Seller feedback vs product reviews: what wholesale sellers control

If you resell brand-name products, you've probably noticed that the review count on your listings barely moves, however many units you sell. It's one of the most common questions on seller forums. Part of the answer is that a product review was never yours to begin with. It belongs to the listing. What's yours is your seller feedback, and it's the rating anyone who looks you up will see.

This guide explains the difference, what Amazon lets you ask for, how feedback removal actually works, and which parts a wholesale seller controls. The companion guide on automating review requests covers the Request a Review button itself in depth.

Amazon's rules here come from its US help pages for shoppers, its Sell on Amazon pages, and replies Amazon staff posted on the US Seller Forums, each dated in the Sources list. Seller Central's own help pages on Feedback Manager and feedback removal need a sign-in, and we couldn't open them for this guide, so check them in your account before you rely on the details. Our editorial policy explains how we check sources.

Reviews belong to the listing, feedback belongs to you

Amazon runs two rating systems side by side, and buyers often mix them up. An Amazon staff member set out the difference on the US Seller Forums: a product review is about the product's quality, function and usefulness, and appears on the product detail page. Seller feedback is about the experience the seller provided, from reliability to the overall fulfillment experience, and it appears in your Feedback Manager.

For a wholesale seller, that split decides where your effort goes. A five-star review from your buyer on a shared listing helps you and every competitor on it equally. A review that only complains about the seller, shipping, packaging or damage breaks Amazon's Community Guidelines, which send those comments to seller feedback instead, and you can report it from the product page. Until Amazon takes it down, it sits on the listing for every seller. Your seller feedback is the one rating that's about you alone.

It works the other way too. Buyers also leave product complaints in seller feedback, for example a comment that only says they didn't like the scent. That's one case Amazon removes, because a comment that's entirely a product review doesn't belong in seller feedback. More on that below.

What buyers are asked to rate you on

Amazon's guidelines for comments and ratings about sellers tell shoppers to focus on the buying experience, and suggest the questions to answer:

• Were they happy with how you packaged and shipped the order?
• Did it arrive on time, and did they get what they ordered?
• Were you professional, and if they needed help, did you fix it quickly?
• Would they buy from you again, and what would have made it better?

Ratings run from one to five stars, and Amazon shows a seller's average rating beside their name. Buyers have 90 days from the order date. Amazon's instructions for leaving seller feedback add that the option can take up to three days to appear after an order is completed or canceled, so a buyer whose order was canceled can still rate you.

The same guidelines list what seller feedback shouldn't contain. Keep this list in mind, because it decides what can come down later:

• promotional content, or links to other sellers or websites,
• offensive, abusive or illegal content,
• personal information such as phone numbers, email addresses or physical addresses,
• comments about the price of the item or the price of delivery,
• product reviews, which belong on the product page,
• spam, or text in a language the site doesn't support,
• feedback left for the wrong seller,
• feedback written, changed or removed in exchange for compensation, which Amazon says includes cash, discounts, free products, gift cards and refunds.

Amazon also lists feedback it won't allow from people with a financial interest, people with a close personal relationship to the product's owner, the manufacturer posing as a shopper, and sellers trading positive feedback with each other.

What you control as a reseller

You don't write the listing and you don't own the reviews. But most of what buyers rate you on happens before the unit ever ships, and much of it is in your hands. Here's how the usual complaints map back to a wholesale business.

Matching the listing deserves a closer look. Every product on Amazon has its own ASIN, and a 4-pack and a single unit of the same product usually have different ones. Sending the wrong one in is the fastest way to collect "not what I ordered" feedback on a product you priced correctly.

That row about missing parts matters more than it looks. An Amazon staff member explained on the US Seller Forums that when a buyer mentions missing parts, incorrect measurements, or how communication and refunds were handled, the comment crosses into the service experience, so it isn't removed as a product review. In Amazon's eyes, getting the item right is part of your service.

How feedback reaches your account and the Buy Box

Negative seller feedback, meaning one or two stars, is one of the three things counted in your order defect rate, alongside A-to-z Guarantee claims and credit card chargebacks. Amazon wants the rate under 1% over 60 days. Amazon's order defect rate help page has said the rate applies only to seller-fulfilled orders. It needs a sign-in and we haven't rechecked that wording, so confirm it on your own Account Health page. Our account health guide covers the other metrics.

On the product page, Amazon picks the Featured Offer on total price, delivery speed, stock and seller performance. Amazon's announcement of its 2026 change says customer reviews and star ratings don't count, and the seller performance it names is order volume, chargeback rate and complaints in Voice of the Customer. Feedback ratings aren't on its list. Still, the habits that earn good feedback (the right item, undamaged and as described) are the same ones that keep those complaints down. The Buy Box guide explains how the rest works on a shared listing.

Other sellers' software looks at feedback too. BQool's page for its rule-based repricer lists filters for a competitor's positive feedback rating and total feedback count, so a repricer can respond differently to sellers with weaker records. If you're weighing repricing tools, Automate Pricing vs a repricer compares them.

What Amazon lets you ask for

That's how Amazon's public pages sum it up. Its Customer Reviews page for sellers says to follow the community and communication guidelines and not to attempt to influence customer ratings, feedback and reviews, and its shopper guidelines treat refunds as compensation. The communication guidelines themselves sit in Seller Central behind a sign-in, and we couldn't open them for this guide.

Within those rules, here's what's open to you.

You can:

• Send Amazon's Request a Review. One email, written by Amazon, asks the buyer for a product review and seller feedback together. In a forum reply, an Amazon staff member called it the designated method for requesting seller feedback. It's one per order, and an Amazon staff reply and Amazon's API documentation both put the window at 5 to 30 days after delivery.
• Write your own buyer-seller message instead. Amazon's staff have listed requesting a product review, seller feedback or both among the permitted messages, next to resolving a fulfillment problem or sending an invoice. It has to follow the communication guidelines, and it doesn't add a second request: Amazon's API documentation allows one review request or one free-form proactive message per order.
• Contact a buyer to fix a problem with their order. That's what buyer-seller messages are for. The same staff post says you can contact buyers only to complete orders or answer customer service questions, never for marketing.

You can't:

• offer anything for feedback, or for changing or removing it, refunds included,
• ask only the buyers you expect to be happy, or ask for positive feedback,
• rate your own account, have people close to you or with a financial stake do it, or swap positive feedback with another seller,
• send a second request for the same order,
• market to buyers through their order messages.

Amazon's staff add that breaking the communication guidelines can lead Amazon to limit your proactive messages to its own templates, or to suspend your selling privileges.

Request a Review vs buyer-seller messages

Our advice: send Request a Review to every eligible order, the same way, and keep your own messages for real order problems. Asking for feedback in the same message that fixes a problem can read as a trade, so keep the two apart. And don't skip the request on orders that went badly. Choosing who gets asked is exactly what Amazon tells sellers not to do, whether you or a tool does the choosing.

If you'd rather not press the button by hand every day, automating review requests compares the ways to send it for every eligible order.

Getting feedback removed

What Amazon removes, and what it strikes through

Amazon's staff have answered this the same way for years, most recently in a reply on the US Seller Forums. Amazon removes seller feedback in three cases and may strike it through in two more.

The fine print is where resellers get caught.

"Entirely" is the word that matters. A comment that mixes a product complaint with anything about your service stays up. An earlier staff reply added that Amazon doesn't treat comments about a product's authenticity or a defect as product reviews. So "this is fake" or "arrived broken" reads like a product complaint, but Amazon counts it as feedback on you.

Strike-throughs are their own outcome. Amazon's staff describe them for the FBA delivery and Buy Shipping cases, but the replies we found don't say how a struck-through comment counts in your numbers. Feedback metrics update in batches, an Amazon staff member wrote, so give it two or three days before you check your rating.

Star-only ratings are handled differently. The same reply says ratings without a written comment are assessed for removal automatically when they're submitted.

Amazon's shopper guidelines go further than its removal list. They say Amazon may remove feedback that isn't about the buying experience or breaks the guidelines, which covers comments about price and feedback left for the wrong seller. Amazon's staff replies to sellers, though, name only the cases in the table. A comment that's clearly about another seller's order is still worth a request. Just don't count on it.

How to request removal

1. Check the comment against the list

   Read the whole comment. If any part of it is about you, the item you sent or your service, it stays, and your time is better spent on the buyer.

2. Open Feedback Manager

   Amazon's staff give the path as Performance, then Feedback Manager. Amazon's guide to Seller Central also points to Feedback Manager from the Customers workspace, which gives an overview of your feedback ratings.

3. Choose Request removal next to the order

   In the Recent Feedback table, find the order ID and choose Request removal in the Actions column. Do it within 90 days of the day the feedback was left.

4. Keep the case ID

   A case opens automatically when you request removal. If the answer looks wrong, Amazon's staff on the US Seller Forums have asked sellers to post that case ID so they can take a look. In one thread, a staff member reviewed a Buy Shipping case and removed the feedback.

When Amazon won't remove it

Most negative feedback doesn't qualify for removal, so the real work is with the buyer.

1. Fix the problem first, with no strings attached. Replace, refund or answer the question under your normal policy, because the order went wrong. Never make anything depend on the feedback.
2. Then you can ask. An older Amazon staff reply says you can contact the buyer to try to resolve the issue and ask them to remove the feedback, and that the decision is the buyer's. Ask once, and make it clear nothing depends on their answer.
3. If they agree, send them Amazon's steps. Amazon's shopper help says to go to Your Submitted Feedback, open Completed Feedback, select Remove next to the feedback, pick a reason and select Remove again. Feedback can't be edited, only removed, and once it's gone the buyer can't leave new feedback for that order. That page gives no deadline; an Amazon staff guide from November 2024 says buyers have 60 days to remove it.
4. If it stays, reply in public. Amazon's Seller app guide says you can post public replies to customer comments in Feedback Manager. Keep it short and factual, with no buyer details and no argument. One example: "We're sorry this case arrived damaged. We've sent a replacement and changed how we pack this item."

Everything above is about seller feedback. Amazon's seller pages say not to ask customers to remove negative product reviews, so never ask a buyer to change or take down a review.

Why brands and distributors may look at your feedback

Your seller profile is public. Anyone can click your name on a listing and see your ratings and feedback, the same way you can read other resellers' storefronts when you look for brands to wholesale. When you ask a brand or a distributor to open an account for you, they can look you up in a minute.

What they'd notice isn't the count. It's what the comments say. A run of "arrived damaged," "not as described" or "not genuine" is what a brand protecting its listings worries about, because the same complaints can end up on its product page as reviews too. A record of orders that arrive right, on time and well packed tells them you handle their product the way they would.

What we're not saying: we don't know of any brand, distributor or Amazon approval that requires a number of feedback ratings, and we haven't found an Amazon page that ties category or brand approval to feedback. Sellers often ask how much feedback it takes before ungating "opens up." Our ungating guide covers what Amazon actually asks for, starting with the invoices.

Where Review Booster fits

Review Booster, part of Apex Black, is Amazon's own Request a Review button, pressed for you on eligible Amazon.com orders, after the wait you choose. Because it sends Amazon's own request, each one asks the buyer for a product review and seller feedback together, and each order is asked once.

It can't choose which buyers are asked, write reviews, ask only happy buyers, or promise you a review or a rating. Amazon decides which orders are eligible. You can leave out a listing, which leaves it out for every buyer alike, and every request goes in a log, so you can see which orders were asked. How many requests it sends a month depends on your plan.

On a shared listing, the reviews those requests bring in go to the listing. The feedback is yours, which is why your feedback is the number to watch.

Reviews and feedback sit in stage 8 of the Amazon wholesale roadmap, next to the Buy Box. The next stage is protecting the account itself, starting with the account health guide.