Countries
Read only
Voice of the Customer
We sell books. We have gotten a few negative VOC responses, but when we look at them, routinely the buyer chooses inaccurate reasons, or things that we have no control of.
*One customer bought a Bible and gave us "100% not accurate" because the Bible "didn't have the books of the Catholic Bible". The Bible is not a Catholic Bible and is not described as a Catholic Bible anywhere on the product page.
*Another customer gave a "100% negative" rating because they didn't like the color of the Bible they ordered.
*Another customer gave "100% negative" for Unspecific Quality Issue. How are we supposed to remedy that?
*Another customer gave "50% negative" because the cookbook "Doesn't have the recipes that I want".
*Another customer gave "50% negative" because "Wrong item was sent", but then they wrote "I ordered by mistake".
*Another customer gave "100% negative" for "Inaccurate website description" but then wrote "Just not what I wanted".
*Another customer gave a "50% negative" for "Performance or quality not adequate". No other description or reason.
*Another customer gave "100% negative" for Unspecific Quality Issue. Again, no other description or reason.
I'm convinced that this ridiculousness is affecting our Featured Offer Eligibility, since our Account Health is impeccable otherwise.
How long are these things "active"? A year? Forever? Supposedly VOC is there to help sellers improve the customer experience. How can we improve things if we aren't told what the problem was?? Amazon is so incredibly unfair and infuriating.
31 replies
Seller_LImVvUWeyiCfQ
You're not alone in your opinion of just how ridiculous and useless this metric is. There are many threads on how terrible VoC is.
This one is always good for a laugh:
Seller_nRFmxiQg4EGrw
For sellers of volume items, it might help them spot problems early on, when 2-3 out of a few hundred orders get complaints.
For used booksellers, who in most cases sell exactly ONE of any item, it's worse than worthless. And of course, since you only have one of any SKU (in most cases), any complaint will register as 100%, since it's strictly by the SKU (or maybe ASIN), and in no way reflects overall sales or customer satisfaction. All it does is induce unneeded stress.
Unless you get a whole lot of them for something like "Not like described" that might indicate your condition notes need help, just ignore them.
(as an aside, one of mine was "This book was obviously used, not new, with a big crease on the cover and a name written inside", which was almost exactly what I had written in the condition notes when I listed it as "Used-Good"; so even that won't protect you from the idiots.
Seller_BE3xPpZWhTS9Z
I feel ya. Few things upset me more than a bad review with inaccurate information or a return that's on me with an unknown reason.
When they wrote the seller docs back in 1865 they seemed to know that sellers really do need that input, or some of it at least, to improve.
Seller_DdmPiA1p1S2Wu
It is a completely useless metric, which is why I never bother looking at it. All it is is a list of most popular lies told by buyers to get free return shipping.
Seller_qnTAijoehpzf0
It doesn't help anyone! Amazon will always side with the buyers no matter what. I don't even look anymore, what good does it do? None, I can't change it or fix it. So why even worry about it, unnecessary stress.
Seller_xlf3vF516IRli
If it helps, I got a Negative rating on a design I offer because the Customer "didn't want the dog or the font"... It was a set design with no options to change either. How do you fix that?! And worse, It happened in OCTOBER OF 2023 AND IS STILL SHOWING AS A NEGATIVE on my VOC. So clearly 30 days isn't accurate, 60 isn't either, we are at 6 months and it's still my ONE negative on VOC period. So it might be forever that they stay. It's completely useless.
The worse part? The customer reached out to me, explained that they MEANT to put in the notes during ordering to not include the dog, and to use a different font (which makes no sense based on the design), and I eventually figured out what they wanted and sent a replacement with that abomination instead - and they left me positive feedback. So their OVERALL experience was positive, but I have this negative ding on VOC anyways. Its honestly laughable how broken VOC is and they claim to have fixed it last year.
Seller_keSnEDesLFVwv
Amazon has been presenting our books without descriptions or photos for most of this year. My most recent negative VOCs are all of this type: customers complaining about something that was clearly described in both text and photos.
IOW, they are enabling the idiots.
Just this morning I had a buyer - almost certainly a bookjacker - send me a message that he wanted no invoice because it was a gift. My description starts "This is an ugly book...", and continues to list numerous flaws in a poor copy of a hard to find book.
Seller_W1tFzATWCqDHQ
I even received a phone call from a customer service rep from India asking about one of our products. We give exact dimensions but some dopes don't read. Some said it was either too big and others too small. Others said it was too soft and others said it was too hard for them.
It is amazing that any of these dopes who review can even use a computer.
Seller_0JNslkNnWLtcD
Voice of the Customer is terrible and what is even worse is that bad reviews typically transform to account violations. A seller has to spend hours on trying to prove to be right and, if lucky, have those violations removed. While the violations are still there your listing, or even your account is at risk of deactivation.
A couple of violations we got recently resulted from 1-star reviews stating the product "would expire soon". To be exact, the reviews were left in late Feb. to mid-March for a product that will expire in mid-June.
Product was selling at 30-40% discount and is a kitchen staple that can easily be used within a month, if not a week. But buyers get creative on Amazon to be 100% refunded for their purchases. Not only these reviewers were fully refunded, they kept a product (for free) as this is a non-returnable category on Amazon.
We had to remove all FBA inventory to avoid any more violations and stopped selling the product FBM soon after. We moved that stock to another marketplace (that BTW accepts returns on this product category). Guess the return/refund/claim rate? ZERO.
We guess that in this rough economy 9 out of 10 people are happy to get a perfectly usable product at a discounted price. The fact that it has only 3 months of shelf life is surely compensated by a deep discount (30-40%).
However, Amazon has so much succeeded in training their customers to get stuff for free, that they are getting creative. Any reason including "will expire soon" is good in assisting a customer to get a product for free. No questions asked.
LeviDylan_Amazon
Hello @Seller_C2NiEkAU4xTGT,
Thank you for reaching out on the Seller Forums.
I see that you have received negative responses in the Voice of the Customer section of your account and you have questions about if this is affecting your featured offer eligibility.
I want to start by thanking you and the community for providing feedback about your experience with this feature. So that I can support you the best, I will be passing this information to the appropriate teams for review.
Also, to address the possibility of this affecting your buy box eligibility, I am engaging a Community Manager to review this situation further.
Please continue to post any relevant information so this can be shared with the appropriate teams. If you have any further questions or updates to provide, please feel free to respond here. The Forums community and I are here to support you.
Wishing you the best,
LeviDylan
Similar Discussions
