The madness of Amazon banning reviews

[Brian Clegg]

HT to Richard Sutton for pointing out this article suggesting that Amazon has been preventing readers putting positive reviews on because Amazon thinks that their account activity 'indicates that you know the author.'

That is bizarre. Apart from anything else, most newspapers etc. get either people from the same profession or those who write in the same field to review books - which almost inevitably they slightly know some of the authors, so it's the norm amongst professional reviewers. And, let’s face it, if friends and relations weren’t allowed to leave reviews, many books on Amazon would never get a single one .

What's most insidious is where they draw the line. Could they start saying 'You are on Litopia, so you can't review the book of anyone else on Litopia'? It's crazy.

 

[Alistair Roberts]

Seems like a serious flaw in their ideas, that lack real understanding of the situation, a situation they should be experts in surely? Seems highly illogical to me, or a seriously over simplified application, which results in stupidity raising its head!

 

[Carol Rose]

I agree. Amazon has gone totally bonkers.

 

[Stephen Drake]

If you think about it, they want a stranger to read and review a book. However, most first-time, self-published authors don't know strangers. The authors count on friends and family to read and enjoy. Reviews should be accepted by anyone who has read the book. I'd block those who hadn't read it from doing a review.

 

[K.J. Simmill]

Don't get me started on Amazon and reviews. I am still fuming with them for removing one I left. The reason? Well my mother in law used the same IP address to leave a review on a book I recommended and as she has no internet (but she used a different account, different address, different name etc) they justified it saying our accounts were related. Thus it seems only one person per Internet connection is allowed to leave a review. (Or per household but as we don't live together I will go with per connection)
They were also really unhelpful and a bit on the rude side when I tried to question how their rules were breached and how to avoid it in the future. To start with they replied with just a form email. Then when I finallly got the reason and tried to appeal they just stopped answering my emails, and I was really polite too.
It was frustrating as the author in question was using my review to promo on twitter, despite not knowing me at the time, so I was really flattered.
Grrrrrrrr if they spent as much time stopping the pay for review services the market would be a more honest place.... Okay rant over.

 

[Karen Gray]

It's mad. But thee is a petition going round about it. If you get time to sign it, please do