Let’s say one thing right off the bat: we here at RepricerExpress hate dealing with anything negative because we think every cloud has a silver lining. But it’s an inevitability that you’ll come across a negative review and it’s how you handle it (hopefully with aplomb) that’ll shape you as a seller.
Differentiating Between Product and Seller Feedback
Buyers can leave you one of two types of feedback: seller- or product-related. The former has to do with your behaviour during the selling process (and is, and has been, the topic of another post), while the latter deals with the quality of the item you sold.
A little side-note: I once had a room-mate who made up Excel charts for hospitals that recommended which pieces of medical equipment they should buy. There were about a half dozen criteria that scored points and the item with the most overall points was the one hospitals would get. This ensured that, for the most part, hospitals would get the generally best product for the generally best price.
Pretty much the same idea goes for selling on Amazon. We can’t, in good conscience, recommend that you buy seemingly high-quality or big-ticket items in a back alleyway and then turn around and sell them on Amazon for a massive profit (for many reasons), but as a general rule of thumb, try and use quality items in your listings as much as possible. The profit margins may not be as padded as if you were to sell knock-offs, but trust us, the chances of getting positive product reviews will be infinitely higher.
That being said, not everyone will understand where you’re coming from as a seller and will have something not-so-nice to say. In those instances…
Related reading: Removing Negative Feedback on Amazon
Solid Strategies on Bouncing Back from Negative Amazon Product Reviews
Let’s just get right to the meat of the matter, eh? Here we go, in no particular order.
- Get the customer to revise or remove their feedback: The most effective and permanent way to deal with negative feedback is to eliminate it. And since you can’t do that as a seller without hacking into Amazon (which, again, we do not recommend), you’ll need to communicate with your buyer about any misunderstandings. Email them and ask exactly what they weren’t happy with, and try and clear up any misunderstandings. This is going to take a lot of effort because you have to reach out right away, make yourself readily/quickly/constantly available to just one buyer, and focus a lot of energy on just one review. But it’s worth it, it really is, if you can bump up your feedback score and keep your reputation stellar.
- Get Amazon to remove it: Alternatively, if your buyer isn’t receptive to the idea of revising or removing their negative comment, you can reach out to Amazon. The effort required by this is pretty low because all you have to do is shoot off an email to Amazon; the converse is the review has to specifically not comply with Amazon’s guidelines. As well, it’s pretty unlikely that Amazon will actually remove the comment because the feedback has to be unusually harsh or dishonest.
- Respond to the negative feedback: Okay, so maybe the first two strategies didn’t work and what you’re left with is damage control. It’s like how on Yelp you might come across a slammer of a review and see the shop owner commenting right back, addressing the person’s concerns. You won’t actually be able to remove the negative feedback, but you’ll be able to show other buyers what the true score is. It’s a bit of a win-win, lose-lose situation in that the negative feedback is still there, but you’ll have gotten to explain your side of the story.
Related reading: How to Respond to a Negative Amazon Product Review
Want to know one way to reduce your chances of having negative product reviews on Amazon? Use RepricerExpress to show off your incredible, incredibly aggressive item costs. While the rest of your competitors are dangling their feet, you’ll be selling items left, right and centre at really pretty prices. Oh, and hey, in order to do that, we want you to give it a test drive for free for the first 15 days. It takes less than a minute to set up!
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