A common question we're asked at GetReviews is "How can I use your product in compliance with Amazon?" 

Below we'll explain the definitive way to follow Amazon's guidelines, while also increasing the review count of your FBA products.

Let's begin by checking out the guidelines verbatim:

Violations to Customer Reviews policies include, but are not limited to, these actions:

  1. A seller posts a review of their own product or their competitor's product.
  2. A seller offers a third party a financial reward, discount, free products, or other compensation in exchange for a review on their product or their competitor’s product. This includes using services that sell customer reviews, websites, or social media groups.
  3. A seller offers to provide a refund or reimbursement after the buyer writes a review (including reimbursement via a non-Amazon payment method), and asks the buyer to change or remove the review, before or after the refund or reimbursement. This could be done via buyer-seller messaging on Amazon or directly contacting customers or using 3rd party services, websites, or social media groups.
  4. A seller uses a third-party service that offers free or discounted products tied to a review (for example, a review club that requires customers to register their Amazon public profile so that sellers can monitor their reviews).
  5. A family member or employee of the seller posts a review of the seller's product or a competitor's product.
  6. A seller asks a reviewer to change or remove their review. They might also offer a refund or other compensation to a reviewer in exchange for doing so.
  7. A seller diverts negative reviews to be sent to them or to a different feedback mechanism while positive reviews are sent to Amazon.
  8. A seller creates a variation relationship between products with the aim of manipulating reviews and boosting a product’s star rating via review aggregation.
  9. A seller inserts a request for a positive Amazon review or an incentive in exchange for a review into product packaging or shipping box.
  10. A seller uses a customer account to write or change a review on his or his competitor’s product.

Amazon has a zero-tolerance policy towards any customer reviews violations.

The original terms are bulleted, but we've numbered them above to simplify direct references.

Guidelines 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, and 10 are not possible in our platform. This leaves us  2, 4, 7, and 9, which we'll address individually.

Guideline 2
A seller offers a third party a financial reward, discount, free products, or other compensation in exchange for a review.

  • The key phrase here is "in exchange for," in other words a quid pro quo agreement. GetReviews does not offer this functionality.
  • All survey funnels created inside GetReviews include the following verbiage: "Our offer is not in any way dependent on feedback that you provide, whether that be positive or negative." A live example is here.
  • Inside GetReviews, simply set "Do not require either" to ensure Amazon compliance.

Guideline 4 - A seller uses a third-party service that offers free or discounted products tied to a review

  • Similar to Guideline 2, the key phrase "tied to a review" is not relevant for GetReviews customers, as there is no way to verify a review was placed on Amazon.
  • GetReviews does not employ any monitoring solutions to check reviews on your Amazon account.
  • To measure the efficacy of GetReviews' survey funnel technology, we encourage customers to simply measure the average number of monthly reviews before and after using our platform for 30 days.

Guideline 7 -  A seller diverts negative reviews to be sent to them or to a different feedback mechanism

  • GetReviews does offer a feature that puts more emphasis on shoppers sharing their positive vs negative reviews.
  • However, this was built for non-Amazon marketplace customers; we integrate with over 10 (Walmart, Etsy, Tractor Supply, Petco, etc) who do not share the same Terms as Amazon.
  • Thus, we do not allow Amazon-linked products to enable this optional feature.

Guideline 9 - A seller inserts a request for a positive Amazon review or an incentive in exchange for a review

  • This guideline mentions the use of an "insert" in the "product packaging," otherwise known as a Packing Insert
  • While many GetReviews customers use packing inserts to share more information about their brand, request feedback, or offer free products, the important terminology is clear: "in exchange for a review"
  • GetReviews does not require shoppers who visit our feedback surveys to leave a review in exchange for free products, discounts, or coupon codes.
  • Inside GetReviews, simply set "Leaving review on marketplace optional" to ensure Amazon compliance.

Summary

GetReviews is here for honest entrepreneurs.

We're here to save DTC brands precious developer hours and data analysis investments through easy-to-use tools that help consumers find the best products, using authentic reviews by their peers.