Shane Barker makes money helping Amazon sellers challenge negative reviews that may violate Amazon's rules. His company, TraceFuse, says it identifies reviews that breach Amazon's rules and helps sellers challenge them rather than simply trying to erase criticism.
Yet in a recent LinkedIn post, Barker made a point that is easy to miss in a business built around review removal: some bad reviews should stay. Barker argued that if a customer genuinely bought a product, disliked it, and left an honest review that follows Amazon's policies, the review belongs on the site.
His argument points to a larger question about how Amazon's review system is supposed to work. Negative feedback is not automatically a problem to be fixed. In many cases, it is useful information for shoppers deciding what to buy and for sellers trying to understand where a product falls short.
Amazon's Community Guidelines allow customers to share opinions about products, but those reviews must comply with the platform's rules. The difficult part is knowing where legitimate criticism ends and a policy violation begins.
Why Some Negative Reviews Should Stay
For shoppers, a product page filled entirely with praise can be less useful than one that contains a mixture of positive and negative experiences. A customer who says a product broke after two weeks, does not perform as advertised, or is uncomfortable to use may be giving future buyers information they cannot get from the product description.
Amazon's guidelines are intended to keep product reviews focused on the product itself, including matters such as its features, quality and performance. The platform says reviews should reflect the reviewer's sincere and unbiased opinion, regardless of whether it is positive or negative.
That means a genuine one-star review is not, by itself, grounds for removal.
This distinction matters because sellers have an obvious financial incentive to improve their ratings. A business may understandably dislike seeing a customer describe a product as poor value or complain that it did not work as expected.
However, if the customer actually used the product and the review follows Amazon's rules, removing that criticism would give future shoppers a less accurate picture. Barker's position is therefore unusual given his business.
TraceFuse describes itself as an Amazon review removal service, using software to identify reviews that may violate Amazon's policies before preparing cases for sellers to submit. TraceFuse currently says it has removed more than 25,000 reviews for more than 800 brands.
What Amazon Can Actually Remove
Amazon's review rules are much more specific than simply banning fake reviews. The Community Guidelines say product reviews should help customers understand the product itself.
Reviews that focus only on the seller or customer service, ordering and returns, shipping and packaging, product damage, or shipping costs and speed are not allowed in product reviews. Those complaints are directed towards seller feedback or customer service channels instead.
Other prohibited material includes spam, private information, external links, promotional content, harassment, hate speech, sexual content and certain illegal or dangerous material. Amazon also prohibits reviews affected by compensation, including payments, refunds, discounts, products, gift cards or services.
A customer cannot be offered something in exchange for creating, changing, or deleting a review. There is also a clear line around conflicts of interest. Sellers cannot review their own products or competitors' products, while Amazon also restricts reviews from people with financial or personal connections to a brand.
The larger review market has also attracted attention from US regulators. In 2024, the Federal Trade Commission finalised a rule targeting deceptive review practices.
It prohibits businesses from buying or selling fake reviews and from providing compensation or incentives conditioned on reviews expressing a particular positive or negative sentiment. It also prohibits certain forms of review suppression.
Amazon's review system has faced real examples of manipulation. In 2023, the FTC accused The Bountiful Company of 'review hijacking', in which reviews and ratings from established products were used to make newer products appear to have a stronger review history.
Bountiful agreed to pay $600,000 (£439,560) to settle the case, and the FTC later distributed more than $527,000 (£385,714) to affected consumers. The case illustrates why the distinction Barker makes matters. Seeking to remove a review simply because a seller dislikes it is different from challenging content that appears to violate Amazon's rules.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Why should some negative reviews stay on Amazon?Negative reviews can provide useful information for shoppers and help sellers understand product shortcomings.
- What types of reviews does Amazon prohibit?Amazon prohibits reviews that focus on seller or customer service, ordering and returns, shipping and packaging, and those containing spam, private information, or promotional content.
- What is review hijacking?Review hijacking involves using reviews and ratings from established products to make newer products appear to have a stronger review history.
