Review-manipulation warning: root cause found in a third-party tool, account kept
A warning for review manipulation came from a review-request tool that emailed buyers with wording Amazon treats as incentivised. Removing the tool and proving it kept the account open.
Published October 19, 2022
Enforcement
None
Time to close
6 days
Root cause
3rd-party tool
Warnings since
0
Warning: review manipulation
Day 0- Buyer messages sent from the account offered a discount together with a review request.
- Amazon treats that as an incentivised review request under the Customer Product Reviews policy.
- The account may be deactivated if it continues.
Plan of action submitted
Day 4- Root cause: a third-party post-purchase email tool and its template.
- Corrective: tool removed, template deleted, Request a Review button only.
- Preventive: written message policy, quarterly audit of every automated buyer message.
Warning closed, no further action
Day 6- The plan was accepted; the warning stays on record for 180 days with no enforcement.
- No policy warning has followed since.
The challenge
The seller had never paid for a review. The warning cited "incentivised review requests". The cause was a third-party email tool sending post-purchase messages that offered a discount code alongside a review request.
What we did
- Audited every automated buyer message for the last 12 months and identified the exact template.
- Removed the tool, switched to Amazon's own Request a Review button, and documented both with dates.
- Plan of action acknowledged the message wording as the root cause, with the corrective steps and the new review policy attached.
The results
Warning acknowledged and closed without enforcement. Review velocity dropped 20% for two months and recovered through Vine and the built-in request button; the account has had no policy warnings since.
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