On October 3rd, Amazon made changes to its policy about incentivized reviews. These changes no longer permit sellers to provide free or discounted products in exchange for reviews. The specific wording states: You can view the policy change announcement here: https://www.amazon.com/p/feature/abpto3jt7fhb5oc
“Additionally, you may not provide compensation (including free or discounted products) for a review.”
You can view the policy change announcement here: https://www.amazon.com/p/feature/abpto3jt7fhb5o
The only exception to this policy is Amazon Vine, which is currently part of the Vendor Central program and is a means to provide free products in exchange for reviews. However, the fees to use Amazon Vine are in the thousands. Furthermore, the reviewers are selected by Amazon, and the seller has no communication with them.
This change in policy came only a few weeks after an article was published by ReviewMeta which showed that the average rating in incentivized reviews is (unsurprisingly) higher than the average rating for normal customer reviews. You can view this report here: http://reviewmeta.com/blog/analysis-of-7-million-amazon-reviews-customers-who-receive-free-or-discounted-item-much-more-likely-to-write-positive-review/
Clearly, Amazon is trying to improve the quality of customer reviews and the overall customer experience. However, several businesses offered services to obtain incentivized reviews, such as iLoveToReview, SnagShout, Amz Review Trader, and others. For now, many of these businesses are moving forward by continuing to provide items for free or at a discount, but without the requirement of a review.
Several questions still remain about the policy change, such as:
- Is it OK to send out items for free or at a discount but not require a review?
- If you receive an item for free or at a discount and write a review for it, will the review be posted?
- Will reviewers be banned for receiving free or discounted items and posting reviews, even if they understand it is not required?
Further confusing is considering the FTC rules about providing reviews for items within the Amazon policies. Under FTC rules, you must disclose that you received an item for free or at a discount if it is an endorsement. Here is information from their FAQ guide:
“My company runs a retail website that includes customer reviews of the products we sell. We believe honest reviews help our customers and we give out free products to a select group of our customers for them to review. We tell them to be honest, whether it’s positive or negative. What we care about is how helpful the reviews are. Do we still need to disclose which reviews were of free products?
Yes. Knowing that reviewers got the product they reviewed for free would probably affect the weight your customers give to the reviews, even if you didn’t intend for that to happen. And even assuming the reviewers in your program are unbiased, your customers have the right to know which reviewers were given products for free. It’s also possible that the reviewers may wonder whether your company would stop sending them products if they wrote several negative reviews – despite your assurances that you only want their honest opinions – and that could affect their reviews.”
However, Amazon bans receiving items for free/discount in exchange for reviews. If you post a review just to be “nice” and even though it is not required, do you still have to post a disclosure statement due to the FTC rules? If you do, will Amazon ban the reviewer and/or seller? You can view information about the FTC rules here: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftcs-endorsement-guides-what-people-are-asking
Beyond the issue of writing a review, there are questions around sending free or discounted items to boost sales rank. Amazon’s Prohibited Seller Activities states:
Misuse of sales rank: The best seller rank feature allows buyers to evaluate the popularity of a product. Any attempt to manipulate sales rank is prohibited. You may not solicit or knowingly accept fake or fraudulent orders, including placing orders for your own products. You may not provide compensation to buyers for purchasing your products or provide claim codes to buyers for the purpose of inflating sales rank.
Although that language was added to the guidelines in July, at the time you could still state that you were providing claim codes for reviews. Now, it seems that it might be more difficult to argue reasons for sending hundreds of claim codes at a time. This is another area that needs to be clarified.
These questions, and more, have still to be answered. We expect that clarity will be added to the new policy in the coming weeks, and we will continue to provide updates as new information becomes available. Follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/binaryburner or on Twitter at www.twitter.com/binaryburner for updates.