Last year my mom and I had some issues leaving book reviews. Because she had temporarily moved in to my home and was using the same address, Amazon would not allow her to post a review for a book that I had already reviewed. They felt that her reviews would be biased because she was living at the same address. She called them on the phone and they gave her the runaround. Eventually we gave up and accepted it.

I also noticed that I was never able to use the word NetGalley or say that I received the book for free, or my review would be removed. It had to be worded that you received a “complimentary copy” or it would be removed.

Fast forward to January 30th 2018. I logged into Amazon to leave a book review and I received this message…

This makes no sense. What previous review? I called Amazon and a woman gave me the runaround, telling me that someone would call me regarding the issue. Needless to say, nobody ever called.

A few days ago I received a specific request from an author to record my book review on Amazon. This is a book that’s a verified purchase through Amazon, by the way. I logged on and received the same message, “Sorry, we are unable to accept your review.” I became a little perturbed because this just seemed so unfair. I decided to call Amazon again. This time, the person I spoke with gave me the same information–that someone would call me back. I never received a call, but this morning I received an email from Amazon…

Final? Obviously they’re sending this email out for all inquiries. It gets worse…

Due to my geographical location, I’m  a heavy user on Amazon. We pay for a Prime membership which (most of you probably already know) includes free two-day shipping. It’s not uncommon to purchase forty or more items a month and 98% of our Christmas and birthday gifts come from Amazon. I also purchase scads of books on Amazon as well.

When scrolling through some of my purchases from last year, I noticed that the star rating wasn’t completed on ANY of my previous purchases. Every single one of my ratings and reviews has been removed. Every single one from the beginning of time.

I have NEVER received goods in exchange for a review or won ANY Amazon giveaways in the few that I entered. I have received a few free books in the mail from giveaways on Goodreads and a few from authors requesting reviews, but I’m not affiliated with them in any way, in fact, the few authors that I am friends with became friends AFTER I read their book. In only one case did I have friendly communication with an author over the internet prior to reading their book. I honestly don’t see how Amazon deems my reviews biased based on that.

With that said, I also questioned if it could be the fact that I read ARC’s for NetGalley and Edelweiss. I also thought that maybe they somehow discovered that I have a blog with all my Amazon links, but I make zero money from this blog and pay a yearly fee out of my pocket for it. Even so, how can it be right to blacklist me and not allow me to leave any community reviews on verified purchases which is where the majority of my reviews on Amazon come from anyway.

Thanks a lot, Amazon, for preventing me from sharing fair and honest reviews with the public.

What do you think? Has this happened to you?