#106 - How To Remove Bad Amazon Reviews And Turn Feedback Into Product Wins

Your next conversion lift might not come from new ad creative or a fancy A+ module. It’s hiding in your reviews—what customers love, what frustrates them, and which negatives never should have been there in the first place. We sit down with Sean to map a practical playbook for Amazon review defense: identifying clear policy violations, reporting them through the paths that actually work, and building a reliable tracker so removals stick instead of quietly reappearing.

We get specific about what crosses the line. Pricing mentions and off-platform comparisons often slip past automated filters but are among the fastest to remove. Subjective taste is usually fair game, yet reviews that nudge shoppers to competitors or misstate use can be challenged. You’ll hear why the “compensated review” form frequently yields higher success against fake or coordinated review bombs, how to document verified vs. unverified claims, and why multiple tickets with tighter evidence can make the difference with Amazon support.

But cleanup is only half the equation. With only about 10% of buyers writing reviews, every written comment carries outsized weight in rankings, ads performance, and AI-driven recommendations. Sean shows how to turn review data into a product roadmap: fix packaging pain, clarify instructions, address compatibility issues, and surface features customers feel are missing. We also compare Amazon’s native review analysis with deeper two-year sentiment tracking, and share simple ways solo sellers can stay proactive—like using targeted alerts or hiring a focused VA to manage submissions and weekly insights.

If you sell on Amazon, this conversation is a blueprint for protecting your listing and improving your product at the same time. Subscribe for more seller-first strategies, share this with a founder who needs a review win, and leave a quick rating to tell us what topic you want next.

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Transcript

Why Reviews Now Matter More

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Review an artist is kind of where a lot of the trainers and features and girls are kind of saying that you can get correct. They just get this ridiculous response that completely out of the question. What do I do now? Okay, this is a compensated review. This is a little task whether I can be using it to remove. Amazon doesn't say why. So on average, it's 10% of people actually leaving a room review.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

I think most people would think, oh, are my ads performing good? Is my content working? And I think less people would say, How are my reviews? And more so, they would less that more less even less people than that would say, how can I get my reviews, my negative reviews, removed? So excited to go into a little bit deeper topics on this, on the review side of things and get into a few different uh questions here. But I'd love to first hear from you about how you got into the Amazon review space, the Amazon review niche.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Yeah, absolutely. So I started 10 years ago when I got a ton of credit card debt investing in selling on Amazon courses. So I became a seller and had been selling now for seven years, and that's really how I got into it. You know, I started off at Helium 10 uh back when I was a team of 25, and then of course that blew up. Uh good timing, and then also just um, you know, being capable for what it was they needed, which was affiliate management at the time, uh learning a lot about marketing, and then uh, you know, the uh the economy uh in on the e-commerce side uh kind of plateaued. Um things started to shift and shift in the space. Um couple other companies started to come into the scene, and one of the ones that I noticed was was VOC, which was a review analysis uh software. So I reached out to them, uh, saw they had some growing pains, so ended up joining their team and really getting deep into the review analysis and what is now the negative review removal and yeah, other features

Guest’s Path Into Review Analysis

SPEAKER_01 2:30

as well. But it turned out that no one was servicing that market in the e-commerce space. But now with AI blowing up and you know it being a really competitive landscape, review analysis is kind of where a lot of the trainers and teachers and gurus are kind of saying this is how you're gonna get your edge by analyzing these reviews, really connecting with the customers and resolving their pain points. But that's how I got into it.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

It's it's very you're right to great point. It's very interesting about how Rufus, they say, is reading your reviews now, and all the other AIs too are saying, you know, when you ask them a question of what's the best product for X, Y, and Z, they're looking at the reviews and saying, based on reviews, people say it's this one. So you're right, this has become much more of a important topic and maybe less of a niche than I would have thought, maybe then a couple months, even a couple months ago or a few uh years or so ago now. So yeah, I'm excited to get into it and kind of talk with you about a few things because this is something that I'm not super knowledgeable in, and I always like to improve my knowledge of things that I'm not knowledgeable about. So I want to start off with uh sort of a a broad question, kind of, but looking at the community guidelines, Amazon's community guidelines for reviews, they can be kind of vague. In your experience here with VOC, what is sort of the maybe the line that a reviewer can cross that makes a review a hundred percent removable, even if it doesn't seem like an obvious violation at first glance? Like what's something that they can say, or what are some things they can mention that automatically says, okay, yeah, that can be removed?

SPEAKER_01 4:09

That's uh that's that's as as kind of um where the where the trouble is, right? So Amazon is doing a pretty decent job at removing these kinds of reviews uh automatically, the ones that obviously cross the line. Um but then of course it doesn't catch a number of them, and that's where you know um either either a service you hire, third-party service, which can remove a negative review, they charge like $200 or more per review removed, or the software service uh comes in and aids agencies or brands and at removing the reviews. Um mentions of prices get overlooked a lot uh from what we see by Amazon's algorithm, um, misspelled curse words and stuff uh as well. Um so and anything really to do with pricing is probably one of the easiest to get to get removed. Uh, there's a lot of people that that mention, hey, it's this much at Walmart. Um you can buy it, I'm gonna buy it there instead. Easy, easy one to get removed. Um so I'd I'd I'd say that to answer that

What Makes A Review Removable

SPEAKER_01 5:20

question.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

What are some other things that maybe you've seen that Amazon has either missed? Like, what about um I always think that taste is so subjective that I feel like if you leave a review and say, I didn't like the taste and that's it, that should be removed. Is that does that fall under their jurisdiction? Like, can you get that removed or is that not really uh now?

SPEAKER_01 5:40

No, it's an honest, it's it's an honest opinion. Um if it's clearly or obviously leaning towards another product, um, then those I've seen removed pretty easily. And when I say pretty easily, like I even if it obviously violates Amazon's guidelines, there's many cases where you have to just open up another ticket. I don't know what kind of AI automation system they have or who the customer support agent is or where they're from on the Amazon side, but some of them, yeah, a lot of them just copy and paste something just to get your ticket closed or get you responded to to, you know, maybe try and get their NPS response score improved or something. That's what it feels like sometimes to a lot of sellers, right? They they just get this ridiculous response that completely overlooked the question, what do I do now? Right. And it's like you just pasted the same thing that you sent me in the last last case response.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

It's uh it's called the Amazon help desk, right? Help desk for a reason. I think a lot of people would say that, unfortunately. I know they're just people, but you're right, it feels like sometimes they're not even reading the case. But sort of on the on that note, but on the flip side of that, even people would say that obviously a one-star review is very is a disaster. You don't want any of them. Is there ever a time where maybe it would be uh I don't know, better to publicly respond to something as opposed to like so let's say it is a review you can't get removed. Are you uh do you work with people to kind of fight back a little bit, or do you take into account the review itself and are you able to work with the sellers to say, hey, this person, a lot of people have mentioned X, Y, and Z. Like you're scanning the reviews, right? And you're saying a lot of them are mentioning this in about your product, and then can you share that with them to help help them uh uh better their product or change something about it? Is that something you guys do as well?

SPEAKER_01 7:33

Yes, uh so we don't do it for them, they they just sign up and uh so we've been generous to all of the individual small sellers, right? People selling one ACN and that or about to launch, they just need one report. So VSC comes with a one-day trial and it unlocks whatever report that they want. So many sellers they don't need to pay for a pay plan, they just generate a report and then make sure their product, their one product that they have, and they can get all the answers from that. It's gonna tell them what people don't like about their product, it tells it tells them it gives them all the consumer insights of what uh people are saying that's bad about it, what's good about it, what is missing, right? Um, gives them market data, keyword data. But after that one day, they don't need to pay. The the largest user base of of VOC, at least paying, is is the agencies because they need to keep generating reports like hundreds of different ASINs, multiple brands. Um, but it's becoming a lot more uh you know new seller friendly in terms of it now does like review tracking. So it will track and alert you as soon as a negative review comes in, and that's vital for a brand new seller launching a product, right? Because if you launch this product and then all of a sudden you get a review from a competitor that says, oh, this uh this this product absolutely sucks, XYZ. Um, you can there's a and we actually got there's a perfect method for not perfect, there's no perfect method, but there's a high working method of getting negative reviews removed, and it's not the typical, all right, and brand registers, let's go through the review reporting section of Amazon's back end. It's there's a there's a there's a link to a form where you can report to say, hey, this is a compensated review, right? But a lot of the Chinese sellers we found have this little hack where they're actually using it to remove negative reviews instead, even though it has nothing to do with a compensated review. And that form has the currently the highest success rate in removing negative reviews. Um, but

Taste, Opinions, And Policy Gray Areas

SPEAKER_01 9:40

you know, you you can learn from the majority of them. Uh as a newseller, um yeah, you can just generate a report, it's gonna summarize. Well, so something that's interesting, actually. Um, a lot of people were using Helium 10. Um, but then a lot of these software companies have had problems, I believe, with Amazon, and I'm not sure why, but there was a massive shift a few months ago where a lot of these other tool providers were coming over to VOC because they weren't able to get or analyze the reviews with these other tools anymore. So they asked us all these different questions. What kind of partnership do you have with Amazon to be able to allow us to access all these reviews? And it's it's it's not an obvious answer. All I can say is that you know, we've been saving and in the review analysis business for for five years. Um, and it started off solely, primarily as okay, analyze these reviews. We want the software to analyze these reviews and let you know as the seller how you can improve your product or improve the product before you even get into selling it. And then that that that's that's kind of it.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

Um I have a lot of follow-up questions. The first one that comes to mind is you mentioned in the beginning there that a competitor can leave a review, which is something that of course we know, and you know, you see like review bombings and stuff like that that happen on on listings that are um either they're using like fake accounts or uh some sort of uh bot or something, right? Is there anything that you guys do, or is there anything recommendations you have on how to deal with that? Whether it be gathering some evidence to say, hey, this was these are all fake reviews or from fake accounts. Is there something is there a way to combat that?

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Um the the the best way to combat that is to take a screenshot, show Amazon that it's not a verified review, right? Uh, which in some cases it's not, in other cases it can be. Um, and then report it with through that that Asian hack, that Chinese hack, which is to report it via the compensated review form. Amazon will do their due diligence. Um it actually has a review, a negative review removal tracker. So I'll actually track when the review is removed, aka when you click into that review, it now goes to a page, you know, cute little dog picture, cannot page cannot be found. But then what we found is that sometimes, you know, Amazon does that as a precautionary thing. So sellers and agencies think that they've removed that review and it's a success. Great. And a lot of them are using Excel spreadsheets to actually do this, like, yep, this review was removed. Uh our uh overseas team was able to get it removed. But then what happens is like hours or

Dealing With Amazon Support Runaround

SPEAKER_01 12:30

days later, it actually comes back and they just don't have a software to kind of they don't have really people double checking to make sure it's stayed removed. Um, so the I mean the software does that and that's kind of like where it where it where it helps. But yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

But it's yeah, so it can be tricky, right? Because if it is a verified review, there's not a lot that they would be able to do.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

And they want screenshots, yeah. And then of course Amazon it really depends on that account's activity too, right? Um if they've been flagged by other other products as being a competitor and they see that those competitors only leaving negative reviews on similar products to the ones that they're say selling, uh, it's easy to get removed. If it's a newer seller account, uh it's easier to get removed. But the ones that aren't, you know, we've seen negative reviews take like five or more different cases just to get a review removed. And that can be for the easy ones and for the and for the hard ones. So it's uh you know, you're set you just gotta have someone proactive on it and doing their best at uh getting it removed.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

Is there a difference that you notice between someone that's a disgruntled customer versus a bad actor competitor that's trying to destroy a listing? Like, is there any specific wordage or are they pretty good at integrating into with what a normal customer would say, aside from the verified review part? Is there something that you guys identify that says this is not a legitimate review? This is someone faking it like in in their in their verbiage.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

It's hard to identify because um there's so many competitors out there and they all they all sound different, and they're of course trying to fight the algorithm and that to not get discovered. Uh at least the good the ones that are easily removed, they're just like new competitors that have no idea what they're doing. Um but then you have the competitors who've been around for a while and they've maybe trained a team to um to do it, but they they don't want to do it from their main account, so it is typically newer accounts, and uh at some point they they'll eventually get found. Uh and then you'll open up your account uh and you'll see that net reviews were removed, and you're not sure why. And there's that tracker inside of VOC that tells you if then how many on a certain date negative reviews were removed uh or re-added, and then how many positive reviews was removed or re-added. But it's it's it's a tough, it's a tough space, and there's no one really servicing, yeah. Uh you know, via VOC actually blew up because there literally is no competition that's servicing the review space because everyone is using Google Sheets or they're using VOC.

SPEAKER_00 15:11

Um but yeah. For a for a case study perspective, what's been the most maybe unusual review that you've had removed, or maybe more like what is the most unusual violation of terms you've ever uh successfully used as grounds for review removal? Like what are some some some stories about how you've uh helped a customer in a way that maybe you thought this was this review is hopeless, it's staying up, but then you found something that pushed it through or something along those lines.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

It was um I mean only only one comes to mind. I don't actively work with the with the sellers myself. Um they

Public Responses Versus Removals

SPEAKER_01 15:50

just they we we give them the tools to do it themselves, hence why yeah, they can do it for so cheap. Um the but one of the reviews that just comes to mind is uh PDRN is absolutely exploding for like skincare and stuff. Right. And PDRN, I believe is uh comes from like salmon sperm, and someone left the review saying salmon sperm, yeah, I'm not putting this in my mouth, and then um you know, a few days after tracking the the review was reported, it showed that it got removed, which was which was cool, and it was exciting for me to see because it validated that it actually tracked successfully and and worked, but I'd say, yeah, I mean that's really the only thing that comes to mind. But I thought I thought it was funny. Sand on sperm, yuck, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:40

But even though it wasn't you're saying this is an ingredient in the skincare, but because they said that, like what what was the reason for the removal that they just mentioned sperm?

SPEAKER_01 16:50

It's not like because it wasn't uh it wasn't like a proper review, it was like Amazon doesn't say why, they they just say what you say, you know.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Well I guess if it's skincare, too, you're not putting it in your mouth, so that's just a silly I see what you mean now. That is okay.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

Um misleading or misguiding, yeah. Um but then at the same time, I I thought it's okay. I mean people put salmon eggs in their mouth.

unknown 17:12

Right.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

But maybe but eggs, eggs is yeah, I I guess we're more inclined to be okay with putting eggs in our mouth and salmon sperm, but it's an extract from salmon sperm that you put on your face. Um that doesn't seem really good. It's in show, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:25

I mean if it works, it works. I don't want to sound gross, but if it works, it works.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

So yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. We probably lost all the male audience.

SPEAKER_00 17:31

Uh watching all the all the females are still watching because it's like they're great. Here we go. Yeah, they're locked in. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's that that's interesting. It's a funny, I wouldn't think to I mean, I can't believe that reviewer thought to comment that, but yeah. Um I I know there are some interesting people out there on the review side. I know there are a lot of people that are. I feel like if you are you're a different breed, if you choose to go on and review a product, um, I personally have never done that. And I speaking to a review expert, I've never left a review for an Amazon product, even if it has saved my life, even if I ordered it six years ago and I still use it today. I've never been so inclined to leave a review. I'll leave like a score, like I'll say, oh, five stars or whatever, but I've never typed out a review. So this world is so fascinating to me of people that are either so angry at something, they have to go

VOC Tools, Trials, And Tracking

SPEAKER_00 18:20

and type out that it's horrible, it sucks, it's bad, um, or they love it so much that they have to go in and you know praise it.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

Um Yeah, that's interesting. So I mean the stat that we've seen is because a lot of people come to us and say, hey, these products have 30,000 re rate ratings, but your software is only analyzing 300 of them. And we found that the statistic is that I mean our software just analyzes the reviews, right? At least you know how many ratings there are, but of that, there's usually 10%. 10 10 to 25, and that's that's if they're really good at their review game. But on average, there's 10% of people actually leaving a written review, so one in 10 people actually leave feedback, which you're you're you're nine of the 10 that don't. And I I would say I'm most of the time, 95% of the time, I'm nine of the of the ten that don't. I've only left like five reviews in my in in like the last seven years, probably.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

Yeah. It's so interesting to to meet a uh an Amazon review person, you know. I feel like they're a different, I feel like you can almost tell who the one of ten is. Um, I don't know if you ever met anyone from the Vine program. It used to be an old dream of mine when I first started getting into Amazon. I said, I need to be a Vine reviewer. I'll get so much free stuff, it'll be awesome. And uh then I found out how extensive that process is. And they're like, you have to leave a thousand reviews, and I couldn't bring myself to even leave one. So yeah, it's pretty in-depth. I don't know if it's exactly a thousand, but I know they they you need to have a long-standing account. Um, uh, you have to have a certain amount of reviews, a certain amount of people have to find it helpful, right? So it's an interesting process that the Amazon reviewers go through, or Amazon Vine reviewers, I should say, go through to be qualified for that.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

So yeah, yeah. I was trying to get my mom into that actually. She she's retired and uh she she's getting bored. That'd be a great thing. But it's like, yeah, come on, mom, you gotta you gotta actually turn, be more interactive.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Yeah, you gotta start picking products, you gotta be leaving them. Yeah. No, it's it seems like it'd be a fun, fun gig. Um but I have a sort of an interesting, more of a fun question for you. So if Jeff Bezos came to you today and he was asking you, he said, Sean, what's one thing that you would change to the Amazon review system um that you think would make it better for for honest sellers and for people to take more advantage of the reviews? What's one thing you would change on the system today?

SPEAKER_01 20:52

I mean, they've they've rolled out some review analysis features, right? And the Amazon team actually came to us. We were uh we were booting in New York at EMZ Innovate. There was a seller conference, and um they they came around to us and said, Hey guys, we're actually um we're releasing something similar to you. Um but what didn't make us obsolete is the fact that we analyze all the reviews back to two years. Amazon still caps at like six uh six months, and it also makes it very hard for you to choose exactly what you want to analyze and how. Um but one of the things that we we chatted about was product product research and discovery through through Amazon reviews. Um I I guess this is time maybe kind of answering your question from a different angle. Um but knowing which products um need improvement based on uh which niches are getting the the the most negative reviews on average. Yeah, you can have like a really good five star product or you can have a new Yesha comes out and all of a sudden these products are getting like five stars. But a lot of it is is because it's like from friends and family. I know they're doing

The “Compensated Review” Form Tactic

SPEAKER_01 22:10

a lot of testing around the number of reviews that are being left. They've tried hiding ratings, they've they've they've renamed it to ratings, right? They've they've changed it to reviews. Um they're trying out all these different things. Um one obvious answer doesn't come to mind besides just enabling sellers themselves to find out which niche is more easily. Uh on average getting NATO reviews and need more, you know, more experienced sellers with product development and innovative uh skill sets to come in and make that that niche the the better.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

I think it's a great answer. I think Jeff would be happy about that um and the review team. So yeah. Sean, I want to thank you for for being a guest here. I'm gonna have Sean's LinkedIn as well as the VOC homepage down below in the description. Make sure to check out both of them if you're in need of some review help. And Sean, thanks so much. Any closing thoughts for any any advice for sellers out there that might be struggling with reviews? Struggling with reviews. Or struggling with um managing their reviews, maybe I should say.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

Yeah, it can be very tedious, um, especially if you're uh individual seller doing it yourself. Um, I'd say if you don't have the money and you're struggling with budget, you know, there's uh take advantage of VOC's free trial. Uh otherwise, if you are a growing seller and you just feel overwhelmed, there's very friendly, knowledgeable people overseas that you can easily hire nowadays. There's different services that do it. There's onlinejobs.ph, which a lot of sellers are leveraging to hire a full-time or even just part-time VA or EA for you know for $200 uh a month. Uh just you know, use your resources. There's so much that can be done, and attention is is all over the place right now, especially with AI. If you feel like you don't have the the time, which I feel like that's uh that's most people, hire a VA. It's time to hire EA or VA and you know, just assign them one thing to focus on, um, especially if your attention is is scattered, which a lot of people's are these days.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

Love it. Love it. Sean, thanks for your episode. Appreciate the interview, and uh thanks for all of uh your answers there. Thanks everybody for watching. I am your host, Velocity Pete, and we'll see you next week.