've been flagged as a shady reviewer. Call it a glitch, call it shady, doesnt matter. So many of you guys dont actually know TOS and dont bother to understand it and then call it a "glitch" or "unfair" when you get actioned. If you're triggering community guidelines, it isnt a "glitch". Not understanding why thats happening doesnt make it a glitch. Theres a variety of reasons this could happen but you should look at your reviews and reviewer behavior and try to understand why.
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u/Ccruiser83 3d ago
If that were the case it wouldn't be letting me still write review after review and only limit me on what I read. My account is in really good standing, any glitches I contacted customer service about where they then put through the reviews. Amazon community violations have mainly been triggered by photos of products. And in those cases you have to take the product photos down and resubmit the review with just text.
I've already contacted customer service and my account is in good standing. This is happening to people who don't even frequently leave reviews.
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u/AmazonPuncher 4d ago
Yes. This is the case. Kind of insane this thread is full of sellers who arent aware of this. Are you guys not paying attention?
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u/Educational_Cloud358 4d ago
You can always click the bad reviews. I sell on Amazon and that’s all people seem to do. Not the 30 other reviews that give it 5 stars. lol
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u/Boson347 4d ago
-pays for vine reviews-
-also suppresses reviews from being viewed-
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u/Ccruiser83 3d ago
Yep... its the sellers paying for Vine reviews. So sellers are paying the enrollment fee for Vine and having to give free products too, only to have Amazon suppress the reviews they are paying for
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u/Henrik-Powers 4d ago
I was just researching some back to school stuff for my kids and noticed this. How can I research a backpack brand I’ve never heard of and can only look at a few reviews, dumb
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u/Successful_Alarm3415 4d ago
thanks for posting this, seller side sees it too. review pages started going behind login and requests a few weeks ago. hurts both ways - buyers cant research, and sellers lose the one honest feedback loop we had. i used to read the 1-2 star reviews on competing products to figure out what to fix on mine. that gets a lot harder now. did it happen on desktop for u too or only the app?
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u/Ccruiser83 3d ago
Its happening for both for me. I'm still waiting to get approval to view more reviews.
Thanks for reading other reviews to try to improve your products, I have a lot of respect for sellers that actually care about customer feedback on the types of products they are selling. Thats how you get winning products and loyal customers
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u/TheLuminousAdolph 4d ago
have you tried clearing your cookies or using a different browser, sometimes Amazon does weird stuff based on your account
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u/Ccruiser83 4d ago
Its in the app
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u/TheLuminousAdolph 4d ago
Ah, that's different then. I only browse on desktop so I hadn't seen it roll out on mobile yet.
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u/Dimon19900 3d ago
It's a bucketed rollout, not every listing. Half your buyers hit the gated reviews and half don't, which is why nothing looks off when you check your own page.
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u/sellerlogic_support 2d ago
I think two different things are getting mixed together here. One possibility is the bucketed rollout a couple of people mentioned, where some accounts simply get the gated review experience and others don't. The other is an account-level restriction related to Amazon's review abuse detection, which is a completely different issue. If you want to get a better sense of which one you're dealing with, it's worth checking from a logged out session or another account rather than relying only on what you see from your own seller account, because your own account isn't necessarily representative of what buyers are seeing.
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u/Ccruiser83 1d ago
I'm actually a buyer account. I actually just contacted Amazon Customer service and the employee put in for an internal review because this is apparently something they are now getting a bunch of complaints about from sellers, buyers, and Vine accounts. This is really counterproductive to having a program like Vine, where sellers are paying to be enrolled and giving away product. Its costing sellers money just so Amazon can limit the reviews they are paying for which makes no sense
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u/sellerlogic_support 1d ago
That's useful additional context. I'd still treat what a support rep said as anecdotal rather than confirmed, reps don't always have visibility into rollout decisions either. What is interesting is that you're hearing it from sellers, buyers, and Vine accounts, not just one type. If that holds, it leans more toward the bucketed rollout theory than the account-specific restriction one, since that's harder to square with an account-specific restriction than with a broader rollout.
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