Went to look at something this morning and had that notice.. so I looked into it and it seems a lot of people are being hit with this, starting a few months ago. They started burying negative reviews and only gives buyers a small window of 5-10 positive reviews. On forums it seems to have started rolling out on a larger scale, with their response being they are done shopping on Amazon, but not sure on the follow through. I personally went to eBay and bought it after reading the reviews on Reddit, problem solved lol.
I am definitely thinking this will impact sales. If people can’t see the negative reviews they are going to see it as a scam and move on. It also does away with the whole concept one bad review doesn’t damage sales. Now one bad review no one can see was made because they didn’t read the instructions…will do nothing but damage sales.
On the seller side, not being able to see reviews has started impacting sellers.
I found a forum post on it here and hopefully a mod reads the rundown of why being transparent about reviews is critical to retain shoppers.
I wish Amazon would actually think about how their changes impact sales before rolling out things like this. I am sure it is a push to move everything to AI but if we have learned anything about AI it is that it makes a ton of mistakes. Removing access to reviews is going to make people shop elsewhere.
We were looking to buy a replacement battery for a weed whacker and saw all of the top reviewed items had reviews that were for completely different items. We didn’t buy any of them because of those reviews as we didn’t trust the listing at that point. Definitely manipulated reviews on those listings.
In our opinion, Amazon might be better off just getting rid of reviews at this point.
I thought it was bad enough that they started limiting the number of reviews you could see/not letting you filter by stars without logging in (I don’t use my personal Amazon account on my work computer - my browsing history is already weird enough as it is without adding work research).
To literally hide them behind a “I’ll think about showing them to you if you click this button” is absurd, as a consumer. I need more than a handful of reviews to tell me if it’s worth buying, especially with the “leave a 5 star review & get a refund” payola nonsense people pull.
It looks like its been rolling out on a larger scale, there are a few forum posts about it now. Someone actually tried to get seller support to help them since they track reviews. I think a lot of sellers do to look for any issues before they become issues. This blindfolds sellers to only what VOC will show (which isn’t much because it has never worked right). Never mind how many customers will be lost because of lack of transparency.
We are already fighting Amazon being viewed as a place for Temu level products, now we have no way of proving it with reviews being accessible to customers. I really don’t understand their thinking behind doing this other than trying to push everyone to AI, something that still can’t filter results properly and leads to escalated returns. Maybe I am missing some other reason that would help instead of hinder sales, but I am at a loss.
When I make an expensive online purchase, I read the reviews after the purchase and many of the reviewers have no clue how their purchase works, and few of them have read the manual.
Amazon has already made it much harder to leave a negative review than it was in the past, and I have had to struggle to get them to publish them for Amazon products.
There will be no loss of buyers because many, many Amazon buyers are clueless, and that is an Amazon strength which benefits Amazon and its 3P sellers.
At least if those reviews are there, you can disregard the idiots rather than not having them available to see!
I once read a review for a pill with 50 mg of active ingredient (prominently displayed on the front panel and SFP) and the reviewer was upset that the pill was less than half a gram, and so clearly it was a scam. Unfortunately for the reviewer, half a gram is 500 milligrams, not 50. It was at least worth a laugh? But I felt bad for the CS rep at the company who would have to try to explain that.
People are calling it the US Temu, hiding reviews is very shady practice. A lot of people who have been shopping on Amazon for years have been quitting, which is never a good sign for sellers. On top of it, return rates will go up because we will only be left with the buyers who don’t research anything.
Personally, I won’t shop on Amazon if they are not transparent with reviews. I look for patterns on negative reviews to know if it is an issue that can affect me or something that doesn’t matter (like repeatedly saying the zipper breaks when I need a laptop bag vs the color isn’t as blue as the picture). If I can’t read the pros and cons, I can’t trust the product. I avoid returns unless it is an absolute, which usually comes from receiving someone else’s return. This just tells the good shoppers we want to go elsewhere, which it seems a lot are doing by reading social media posts about it. Very disappointing.
Funny thing is customer service doesn’t even know what this is and thinks it is an internal glitch. Maybe it is, just spreading.
Not sure if this was just an A/B test or what, but I have the same limited reviews visibility back (at my work computer, not logged in) as I previously had. Yay? Still have to log in to filter by stars, see more reviews, etc., but at least I can do basic research on the last several reviews/see images uploaded.
I think everyone is missing the actual motivation here - Amazon does not want its reviews harvested and used to train AIs. So, they consider reviews to be THEIR intellectual property, and of value, given the wide range of products reviewed on their platform.
When Amazon says that you can return anything at any time in any condition and get a full refund as soon as it is scanned in, is there really even a need to read reviews? Just buy and return until you find the quality you desire.
