Amazon Limits How Many Reviews Shoppers Can Read

have been reporting for months that Amazon is limiting how many reviews they can view on a listing. Shoppers who encounter the problem and request they be allowed to see additional reviews are being shown a message stating they’ll have to wait up to 5 days. Reports of the problem continue, and on August 3, Fast Company wrote about it.

The publication said Amazon told it that it was “trying to restrict unauthorized data scraping on its site,” just as many people had suspected. Shoppers reported the issue on the Amazon Prime subreddit in February, with the original poster writing in part, “I’m only seeing 8 reviews for every product.

A search shows that a few people had the same issue back in November not nothing since. Is it an issue still?” On March 2, a shopper replied, “I noticed this happening over the last 2 days. I am trying to shop, and I want to read reviews and I can only see a few, and I clicked the link to “request to read more reviews” or whatever it says.

So, now all pages I visit, it says “Your request to see more reviews has been sent. You’ll receive an email within 5 business days.” This is beyond stupid. I chatted with a supervisor, and they told me they sent the problem to their team and to wait 2 business days.”

Shoppers continue to report encountering the problem, such as this subreddit thread started last week. “I don’t get it. I won’t buy a product if I can’t scan all the reviews – good, bad, and mediocre. I’m certainly not emailing and waiting for access to more reviews – I’m shopping to purchase now. I go elsewhere.”

Sellers (many of whom are also buyers) have also expressed concern about the potential impact on their sales. In a thread on the Amazon Seller discussion boards, a seller wrote the following warning to Amazon customer service on July 13: “I don’t think this is a seller issue, this is the customer side.

Tons of posts on this on LinkedIn and Reddit, all with people leaving Amazon after reviews are being blocked. Same notice: “We’re showing a limited selection of reviews. To see more reviews, you can send a request.”

“I also experienced this on my personal Amazon shopping account (not seller) and requested to have the reviews unblocked, however from social media it seems this is futile. Amazon seems to be hiding reviews and denying anyone the ability to see them.

“This is going to seriously damage sellers here for several reasons: Buyers will not trust the product or the site if they can’t be transparent about reviews.

One buyer who didn’t read the instructions and left a one star review will have a greater impact since no one can see they missed something in the instructions, something I am constantly reassuring new sellers to trust in. That their buyers will understand this one negative review is a misunderstanding. Now they can’t read the review.

Sellers can’t check their reviews for any trends/issues with their products before they begin impacting on a larger scale. Sellers can’t report abusive reviews. Buyers are leaving Amazon for other sites that they can access reviews on. “I understand this is a seller forum, but as sellers this will damage sales on Amazon for everyone.

Not being transparent with reviews is creating a large group of distrust amongst potential customers. “I am not sure if you can do anything to escalate the issue this is causing, but customer service has no understanding of this happening.”

In its August 3 article, Fast Company said a spokesperson told it: “We understand there may have been isolated instances where customers were unable to access reviews, and we’ve worked to ensure access.”