I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with Amazon feedback. Well, mostly hate. I’ve always found it to be unfairly skewed toward unhappy customers. Happy customers receive their item and move on with their lives. That’s is how Amazon wants it, too. They penalize us for any “contact” with customers, so they too, want customers to forget we third party sellers exist. Customers should order, receive, and hopefully order again. All with no contact whatsoever from third party sellers.

Unhappy buyers, however, leave social media posts, terrible reviews, send scathing emails and leave horrid feedback. No one likes or wants this, and as a group, I know third party sellers on Amazon try to avoid this at all costs.

Feedback on Amazon is meant to provide insight on the service the seller provides, not on the item itself. Thus, Amazon will remove specific feedback in the following circumstances:

  1. The feedback includes words commonly understood to be obscene or profane.
  2. The feedback includes seller-specific personally identifiable information, such as e-mail addresses, full names, telephone numbers, etc.
  3. The entire feedback comment is a product review, such as “The Acme Super-Widget lacks the sharpness and speed of the Acme Ultra Widget.” However, if the feedback comment is only partly a product review but ALSO contains feedback about the seller’s service, such as “Seller’s shipping service was very slow, and the Acme Super-Widget lacks the sharpness and speed of the Acme Ultra Widget,” then the feedback would NOT be removed.
  4. The entire feedback comment is regarding fulfillment or customer service for an order fulfilled by Amazon. Feedback reviewed and determined to be relating explicitly to fulfillment and customer service for an order fulfilled by Amazon will not be removed, but a line will appear through the rating and the statement, “This item was fulfilled by Amazon, and we take responsibility for this fulfillment experience” will be added.

We’ve always submitted feedback that meets the above criteria to Amazon for removal. Usually it’s a painless process and mostly automated.

Feedback relating  to FBA orders is usually automatically removed when we file case. This week, however, we have started receiving emails that seem to contradict #4 above.

Dear Seller,

Thank you for contacting us at Amazon Seller Support.

I completely understand that you were concerned about negative feedback on Order ID-XXX-XXXX039-XXXX261 and would like me to provide assistance on the same. I feel privileged assisting you in this regard.

I would also like to inform you that your metrics will get reinstate after 14 days automatically.

With regards to your concern, I would like to inform you that I can not remove this feedback because we accept that it is Amazon’s fault. However I have removed the negative metrics for this feedback, so it will not impact your account health.

For more confirmation, please refer below mentioned page:
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/LINKTEXTREMOVEDFORPRIVACY

Wish you success, Happy Selling.

Have a great day.

I’ve always found it odd that Amazon would not simply remove the negative feedback comments from the seller’s profile when it pertains to an FBA order. Why leave a permanent record of an Amazon issue on the seller’s feedback page when they completely remove other comments such as product reviews?

Now it seems, they will not be striking out the feedback at all, but rather only removing the negative metric?

The feedbacks we have submitted this week have in fact been struck through as usual and the normal wording added beneath the feedback.

Message from Amazon: “This item was fulfilled by Amazon, and we take responsibility for this fulfillment experience.”

There has been no announcement in Seller Central and no change to the Feedback FAQ page on Amazon.com.

So the question is… is a policy change coming soon or is this simply a wording issue from a foreign support center?