The Monday Peeve on Tuesday: Amazon email: “____ever wonder if your reviews are getting noticed?”

It’s been awhile since I participated in Paula’s weekly feature, but here goes. I think it was about a year or so ago when I read a book by Tama Janowitz and wrote a review on it and sent it in to amazon. For the *first*time*ever* they sent the review back, with a detailed list of review submission guidelines. Because it was the first time after writing so many my suspicions were alerted as to why. I read through the guidelines carefully and edited the review to meet them and sent the edited review back to them. Again, they rejected it, so this time I wrote them back asking for details of what they found objectionable or out of compliance. Their response was to publish my complaint as my review! Since that time, I have boycotted reviewing amazon purchases except for a rare exception with a review on a book written by someone I know (which is for the author, not for amazon!) Since that time, I have received a steady stream of emails similar to the one below. PLEASE NOTE, you do not have to read it all! I sent it all just to illustrate the BS and lack of human response I’m getting from amazon over this. Hey Bezos! If you want me to keep using you as the go-between for me and vendors, you need to step up your human game in the editing and customer satisfaction department.

16 Comments Add yours

petersironwood says:

July 26, 2022 at 2:15 pm

Bots are cheaper than humans. So — twitter, facebook, Amazon, and many other companies are relying on bots to do many tasks that they are unable to actually accomplish. I was prevented from using twitter because I wrote something a bot stupidly thought might “encourage” people to commit suicide when it was a complete misreading of my comment. But you can either “delete” the offending text and get back on twitter OR you can wait an unspecified period of time for an unspecified process to review their decision. It sucks. Amazon, twitter, facebook are essentially monopolies and so they really don’t care just how unfair they are or how bad their customer service is. They just keep lowering costs even if it means worse service and selling your data to make more money.

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1. msjadeli says:
  
  July 26, 2022 at 2:33 pm
  
  😦 “Welcome…. to the Machine”
  
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Paula Light says:

July 26, 2022 at 2:46 pm

What the heck? They’ve never questioned any of my reviews. My daughter shares my account and she’s written some very negative stuff, and they’re fine with all of it. So arbitrary and annoying!!!

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1. msjadeli says:
  
  July 26, 2022 at 2:55 pm
  
  Yes! The only thing I can think of is her dad has some controlling interest in amazon or has some very high-powered lawyers that want to keep the truth about him from getting out.
  
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Dale says:

July 26, 2022 at 5:09 pm

What a crock of shit.
I have not had a review refused, so far. I know that if you are a published author and your profile states it? You are not allowed to review others’ books. How inane is that? What? Authors can’t read? Completely asinine. I leave reviews on Goodreads, just in case.

These bots are the bane of my existence. Someone as marked my blog as “inappropriate” or “not following the guidelines” or some other stupidity so I can no longer share my posts. I can bypass by sharing the tweeted link to a post but not directly. Why? You’ve read me. Have you ever, EVER seen anything political or racist or negative or whatnot on my blog? No. Photos and poetry is such a bad thing. Sigh…

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1. msjadeli says:
  
  July 26, 2022 at 10:29 pm
  
  I know I’m not a published author on my profile at amazon and if anyone who is can’t review other authors that is downright frightening. I do leave reviews on goodreads and post them on my blog sometimes. I’m sorry you are being harassed, Dale, I think it’s totally uncalled for 😦
  
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  1. Dale says:
    
    July 27, 2022 at 8:46 am
    
    Yeah. As if published authors are cheating when they review other authors. They don’t personally know them! (Well, mostly, I should think, anyway.) Either way, it seems to me, rather restrictive. Rochelle can’t leave reviews for this reason. So stoopid.
    And yeah, I’d love to know who has a beef with me to give me such grief.
    
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M. Oniker says:

July 26, 2022 at 5:55 pm

Oy. Ain’t technology grand?

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1. msjadeli says:
  
  July 26, 2022 at 10:30 pm
  
  And they think it is ok to send that multi-page garbage instead of doing anything to solve the conflict, that’s the saddest part of all.
  
  LikeLiked by 1 person
  
christiansmusicmusings says:

July 26, 2022 at 8:24 pm

This sounds really annoying, Lisa. My wife who loves plants and gardening had her Facebook account suspended after she had posted some pictures of plants – supposedly for violating their rules. They never provided any explanation that made sense. Restoring her account was pretty painful.

Today, she “committed another crime” – posting a picture of veggies she had harvested from a plot she has at a local community garden. We’re talking tomatoes, peppers and French beans – you know, something truly offensive!

After publishing her post, she received a notification that Facebook restricted it. There’s no one she can contact there to find what exactly she “has done wrong.” Facebook’s actions seem to be completely arbitrary!

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1. msjadeli says:
  
  July 26, 2022 at 10:33 pm
  
  What!?!? That makes no sense at all. I’ve seen millions of pics of vegetables and flowers on there! I posted about 20 of trees today on there. Maybe they will be suspending my account too soon 😦 Sorry she is getting hassled, Christian.
  
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  1. christiansmusicmusings says:
    
    July 26, 2022 at 11:05 pm
    
    I couldn’t believe it when she told me. How could plants or veggies be offensive? It really doesn’t make any sense!
    
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2. Irene says:
  
  August 7, 2022 at 10:14 pm
  
  If you go to
  https://www.facebook.com/help/
  and type “how to appeal a restriction”
  you might be able to restore the content. It happened to me once, they blocked ALL my photos, which were 100% of food and plants. Probably a weird setting in their algorithms.
  
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Jewish Young Professional "JYP" says:

July 28, 2022 at 9:52 am

This is wild. I had no idea that reviews getting rejected by Amazon was a thing.

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1. msjadeli says:
  
  July 28, 2022 at 4:18 pm
  
  I KNOW! And I can never get a human response when I try to figure out why. You see what their last response was! Endless links that mean nothing, and they have really ramped up their emails trying to coerce me into writing more product reviews.
  
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Irene says:

August 7, 2022 at 10:16 pm

That is so strange; I have read the whole range of reviews on Amazon, from bad to good, so I think you are right and there is something more about this particular book …

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