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Comment by odonnellryan | Hacker News Reader

If you leave a bad review on a high priced item often you will be contacted and offered a refund for removing the review.

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I have been fighting with Amazon on a review for a product I bought and returned for weeks now.

The manufacture is trying to bribe me to remove my review (offering me multiple times what I paid for it at this point). I have been trying to update my review to reflect that but it keeps being denied but I am not being told why.

It is very frustrating that these companies are able to deceive customers through reviews.

I had the same experience when I received a gift card with my item imploring me to leave a good review. Mentioning this "incentive" in the review got it blocked by Amazon.

There are certain things you're not allowed to mention. For example, anything related to shipping speed or delivery issues. Even if the item was shipped direct by the seller.

Hope this helps.

Anything related to the seller is not accepted as part of the product review (which makes some sense in most cases, since one product can be offered by multiple sellers).

in cases of review fraud that rule doesn't make sense though IMO, since no matter who's selling it, it's directly related to the rating of the article presented

Yeah I can see why that makes sense as a blanket rule most of the time.

I feel like in this case I am likely calling out the manufacture, but I am not entirely sure.

I bought a gaming mouse where the middle button could never be pressed in combinaison with another. It turns out there was a firmware update to fix that. And of course it only runs on MS Windows.

My review stating this was blocked. I made appeal multiple times and Amazon simply ignored me.

Last time I checked the listing had a perfect 5 star rating...

Or Amazon will prevent you from posting the critical review in the first place.

I haven't had this one happen!

I also have not had this. But a critical review of Dell monitor got deleted after a few months.

They blocked me from writing reviews entirely, and I haven't been able to get unblocked.

I have had more than one bad review rejected or removed for dubious reasons.

Or they just remove it silently (no notification) and then you try to post and it says "not accepting reviews from this account".

In my case I was pissed off about these fake battery capacities and I posted evidence (current draws with images) and yeah...

Similarly I bought the same replacement battery for a Lenovo laptop and all 3 times (from different companies including Amazon) I got fake ones (fake capacity).

It is unfortunate how convenient Amazon is though. The lockers and 1 day shipping.

It's also common to get offers of compensation for a good review with the product.

I'm sure! I have thought about this when reading reviews for products. Often they have very similar language used... Pointing out how specific things about the item are really great etc.

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