Amazon Changes Their Community Guidelines and A Lot of Reviewers are Not Happy

On October 3rd, 2016 Amazon made several updates to their Community Guidelines. While these changes don’t effect me, this effects several Amazon Reviews and I think I have seen more people fussing about this issue on Facebook then I have the Presidential Election.

In a nutshell Amazon has stopped allowing people who are not in their Vine Review program to post reviews where they have received some sort of incentive. Whether that incentive allowed them to get a discount on the product or get the product for free. Amazon feels as though this alters ones opinion on the product and the reviews being left are not honest. While you can still leave product reviews on Amazon if you have purchased at least $50 of your own money. You can no longer receive items in exchange for review unless you’re in their Vine review program.

So what does this mean? There’s a lot of questions still being asked and Amazon has yet to completely clear this up. Some are saying you cannot review items at all unless through the Vine program, which is incorrect. I have been able to leave reviews on products I have purchased with my own money with no problems.

Some are saying you can still get free or discounted products, you’re just no longer required to review the item. Sellers are no longer allowed to give free or discounted items in exchange for a review, however, they can still give free and discounted codes, I am uncertain if one can still leave a review on an item they received for free or not. I do see how this was a problem, I have personally purchased items based on a review and I can see how some reviews can be misleading.

I know there’s a lot of great Amazon reviewers who are honest, I also know there’s a lot of reviewers who post awesome reviews on crap items. I have noticed many Amazon reviewers starting blogs in order to still get free items in exchange for reviews.

As one blogger has already stated and stirred up the Amazon Reviewers, if you’re starting a blog only to get free items to review, you’re going to be very disappointed. There are thousands of blogs out there, and after the 3rd of October hundreds of more popped up. If you are one of the ones who started a blog only to get free items for review, I wish you the best of luck with that venture.

Hopefully, Amazon will find away to weed out the bad reviewers so the honest reviewers can still bring great reviews to the consumers like you and I, who do rely on the reviews to help with our purchasing decisions.