Quick answer. Yes. Amazon can remove product reviews and seller feedback, under different rules. Product reviews can disappear when Amazon detects review manipulation (its stated actions include removing all of a product’s reviews and blocking future ones), when a reviewer had a personal or financial connection to the seller, or when review sharing across a variation family no longer applies. Seller feedback is removed only when it meets Amazon’s published criteria, such as profanity, personal information, or a comment that is entirely a product review, and you must request removal within 90 days of the feedback. You cannot ask buyers to change or remove either one. Audit, report real violations through Amazon’s tools, and fix the cause behind the rest.
Sellers usually notice it the same way. A review count drops overnight, a star rating slides, or negative feedback that belongs to another seller sits on the account for weeks. The reflex is to blame a glitch or a competitor, then message buyers, open a stream of cases, or pay someone who promises to “restore” reviews. Each move can turn a cosmetic problem into an account health problem. Below is how removal works, how to tell a catalog change from an enforcement signal, and how to answer Amazon when a removal comes with a warning.
Product reviews and seller feedback are not the same thing
Amazon’s reviews help page draws the line. A product review is a customer’s evaluation of a product. Seller feedback is a customer’s evaluation of their experience with a seller. They live in different places, are calculated differently, and are removed under different rules. Mixing them up is the first mistake most sellers make, because the fix for one is often useless or even prohibited for the other.
A negative comment under your seller rating is handled in Feedback Manager. A falling product star rating is not. Its cause lies in the catalog, your review practices, or a policy problem Amazon has detected.
For a closely related case, read Amazon Seller Reputation and Account Health.
Why Amazon removes product reviews
Amazon’s Customer product reviews policies page states that reviews must remain “a true and authentic reflection” of customer experience, and that Amazon has a zero-tolerance policy toward review violations. When it detects attempts to manipulate reviews, its listed actions include permanent withdrawal of selling privileges and withholding of funds, removal of all the product’s reviews and blocking of future reviews or ratings, permanent delisting, legal action, and public disclosure of the seller’s name.
Removal because of how the review was obtained
The prohibited practices Amazon lists include a seller reviewing their own or a competitor’s product, paying or giving free or discounted product for a review, using review clubs or services, offering a refund or reimbursement after a review is written, asking a buyer to change or remove a review, diverting negative experiences to a private channel while sending positive ones to Amazon, putting a request for a positive review or an incentive in packaging, and manipulating the Helpful or Report Abuse features. Amazon removes reviews produced by any of these. The full list, and the federal rule behind fake reviews, is in our guide on whether you can buy Amazon product reviews.
Removal because of who wrote it
Amazon prohibits reviews from anyone with a close personal or financial connection to the seller. That means family members, close friends, employees, and anyone with a financial interest in the business, and it covers negative reviews of a competitor’s products. A relative who loves the product, or an employee who paid full price, is still a connected reviewer, and a pattern of them is treated as manipulation.
Removal you did not cause
Not every removal points to the seller. Reviews can drop because of a variation sharing change, explained next, or because someone planted a burst of over-the-top positive reviews to get you flagged for manipulation. The seller rarely sees what triggered a removal, so establish which situation you are in before saying anything to Amazon.
For a closely related case, read Product Recalls on Amazon.
Reviews that move or vanish when variations change
Variation families let one detail page show several versions of a product, and star ratings can be shared across them. Amazon’s Guidelines for reviews shared across product variations page says reviews are shared only when variations have minor differences that do not affect core functionality. Reviews will no longer appear on variations with significant differences, which may affect overall star ratings and review counts. This is the most common reason reviews “disappear” with no enforcement at all.
What Amazon shares and what it separates
Amazon gives examples. Shared are color or pattern, size and dimensions, pack size or quantity, secondary scent (such as cleaning products), and fitment for different models (such as phone cases for different phones). Not shared are performance and power differences, appliances whose power changes with size, platform compatibility, model or generation, bundles versus the base product, flavor or formulation, primary scent (perfumes, candles), fit types in clothing, material composition, substantial design differences in jewelry, and products for different skill levels or user types.
A worked example
Take a hypothetical protein powder listing with three flavors in one family. Chocolate has 1,800 reviews averaging 4.6 stars, vanilla has 300 averaging 4.1, and strawberry has 60 averaging 3.7. While reviews were shared, every flavor showed roughly 2,160 reviews and a blended rating. Amazon’s page lists flavor as a difference that is not shared, so after the change each flavor shows only its own reviews. Strawberry now displays 60 reviews at 3.7 stars. Nothing was deleted and no policy was broken.
The reverse case is the dangerous one. Amazon prohibits creating a variation relationship between unrelated products to boost a product’s star rating. Parking a new, unrelated product under a well-reviewed parent is a listed review violation, and the review loss that follows can come with enforcement.
What to do when shared reviews drop
Amazon says it emails you 30 days before review sharing changes affect your products. Use the Seller Assistant tool to check whether your variations are eligible for sharing, and review your variations in Manage All Inventory so the theme matches the real difference (color variation for color, not quantity). If you correct a variation theme after the change takes effect, Amazon says reviews will be re-shared for eligible products. Fix themes that are wrong. Do not restructure families to recapture ratings the rules say should not be shared.
For a closely related case, read How to Rebrand a Private Label Product on Amazon.
Reviews you can report, and what you can never ask for
Amazon asks sellers to report review violations they notice. If reviews on your listings or a competitor’s look purchased, written by insiders, or coordinated, report them through Amazon’s tools instead of contacting the reviewer, and keep dated screenshots of what you reported. That record matters if a planted burst is ever connected to your account.
The Inappropriate product reviews page adds a rule many sellers miss. You are encouraged to monitor reviews and reach out to resolve product or service issues, but you cannot ask customers to change or remove a review, even after the issue is resolved. Amazon’s own examples draw the line. Offering a refund while asking the buyer to “update” the review is prohibited, because it ties an incentive to the review. Offering a replacement without mentioning the review is acceptable.
Amazon also states that all customer service about negative reviews or feedback must go through Buyer-Seller Messaging. Email, phone, social media and messaging apps are prohibited for this purpose, and so is asking for a customer’s personal contact information.
Seller feedback. What Amazon will remove and when
Seller feedback runs on a narrower, more predictable set of rules. Buyers can leave one feedback per order. Amazon’s About Feedback Manager page says the link becomes available to buyers 3 days after the order is confirmed, and buyers have 90 days to leave feedback. Ratings of 4 or 5 stars count as positive, 3 as neutral, and 1 or 2 as negative. Your feedback score is your positive ratings divided by all ratings, calculated for 30 days, 90 days, 365 days and lifetime.
The criteria Amazon applies
The When buyers want to remove feedback page lists when Amazon removes feedback.
- The comment contains profanity, obscenities, or language commonly understood to be inappropriate in public forums.
- The comment contains hate speech.
- The comment contains personally identifiable information, such as email addresses, full names or telephone numbers.
- The feedback references a product sold by a different seller.
- The feedback references a product for which you are the brand owner or authorized reseller.
- The entire comment is a product review.
Everything outside that list stays unless the buyer removes it. “The carrier was late” or “we refunded them” are not grounds. A comment that the product broke after a week, with nothing about shipping or service, is a strong candidate under the product review criterion. A comment that mixes a product complaint with “and the seller never answered my message” is a service comment and will usually stay.
The windows that matter
Amazon states that feedback disputes must be made within 90 days of the feedback submission and that the system will not process later requests. The About Feedback Manager page and the Resolve or respond to buyer feedback page say buyers can remove their own feedback within 60 calendar days of leaving it. Amazon’s Post a public reply page describes removal as at the buyer’s discretion at any time, so treat 60 days as the stated window and confirm current behavior in your account. If Amazon denies your request, Feedback Manager shows an Appeal Decision option with a deadline, and Amazon says you cannot reopen the case once that deadline passes.
How to request a feedback review
In Feedback Manager, find the order in the recent feedback table, choose Request review in the Actions column, select the reason that matches Amazon’s removal criteria, and add comments showing why the feedback falls under that criterion. The request then appears in the Manage Review Requests tab as Under review, then Approved or Denied. Pick the reason honestly. Labeling service complaints as “product review” across dozens of orders shows a pattern of misusing the tool.
Public replies and contacting buyers the right way
When feedback is not removable, you still have two legitimate tools. The first is contacting the buyer to solve the actual problem. Amazon’s Resolve or respond to buyer feedback page encourages it. It gives an acceptable message after resolution, thanking the buyer for the feedback and hoping the issue was resolved, alongside a policy-violating one. “If we have resolved the issue you were facing, can you delete your feedback?” The difference is the request. Pressuring or incentivizing a buyer to remove or modify negative feedback is a violation, and Amazon’s reviews help page adds that this includes asking during returns or replacements.
The second tool is a public reply. Amazon’s Post a public reply page says the reply does not change your feedback score, cannot be edited after submission (only removed), must not include private information about you or the buyer, and should not ask questions or start a dialogue because buyers cannot answer it. If you delete your reply, you cannot post a second one, and if the buyer’s feedback is removed, your reply goes with it. State briefly what happened and what you did. A reply that argues with the buyer is read by every future shopper and does nothing to the score.
Our guide to Amazon feedback, public replies and more covers reply wording and the link between feedback and your Order Defect Rate in depth. For how negative feedback is counted against you, see how Order Defect Rate is graded.
When review removal signals an account problem
A few reviews dropping off a large listing is usually routine. Some patterns deserve the attention of a policy warning, because they often come before one.
| What you see | What it can mean | First move |
|---|---|---|
| Review count drops on some variations but not others in the same family | Review sharing no longer applies to those variations | Check eligibility in Seller Assistant and look for the 30-day notice email |
| A cluster of recent reviews disappears from one ASIN | Amazon linked those reviews to an incentive, a connected reviewer, or a service | Map every review practice and partner touching that ASIN in the period |
| All reviews removed and the product cannot receive new ones | One of the zero-tolerance actions Amazon lists for manipulation | Treat as an enforcement action. Read Account Health and every notice |
| A sudden burst of glowing reviews you did not ask for | Possible planted reviews intended to trigger a manipulation flag | Report them, record dates and screenshots, and confirm no partner was involved |
| A warning or policy notice citing review or feedback policies | Amazon believes the account or its partners violated review rules | Establish what happened before responding. Follow the method below |
A catalog change calls for a listing correction. An enforcement signal calls for an investigation. An angry case about “missing reviews” sent while the account is under review can put a denial in writing that the records later contradict. Our guide to customer product reviews and Amazon account suspensions explains how review problems escalate to suspension.
How to audit your own review profile
An audit answers two questions. Is anything in my operation creating review or feedback risk, and can I prove what I do. Run it routinely, and immediately after any unexplained removal.
Where to verify each part of the audit
| Question | Where to check | What to look for |
|---|---|---|
| Are my variation reviews supposed to be shared? | Seller Assistant. Manage All Inventory | Eligibility result per family. Themes that match the real difference |
| Did Amazon warn me about a sharing change? | Email notifications and Seller Central messages | The notice Amazon says it sends 30 days before changes apply |
| Which seller feedback can be removed? | Feedback Manager, Manage Feedback tab | Entries meeting a removal criterion and posted within 90 days |
| What happened to my removal requests? | Feedback Manager, Manage Review Requests tab | Under review, Approved or Denied status and any appeal deadline |
| What are buyers saying over time? | Feedback Manager feedback report download | Clusters by ASIN, period, carrier or complaint theme |
| Am I messaging buyers within policy? | Buyer-Seller Messaging sent items. Any automation tool logs | Sentiment filtering, refund links to reviews, external contacts, duplicate review requests |
| Is my account under a review-related warning? | Account Health page and Performance Notifications | Any notice citing review, feedback or seller conduct policies |
| What exactly do the rules say today? | Seller Central help. Customer product reviews policies and Answers to questions about reviews | The current list of prohibited practices and compliant examples |
Reviews gone and a warning on the account?
Send us the notice and we will help you establish what happened before you respond to Amazon.
If Amazon removes reviews and issues a warning
A warning that comes with review removal is an integrity matter, not a metrics matter. Amazon is asking whether it can trust you, so the order in which you act matters more than the wording.
Step one. Establish what happened
There are three honest possibilities, and each leads to a different response. You or someone in your business did it, knowingly or not. A third party acting for you did it, such as an agency, a launch service or a “growth” provider using methods you did not understand. Or the account was caught without manipulating anything, because a family member left a review, a well-meant follow-up crossed a line, or someone planted reviews to harm you. Ask everyone with account access or customer contact about review services, rebates, giveaways, review clubs, and connected reviewers. The deciding fact is often something the seller never saw as manipulation.
Step two. Map the full extent before you write
If involvement was real, even unknowing, identify every affected review, product, service and period before contacting Amazon. A partial admission that the records later contradict is worse than the original problem, because it shows dishonesty in the appeal itself. A common hidden violation is an automated follow-up that sends review requests only to buyers who first said they were satisfied. No fake review exists, but Amazon lists selective solicitation as prohibited.
Step three. Choose the response that matches the truth
There are only two honest positions. If you or a partner did it, own it plainly and show the remediation already done. If you did not, demonstrate it precisely. No service used, no incentive offered, the flagged reviews explained, and an invitation for Amazon to identify any specific review it believes is non-compliant. The fatal errors are apologizing for something you did not do, which admits a violation that never happened, and denying something the data shows, which ends trust entirely.
Step four. Build the plan around root cause, corrective actions and preventive controls
The root cause names exactly what happened, who did it, and why it was possible. Corrective actions are things already done, with dates and proof, such as the agency contract terminated, the automation disabled, the insert print run destroyed, and removal requests sent where possible. Preventive controls are ongoing rules with an owner and a start date, such as a written policy barring incentives and review services, review of every insert and buyer message against Amazon’s policy before use, restricted account access, and a written pre-hire check for any marketing partner. Our guide to the right way to appeal an Amazon suspension covers the structure.
Never fabricate, never “clean up”
Do not create, alter or backdate an agency contract, termination letter, message log or insert proof. If a genuine document does not exist, say so and show what you can instead, such as payment records, account access logs, or the current version of a template with the date it went live. In a manipulation review, a fabricated document proves the integrity failure Amazon is investigating, and no account recovers from it. This is educational information about Amazon’s policies, not legal advice. If a notice mentions legal action or referral to authorities, speak with a licensed attorney.
Mistakes that make review problems worse
Messaging buyers to recover lost ratings
Amazon allows a neutral Buyer-Seller Message only if Request a Review was not used for that order, and prohibits any request aimed at positive reviews or changes. A recovery campaign built in a panic usually breaks both rules at once.
Rebuilding variation families to restore stars
Grouping unrelated products to pool ratings is a listed violation. If sharing stopped because the variations differ, the honest fix is better reviews on each child.
Hiring someone to “restore” or “remove” reviews
Amazon has no paid route to delete product reviews. Anyone offering one is either describing ordinary reporting or doing something that counts as your violation, because Amazon treats partners as the seller.
A repeatable monthly routine
A short routine with a named owner catches most review problems early.
- Weekly. Open Feedback Manager, triage every new negative or neutral entry against Amazon’s removal criteria, and request reviews for eligible ones the same week.
- Weekly. Respond to every buyer with an open problem through Buyer-Seller Messaging, resolving the issue without mentioning feedback or reviews.
- Monthly. Update the review baseline log for every parent ASIN and investigate any variation whose count moved more than normal day-to-day change.
- Monthly. Check Account Health and Performance Notifications for any notice citing review, feedback or conduct policies.
- Before each new insert, template or automation goes live. The named owner checks it against Amazon’s Answers to questions about reviews page and signs off with a date.
- Quarterly. Ask every partner again in writing whether any review, rebate or ranking activity has run on your products, and keep the replies.
If your review profile is part of a broader account health concern, our team handles ongoing monitoring through our Amazon account health maintenance service. If the account is already suspended over review or feedback issues, see our Amazon suspension help.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can Amazon delete my product reviews?
Yes. Amazon removes reviews that violate its review policies, and when it detects manipulation its stated actions include removing all of a product’s reviews and blocking future reviews. Reviews can also stop appearing on a variation when review sharing no longer applies.
Why did my review count drop overnight?
The most common innocent cause is a change in review sharing across variations, which Amazon says it announces by email 30 days in advance. If the drop is concentrated in recent reviews on one ASIN, check whether any came from incentives, insiders or a third-party service.
Can I ask Amazon to remove a negative product review?
No seller process removes a review because it is negative. You can report reviews that violate Amazon’s Community Guidelines and resolve the customer’s problem, but you cannot ask the customer to change or remove the review.
What seller feedback will Amazon remove?
Amazon removes feedback containing profanity, hate speech or personal information, feedback about another seller’s product, feedback about a product for which you are the brand owner or authorized reseller, and feedback whose entire comment is a product review. Everything else stays unless the buyer removes it.
How long do I have to dispute seller feedback?
Amazon says feedback disputes must be made within 90 days of the feedback submission, and requests after that are not processed. Buyers can remove their own feedback within 60 calendar days of leaving it, according to Amazon’s help pages.
Does a public reply change my feedback rating?
No. Amazon says a public reply has no numerical impact on your feedback score. It can be removed but not edited, and it disappears if the buyer’s feedback is removed.
Am I responsible if my agency manipulated reviews without telling me?
Yes. Amazon states that infractions by business partners, employees or third-party agencies lead to enforcement even without your knowledge or consent. Your response must own what was done in your name and show the relationship ended.
Get Help With Amazon Review and Feedback Problems
If reviews disappeared alongside a warning, or your account was restricted over review or feedback policies, we can help you establish what happened and build a response that matches the facts. You can submit your case or book a consultation.
This article is general educational information about Amazon’s published policies and is not legal advice. Amazon’s rules, windows and tools change. Always confirm current requirements in Seller Central before acting. Got Suspended? does not guarantee any outcome, timeline or decision by Amazon.
Our Amazon account health maintenance team can take the case from here. You can also see all our marketplace suspension services.
Sources
- Amazon Seller Central: Customer product reviews policies
- Amazon Seller Central: Inappropriate product reviews
- Amazon Seller Central: Guidelines for reviews shared across product variations
- Amazon Seller Central: Answers to questions about reviews and related topics
- Amazon Seller Central: About Feedback Manager
- Amazon Seller Central: When buyers want to remove feedback
- Amazon Seller Central: Resolve or respond to buyer feedback
- Amazon Seller Central: Post a public reply
