Amazon removing reviews

[Ted]

Amazon is starting to remove reviews.

To quote from the article; "I understand wanting to prevent people from putting up sock reviews, or getting a bunch of family and friends to write great reviews even if they haven’t read a book. But I have to wonder if some readers have complained about indie authors and the reviews we receive. I also wonder if readers understand that the Big Six hire out reviewers to write reviews even though the reviewer didn’t read the book. It’s a dirty secret of the publishing world…and that’s why you’ll see Grisham or King and other bestselling authors have 40-50 5 star reviews the first day their book is available. The Big Six reviews are more suspect than those of us indie authors. Regardless, to penalize everyone in order to catch a few is not right (if this is the reasoning behind removing reviews)."

The full article at..... tobecomeawriter.com/indie-authors-amazon-removing-reviews/?utm_source=rss

Have any of you had reviews removed my Amazon?

[ahpellett]

That was an interesting blog post. Just as a matter of good record-keeping, all authors to keep copies of their reviews. If a review were deleted for one's book, then one could then go back to that saved review and check it over and see if there were any obvious reasons for the deletion. It might not be obvious for every deletion, but it might for some.

If anyone has made copies and can detect a reason it would be interesting to hear about it here in the forum.

[jenniferp]

Actually, if you take Amazon's rules and interpret them strictly, nobody who has a book being sold through Amazon (by them or by a publisher) can review books on Amazon:

Sentiments by or on behalf of a person or company with a financial interest in the product or a directly competing product (including reviews by publishers, manufacturers, or third-party merchants selling the product)

I actually do NOT review books on Amazon because of this clause. I suppose it would be okay if the book was in a different genre, but we are all making, technically, 'directly competing products' and we are all publishers.

[russellphillips]

One of the things I always wonder when I see things like this is, how does the blog author know that it was Amazon that deleted the reviews? I can delete reviews that I've written. It could be Amazon deleting the reviews, or it could be the reviewers. It could even be some bizarre malware.

To answer Ted's question, I've had one review and one review comment disappear. One book had two reviews on Amazon.com - a 2-star and a 5-star. The 2-star review has been deleted, leaving just the 5-star review (which unfortunately makes reference to the now-deleted 2-star review). I've also had a comment to a review disappear on Amazon.co.uk. Someone left a 1-star review on one of my books, and the author of a different book about the same subject commented on it, basically saying "read my book instead". That comment has since been deleted.

[eskimo]

I've put a couple of reviews on Amazon, and put the same ones on both Amazon UK, and Amazon.com. Just checked and they are all still there.

[juice370]

Amazon is actually closing the accounts held by the fake reviewers from what I've seen, and as a result the fake reviews go.

[Ted]

Juice370, that doesn't seem to be the case according to various Amazon forums that even last week had members complaining Amazon isn't doing anything about fake reviews.

[Julie Harris]

I had 6 legit 5 star reviews for one of mine, Amazon removed 4, reasons being they were written by me (sorry, what??) or family members (sorry, what??). I emailed KDP asking why, stating I don't review my own books, nor do family members.
Response to this email:
"I understand your concerns about these missing reviews. We take the removal of customer reviews very seriously.
I'm not able to tell you why these specific reviews were removed from our website. I can only discuss that with the person who wrote each review. However, I can tell you that reviews are removed from the Amazon.com website for three reasons:

1. The review conflicted with our posted guidelines www.amazon.com/review-guidelines/.
2. The review was removed at the request of the customer who submitted the review.
3. We discovered that multiple items were linked together on our website incorrectly. Reviews that were posted on those pages were removed when the items were separated on the site.
I hope this information helps."
Well, no, none of the above apply!

[russellphillips]

Aug 21, 2012 16:51:06 GMT -8 Julie Harris said:

I had 6 legit 5 star reviews for one of mine, Amazon removed 4, reasons being they were written by me (sorry, what??) or family members (sorry, what??).

Did Amazon tell you that was the reason those reviews were deleted?

[Julie Harris]

Russell, yes, that was the first response - reviews had been written by myself or family. When I emailed and stated twas not the case, they responded again with the 1.2.3. points listed in previous post. A form letter obviously, because it was only a Hello. My name wasn't used.
Still no further ahead.
J.

[russellphillips]

Aug 21, 2012 23:08:26 GMT -8 Julie Harris said:

Russell, yes, that was the first response - reviews had been written by myself or family. When I emailed and stated twas not the case, they responded again with the 1.2.3. points listed in previous post. A form letter obviously, because it was only a Hello. My name wasn't used.
Still no further ahead.
J.

So they removed the reviews and sent you an email to tell you why? That seems odd to me, since it seems to be in conflict with their stated policy that they "can only discuss that with the person who wrote each review".
*shrug*

Thanks for the clarification.

[Julie Harris]

Russell, no, they didn't email me. I emailed them when I saw the number of reviews go from 6 to 2.

[russellphillips]

Ah, right. I'm still surprised that they initially gave you a reason why the reviews had been removed. I'd have expected any questions to get the standard "can only discuss that with the person who wrote each review" response that you got the second time.

[Ted]

I'm surprised Amazon was able to determine posts were from family or friends, 'allegedly'. That in itself is scary.

[ahpellett]

I've tried to think of ways that they could determine if "friends and family" were doing the reviews. Some of these are obvious, some not so much. Thanks to computers and $ for data, this kind of information is freely available to anyone wishing to pay for it. Amazon has reason to keep their reviews legitimate and thus it is not surprising to me if they'd pay for the data:

• billing address same as the author's
  
• zip code same as the author's
  
• city same as the author's (suspicious if small city/town)
  
• name same as the author's
  
• facebook friends
  
• linkedin connections
  
• twitter follows
  
• Same IP (personal computer address) as the author
  

Question: Do any of these correlate to removed reviews?

PS I welcome any additions to the list I've compiled