Question about deleted reviews... UPDATED!

[Tia]

regarding Amazon's reviews policy.
If two people from the same home review the same product, both reviews are then deleted and neither person is able to review anything anymore on Amazon.

After some digging (since I didn't know the reviewers personally), I found out it was two college girls who live in the same dorm. They share a wifi connection. One read it and left a review a couple weeks ago. She recommended to her dorm friends. Another read it and wanted to leave a review, but because everyone in the building shares the same wifi, Amazon said it was biased.

I'm not really sure I agree with that, but there is nothing that can be done about it. The two of them are now no longer able to review anything on Amazon for 30 days.

Amazon also accused me of 'paying them to review my book', then said 'I must have done something to encourage them both to review it'. I did neither.

If anything, I hope this helps anyone who's been dealing with anything similar. I'll take this as a learning experience and just hope I can get a few more reviews posted soon.

Have a wonderful day everyone.

[E.P.]

Okay, I had a similar experience where someone read my book, recommended it to someone else in her family, they both tried to leave reviews, and both reviews were deleted. I couldn't get an explanation from Amazon as to why exactly, but they probably live in the same house and use the same wifi. Since I certainly wasn't paying them for it, it was very frustrating, but now I guess we know. Grrrr!

[Tia]

Yeah, I don't really agree that it's biased since two people can have their own opinions. Like the girls in the dorm, some of them don't even know each other, so no matter how many of them read my book and want to post a review, they can't because the whole building shares a wifi signal. Doesn't seem fair to them, or me, honestly,

But, you live, you learn. Also, you have to be weary of people who have the same last name as you. Amazon assumes they're related to you and deletes them too. All this falls under their rule of reviews being 'biased'.

Amazon won't tell YOU why they were deleted. The person who left the review has to email them and ask why. Unfortunately, most of the reviews are left by people we don't even know, so most of the time we never get a reason.

I hope this helps a few people out... even thought it's rather frustrating.

[A.R.]

I sympathize, Tia.

Amazon is fighting to keep bogus reviews being posted by review mills.

Bureaucracy seldom is capable of reasoned response, especially when a directive is being followed.

Good luck

[Tia]

Thanks.

[Diane]

I've had several reviews of my novel deleted for unknown reasons--I did not know the people. I've also had my reviews of other books deleted and then reappear after a few weeks. All of the reviews affected were positive reviews. A one or two star review is never targeted by Amazon, not that I have seen. Only the good ones.

[Tia]

Diane- I have also heard that only the positive reviews seem to get targeted. A friend of mine who released a book last year had 120 reviews. One morning she woke, and 40 of them were gone. All positive ones.

She had done a countdown deal through Kindle and that brought in a bunch of new readers, but Amazon thought that the number of reviews coming in so quickly HAD to be from a "paid review site" or something she paid for. It wasn't. She went back and forth with them about it for weeks, but eventually, gave up. They basically just told her that the number of reviews she got "came in so fast" that it was suspicious. She was livid, but there was literally nothing she could do. It dropped the rating of her book and the rank as well.

It is very frustrating, esp for indie authors. I work very hard promoting and marketing, and each and every review I get means a lot to me. I only had seven, so to lose two of them simply because the people that posted share a wifi signal seems ridiculous. Two people can share a wifi signal and still have differing opinions on the same book.

So yes, very frustrating.

A lot of reasons for deleting reviews falls under their definition of "biased".

[Marla]

Wow, that's awful! Always get a lot of new reviews after a Book Bub ad but haven't had any taken away that I know of. Hope that doesn't continue. Really annoying that they won't do anything about it. Not hard to prove that you just ran a promotion.
MM