All my reviews are gone from Amazon, anyone else?

#1

It was only a matter of time with the crackdown in the USA that they would start shutting us down in Canada as well. I was shocked to find out today that my over 200 reviews, most of them were video reviews, were gone. I spent a lot of time making videos and the bummer part is that over 1/2 of my reivews were legitimate purchases and the discounted ones I removed myself but I may have missed some.

When I search via Amazon rankings I am still at #61 in Canada so I may be able to start over from there with a good ranking but who really knows. When I look at the top 100 reviewers about 10% of them have lost their reviews. Of course all the “VINE” accounts still have their reviews.

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This is very discouraging!! I have spent so many hours trying to help people. I may have benefited with some freebies but I didn’t need most of them and just enjoyed doing it as a hobby.
If I try to do a review from a legitimate purchase it will not let me. look at the photo of this Amazon basics purchase and it shows the reason. I can’t believe they won’t even let me review their own product

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Amazon blocking reviews on any product
Wow all change! + Amazon grumblings?
Power user programme
#2

If you continue they will and can ban you entirely from Amazon.

#3

Understood but pretty hard to do anything wrong at this point as it won’t even let me review the two legitimate purchases I made this week. If they ban me it would be a shame as I have not received any freebies for over 3 months but I still make lots of purchases. I would like to say their loss but I love shopping online so I guess we would both lose. I will call them tomorrow to see whats up.
I understand why they are doing this but personally I would rather read a long winded technical review even if it is skewed by discounts instead of a typical purchase review that says “I like it and it works good” which tells me nothing.

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#4

I was once a Top 500 reviewer on Amazon and I went through this several times. If I reviewed a product for one company, their competitors would either downvote my reviews or report my account for abuse (which was false) to help their own search rankings. Amazon would then suspend my reviewing privileges without verifying the reports and I would then have to waste time pleading my case to get it fixed. I eventually got tired of the review “drama” and just left it suspended. Don’t worry about your entire Amazon account getting shut down as they now have a system that just disables your ability to post reviews. The rest of your Amazon account will work as normal.

This is a good opportunity to consider starting your own blog to give a new home to your reviews!

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#5

I feel so bad for you. Seriously that’s gotta hurt. You said that most of your reviews were video ones. I didn’t even know that you could upload video reviews onto Amazon. Never seen one myself. Have you also posted them on YouTube. If so, if you don’t mind sharing your channel, I’d love to admire all the hard work you’ve done. Again, I’m so sorry this has happened to you. Seems insane to me. You’ll probably have nightmares for a few weeks. I agree with everything you said. I mean I guess I can understand them taking down the ones that you stated you were given for free, but even those are already not as weighted as they are unverified purchases. Heck, they don’t even show up when you’re scrolling through the reviews unless you change the default filters (every time). It frustrates me too. Again I agree that I appreciate the meaningful reviews so much more than the dumb ones.

As far as them taking down your account… I’m not even going to say anything. That’s just stupid and would (or at least should) never happen.

I will say that if Amazon loses their top review contributors, that will hurt them in some way or another - when you reach out to them there should be absolutely no doubt that all of your hard work is restored (other than the ones you received at a discounted price or for free, especially if you tell them that those were written before the rule change and that you tried to go back through and delete as many as possible). Good luck, you’ll get through this.

The people that are falsely reporting you should have their privilegedes taken away, including selling their products - or at the very least a warning.

If they’ve got time to destroy your work, they’ve surely got time to make it right and forgive that all of it happened in the first place.

2 Likes
#6

@TechnicallyWell Thanks Ryan. I appreciate the insight. I had a feeling at times that other reviewers were down-voting but did not consider that competitors were. The higher I got on the list the more down votes that appeared.
The fact that I spent a lot of time making and formatting videos to fit the Amazon space constrictions must have worried some competitors.
I had some very insightful and well thought out videos down-voted within one day and I suspected foul play but never complained.
Amazon is brutal with putting a review with 7 good votes and 1 bad vote at the end of the chain.

If I had the ability to speak as well as you on your Blog I would consider it but I am not a very good speaker and watching other excellent blogs makes me feel that it is not for me. My YouTube channel with all 54 subs is very amateurish in quality but not bad in details. No big deal. :wink:

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#7

@joshuad11 I appreciate the support. Not too worried, fun while it lasted :sunglasses: I kept a good number of my edited videos and may upload them to my YouTube however they were more written for Amazon and I down converted them to fit the Amazon 100Mb (good quality) limit so they are great for small screen but not so much for big screen and I likely deleted the originals. My YouTube is more for DIY help in using the products in real life. I have to warn you ahead of time that my video camera work in some is pretty bad, but when I get comments that I have helped a few people out it just makes me feel good and I will strive to make more videos and get better at it. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6715oVvdNZiZCYq07Z0ayg?view_as=public

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#8

I have a friend who had his entire Amazon account suspended so it does happen, which is complete BS if you ask me. But like @TechnicallyWell mentioned for now it seems like it is just the review portion you have been restricted from using. Amazon must be doing something right though as their IPO reached $1000 a share this week which is crazy. Anyways @bobbleheaderman start yourself a blog or use YouTube forget Amazon.

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#9

There have been several theories on how Amazon rank’s what products appear at top when a customer searches. Some suspect that their algorithm gave more weight to products that have a lot of reviews and reviews that are from top reviewers. So if a company saw you - as a top reviewer - were giving a good review to one of their competitors, they would down-vote your review (or otherwise try to get it removed by reporting abuse) so it would theoretically “weaken” your review and, in turn, the product’s ranking in the search results. Who knows if this was actually true, but that would be the reason that some of your reviews might have a seen a few down-votes in the first few minutes of being posted. The Amazon marketplace is surprisingly crazy if you read through some of the Top Reviewer and Seller forums on Amazon’s site.

I checked some of the reviews on your YouTube channel and they are great! I like that you jump right into the review and give the facts. Nice work! I’m with @cava3395: forget Amazon! :wink:

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#10

Yeah same thing happen to me although I didn’t review as much as you did I bet. Try to post a review of something I bought and couldn’t post a review on Amazon thought it was a bug or something. So I try again few days later and couldn’t still so I just give up and said screw it. I’ll still use Amazon to buy stuff just cause it’s convenient since with Prime at my location I tend to get stuff next day with 2 day shipping.

#11

Did you give them a call?

#12

It is very hard to call Amazon.ca. I finally talked to a customer service rep this morning and she said the specialist in that area would email me within two days. She said that there wasn’t anybody that she could transfer me to that could talk to me by phone.

Message From Customer Service

Hello,

I’ve forwarded your question to the Customer Service team trained to handle this issue.

We’ll contact you soon with an update.

We hope to see you again soon.

We’d appreciate your feedback. Please use the buttons below to vote us about your experience today.

Best regards,

Grace C.

Amazon.ca

Of note I just realized the 15 or so reviews that I did on Amazon.com (all legit purchases) are also gone

I am kicking myself for not keeping the 100 plus video reviews that I did in their original format.

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#13

Goodluck. Specialist that deals with that area, give me a break you don’t become a $1000 per share company by hiring people to do such BS jobs. :joy:

#14

And this is the follow up email that I just received. I must point out that I was never given a warning or a policy change notification from Amazon since I signed up.
pretty harsh!

Hello,

We have determined that you have violated our Customer Review Creation Guidelines. As a result, we have suppressed all of your reviews, and you will no longer be able to post reviews on Amazon.ca.

We made this decision after carefully considering your reviewing account. This decision is final.

Sincerely,

Best regards,
Review Moderator
Amazon.ca

1 Like
#15

That is very similar to the email I received. It is very vague and doesn’t say what was wrong. If you ask them for the reason, they’ll just state that they won’t reply to any further emails on the subject. How they handle this situation is very odd.

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#16

Amazon are harsh (very recently) when it comes to their ‘decision is final’ rubbish and to an extent, how they handle reviews as a whole (such as VINE). I had three well liked reviews canned not that long ago as they were samples, which turned into three actual purchases for friends and family yet trying to re-submit reviews without getting objections was akin to pulling teeth…

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#17

I‘m so sorry to hear your things. I would say start a YouTube channel or a blog. I would also like to encourage everyone to write reviews in the community. At least, we can assure you that we will never delete your posts without any reason!:wink:

6 Likes
#18

I had 7 helpful votes on a product that Amazon markets themselves under the “Amazon Basics” name and it was removed with the rest. I even linked to it from another similar “free” product stating that I like to Amazon better. Not a lot of thought process is right! :confused: I may have rated too many freebies poorly and upset some of those sellers into reporting abuse as they would contact me to try to change it…

I just uploaded 14 of my video reviews that I still had on my hard drive to my YouTube channel. The quality is only 480 but I will put my best work on there going forward. Thanks for the support and letting me vent here!!!

1 Like
#19

Told you Amazon sucks. (Dont tell them that I have 9 months left on my prime membership) :joy: anywho as I suggested earlier make yourself a YouTube or a blog and let Amazon continue to try to take over the world one reviewer at a time.

#20

I have had a couple sellers ask me to review on my other Amazon account, ya right

1 Like