editorial

Amazon Denies Removal of Reviews and Shifts to Blame

Irene Watson

Last week's editorial certainly created a buzz upsetting many authors when I announced Amazon was removing book reviews.  And, as of this writing Nicole from Pacific Book Review hasn't heard a thing from them despite repeated attempts to find out why.  She did take it upon herself to re-post all the reviews and to this date they still remain on Amazon.

Several authors indicated they contacted Amazon directly asking why their reviews disappeared and all got the similar response:

I'm sorry to hear that the reviews by Pacific Book disappeared from your books.
In this case I request you to contact 'Pacific Book' to confirm the reason for disappearance of these reviews from your book's detail pages.
If you uploaded these reviews through your publisher or any other source, you'll need to contact them.
I hope they will be able to help you. We look forward to seeing you again soon.

When the author responded back and indicated PBR didn't removed the reviews another response came saying:

I understand you're upset and I regret that we haven't been able to address your concerns to your satisfaction. However, as my colleague explained earlier, you'll need to contact the source through which the reviews were uploaded.
We won't be able to provide further insight or assistance for your request.

In other words, bugger off. They are not about to take responsibility for removing the reviews.

There were a lot of comments made directly on the post as well as on others that chose to re-post the article or blog about it. Aggie Villanueva's  "Reviews Accidentally Deleted by Amazon or Cover-ups and Denials?"  gives  great detail on her frustrating experience with Amazon when she questioned the maneuver they did with PBR and others. As well, someone  posted that all his (or her) reviews were removed three years ago so obviously this isn't a new move. 

And, there is a lot of chatter on Tiffany Turner's blog.  I've had a lot of personal emails as well and the majority of them were from upset authors that want to remain anonymous.  However, the interesting thing is that there are no responses from publishers or publicists on any posts.  I'm not sure what that means; maybe nothing or maybe it really doesn't matter to them if Amazon pulls reviews.  Or, maybe they just don't have anything to say that hasn't been said.

Many of us have suspicions, ideas, and voice our opinions.  Personally, I think that someone in a call center made an "executive" decision and pulled the reviews.  It may have been a misunderstanding on his or her part, or it may have been a fun thing to do to see what will happen.  There is a sense of power and control that comes with some positions and the click of a button sometimes triggers this sense.  Also, it could have been a response to a complaint.  One author, that wants to remain unnamed, suggested there are stalkers. It could be that a stalker reported or complained about something and the person in the call center pulled the reviews.  It also could be none of these things and we will never know what happened.

But, it's not only Amazon that makes decisions that don't make sense.  About a year ago Good Reads pulled all of Reader Views' reviews and shut down our account because we were posting against their guidelines.  Their guidelines indicate that "commercial reviewers," meaning any review site, aren't able to post reviews.  In my emails back and forth with them in the attempt to defend ourselves as well as save the reviews on the author's book listing I  indicated to them there are other "commercial reviewers" that they didn't remove. Someone in their wonky wisdom at Good Reads had the nerve to ask me for the list.  My response was that we, as reviewers, support each other and are not out to destroy each other.  Of course, I got no response and the other commercial reviewers continue to post their reviews.

But, despite of all this, we need to move forward.  The bottom line is we, as reviewers, are here to support authors by providing reviews for them and those the like of Amazon or Good Reads aren't going to stop us.  They are both just tiny cogs in a huge wheel and their actions aren't going to stop the world.  They may think otherwise but we know different.

What are you comments?  I'd like to hear from you here.

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