Everybody knows that Amazon.ca reviews are often manipulated by the sellers, and Amazon does very little about it. This has gained the criticism of governments and nonprofit consumer groups alike. But what surprised me lately is that Amazon.ca itself seems to have changed its policy whereby any negative product review is rejected. I have been shopping at Amazon.ca for many years, and have submitted hundreds of honest reviews, some positive and some negative. They are always polite and moderately worded. Lately, I got sucked into buying several egregiously-counterfeit, misleading, and poor-quality products that were sold through Amazon.ca, and out of the four polite, moderate and honest reviews I submitted, three negative reviews were rejected, and only the one positive review was published. Two of the sellers short-shipped the order with only half of the product promised, and Amazon.ca even rejected those two reviews complaining of being short shipped, despite their clearly misleading description of quantity on the Amazon.ca site! My third letter complained that I got no response to my concern from the seller’s customer service department … is this an inappropriate or unfair criticism of a seller who is clearly scamming Amazon’s customers? The letter rejecting the reviews made a vague reference to “community standards“, but there was no reference to what community standards were allegedly violated, inappropriate, or irrelevant. My language is always moderate and tempered. The rejection email comes from a “no reply” email address. There is no appeal. There is no follow up. There is no further explanation. The link in the rejection email refers you to a page that gives NO explanation of “community standards” the customer has purportedly not met. It further invites you to the customer service hub for further review, but there is NO link or subject-heading to take up the matter of a rejected review. Amazon simply doesn’t want to know if it’s sellers are cheating their customers. It became very apparent to me that Amazon.ca has either changed staff who supervise reviews, or more likely, changed policies whereby the purpose of reviewing customer reviews is to censor-out poor reviews, and only promote positive ones. This has shaken my trust entirely in Amazon’s role, as they now appear to manipulate and cherry-pick their own customers’ honest reviews to sell more products. I have gone back into my account and deleted all the hundreds of reviews I have put in over the years because I will NOT participate in a corrupt system where reviews are meaningless, perpetuated by Amazon.ca itself. I strongly encourage anyone else who is disgusted by the lack of integrity in a crooked review system, to do the same. Even for Amazon.ca which already suffers a poor reputation, I am appalled at the corporate greed and high-handed manner customer reviews are being manipulated by Amazon.ca, and I will no longer submit any reviews or participate in this corrupt system of manipulating false reviews to sell more merchandise.
