Get the latest insights right in your inbox
Marissa Incitti
Marissa Incitti leads research and content at Feedvisor focused on Amazon, Walmart, and the broader e-commerce marketplace ecosystem. Her work covers retail media performance, pricing strategy, and how AI-driven discovery is reshaping how brands compete across marketplaces. Prior to Feedvisor, she worked in content leadership roles at a Fortune Global 500 omnichannel commerce technology company.
Amazon Seller Feedback: How Ratings Work, What They Cost You, and How to Protect Your ODR
Published: February 27, 2017
Last updated: May 13, 2026
Amazon seller feedback is a public reputation score - expressed as a percentage of positive ratings - that affects your Buy Box eligibility, your account health, and whether buyers trust you enough to click “Add to Cart.” It is distinct from product reviews, which rate the item itself. Seller feedback rates the experience of buying from you: shipping speed, communication, packaging, and order accuracy.
Most sellers treat feedback as a passive metric to monitor. That’s the wrong frame. Since August 2025, Amazon changed how feedback gets submitted - and the new system makes negative feedback easier to leave and harder to remove. If you’re still managing feedback the old way, the math has shifted against you.
Table of Contents
- How the Feedback Rating System Works
- The August 2025 Star-Only Update: What Changed
- How Negative Feedback Hurts You Beyond the Rating
- Removing Negative Feedback: What Still Works
- Responding to Feedback You Can’t Remove
- How to Improve Your Amazon Seller Feedback Score
- FAQ
How the Feedback Rating System Works
Your feedback score is calculated as: (positive feedback ÷ total feedback) × 100. Positive means 4-5 stars. Neutral is 3 stars. Negative is 1-2 stars.
Amazon displays your score across four time windows simultaneously: - 30 days (most recent snapshot) - 90 days (short-term trend) - 12 months (primary public-facing rating) - Lifetime (total accumulated)
If you’ve received fewer than 10 feedbacks in the past 12 months, customers see your lifetime rating instead of the 12-month figure. New sellers with 3-4 negative feedbacks in their first month will show those prominently until volume catches up - which is why the early weeks matter disproportionately.
What “Good” Looks Like
| Rating Level | Positive % | Impact |
|---|---|---|
| Excellent | 95%+ | Industry standard target |
| Good | 90-94% | Competitive Buy Box positioning |
| Concerning | Below 90% | Buy Box and visibility risk |
| Critical | Below 85% | Significant account health risk |
The original Amazon guidance put the acceptable floor at below 5% negative feedback. That benchmark is outdated for competitive sellers. Treating 90% positive as “good enough” leaves you exposed on a bad week - and with star-only ratings making negative feedback cheaper to leave, bad weeks are getting easier to have.
The August 2025 Star-Only Update: What Changed
On August 4, 2025, Amazon made written comments optional for seller feedback. Buyers can now submit a star rating - 1 through 5 - without typing a single word. For ratings of 1-3 stars, buyers must still select a reason from a dropdown menu (options like “Shipping issue” or “Item not as described”), but that’s a few taps, not a written explanation.
The update increases volume potential on both ends, but the removal side creates the bigger operational headache. Expect more 4-5 star clicks from satisfied buyers who previously skipped written feedback - which helps dilute outliers - but don’t let higher volume hide recurring service failures. The real problem is what happens with negative star-only ratings.
Before this change, you could appeal negative feedback through Feedback Manager by pointing to specific text that violated Amazon’s policies. If a buyer wrote something abusive, product-focused, or factually wrong, that text gave you grounds to request removal. With no text, the Feedback Manager appeal feature is disabled for star-only ratings. You cannot challenge a star-only negative through the standard process.
Your only recourse is the “Report a Violation” tool - a narrower pathway designed for abusive or policy-violating content. If a buyer leaves an unfair 1-star with no context and it doesn’t meet the abuse threshold, that rating stays. Permanently.
Less than 1% of buyers currently leave seller feedback - and that pool is skewing negative. In 2020, 92% of feedback was positive. By 2025, that dropped to 84%. A shrinking, increasingly negative pool means one bad week moves your score faster than it should. The star-only system makes it easier for dissatisfied buyers to act on that impulse.
How Negative Feedback Hurts You Beyond the Rating
Negative feedback (1-2 stars) feeds directly into your Order Defect Rate (ODR), which must stay below 1%. ODR is one of three components that make up your Amazon Account Health Rating (AHR). The other two are A-to-Z claims and credit card chargebacks. All three are ways buyers escalate dissatisfaction - and negative feedback is the easiest one for them to submit.
The chain is direct: negative feedback → ODR increase → AHR decline → Buy Box suppression → potential account suspension.
Keep ODR below 0.5%, not just under the 1% threshold. A seller processing 500 orders per month who receives 6 negative feedbacks is already at 1.2% - over the limit. At that volume, you need a near-zero-defect operation to absorb even minor service failures without risk.
Removing Negative Feedback: What Still Works
Amazon will consider removing feedback that meets specific criteria. The 90-day window from submission is absolute - requests after that are blocked automatically.
Five grounds for removal:
- Contains only a product review - “The product broke after 2 days” is feedback about the item, not your service. Product-focused feedback is eligible for removal.
- Contains offensive or abusive language - Profanity, threatening language, or hate speech violates community guidelines.
- Contains personal information - Phone numbers, email addresses, or payment card numbers.
- Is solely about price - Feedback complaining only about price is eligible.
- Is solely about FBA delivery - For FBA orders where the shipping issue was Amazon’s responsibility, the feedback may be struck through and removed from your metrics (not fully deleted, but it no longer counts toward ODR). Amazon can use the buyer’s selected dropdown reason to identify FBA-related star-only complaints - but enforcement is inconsistent. If you see an FBA-related star-only negative that isn’t struck through after a few days, gather the order records and escalate to Seller Support directly.
The removal process: Seller Central → Performance → Feedback Manager → locate the entry → click “Request removal” → select your reason.
For star-only negatives that don’t qualify, you’re limited to “Report a Violation.” Be specific - vague reports get dismissed. If the feedback reflects an Amazon fulfillment error, attach the order and shipping records when you file.
FBM sellers carry significantly more risk than FBA sellers. FBA strike-through, even when inconsistently applied, provides a layer of protection FBM sellers don’t have. If you’re FBM in a category with high delivery complaint rates, the new system should shift how you think about fulfillment strategy - not just how you file removal requests.
Responding to Feedback You Can’t Remove
When feedback isn’t removable, a public response is your best option. Navigate to Feedback Manager, locate the entry, and click “Respond.”
Your response is visible to every buyer who views your seller profile. Write for the next buyer reading it - not for the buyer who left the review. A calm, factual response explaining what you did to resolve the issue is more credible than silence, and far more credible than defensiveness.
One nuance: when a buyer removes their feedback (they have 60 days to do so), any seller comments you’ve left are also removed. Write responses that hold up whether the original feedback disappears or stays.
See also: Removing Negative Feedback on Amazon for the full step-by-step process, and Amazon Seller Rating for how your overall rating affects buyer decisions.
How to Improve Your Amazon Seller Feedback Score
The August 2025 change makes one thing clear: prevention is now more valuable than removal. When you could challenge text-based feedback through Feedback Manager, removal provided a viable backstop. With star-only ratings locked out of appeals, stopping negative feedback before it happens is the only reliable approach.
Post-order communication. Reach out after delivery to confirm the order arrived as expected. A brief message - not asking for feedback, just confirming satisfaction - gives buyers a chance to surface issues before they become reviews. Amazon’s “Request a Review” button (available 5-30 days after delivery) is the compliant way to solicit ratings. Use it consistently; higher feedback volume dilutes negative outliers.
Monitor daily. A spike in negative feedback that goes unnoticed for two weeks becomes an ODR problem that takes months to correct. Set up Seller Central alerts for feedback notifications. Don’t let the number move before you see it.
Resolve before escalation. The buyer who received a prompt replacement and refund rarely leaves a 1-star. The same buyer who had to chase you for a response will. Your complaint-to-resolution speed matters more than it did before the star-only change.
Consider FBA as a feedback buffer. The strike-through protection for FBA orders - even when inconsistently applied - provides ODR insulation that FBM sellers don’t have. For sellers in categories where delivery complaints are frequent, that protection is real. See also: Improve Seller Rating for a broader approach to strengthening seller account metrics.
Feedvisor’s AI platform tracks performance metrics and pricing signals together - because your Buy Box eligibility depends on both your feedback score and your competitive price position. If your seller health metrics are slipping, the problem is rarely just feedback. See how Feedvisor connects repricing and account health →
FAQ
How often can Amazon buyers leave seller feedback? Buyers can leave feedback on each order within 90 days of the order date. Each order generates one opportunity - a buyer cannot leave multiple feedbacks for the same transaction.
Does seller feedback affect product rankings? Not directly. Product rankings are driven by sales velocity, conversion rate, and the A9/A10 algorithm. However, your seller feedback score affects Buy Box eligibility, and winning the Buy Box increases both visibility and conversion - so the indirect effect on unit sales is real.
What’s the difference between seller feedback and product reviews? Seller feedback rates your service: shipping speed, packaging, order accuracy, and communication. Product reviews rate the item itself. Amazon uses seller feedback for Buy Box and account health calculations. Product reviews affect buyer purchase decisions through the listing page, but go through a separate rating system.
Can I ask buyers to remove negative feedback? Amazon prohibits asking buyers to remove or revise negative feedback in exchange for any benefit. Resolve the underlying issue genuinely - then it’s the buyer’s decision whether to update or remove their rating.
How quickly does feedback removal get processed? Clear cases - FBA delivery complaints or feedback containing personal information - typically process within a few days. Borderline cases can take several weeks. Amazon publishes no success rate data, but requests that clearly match one of the five criteria have meaningfully better outcomes than vague submissions.
Request Feedvisor 360 Demo