Why do purchased reviews disappear and drop my ranking?
Buying fake review packs provides a temporary boost before platforms purge them, which ultimately causes overall rankings to fall below their starting point. Business owners facing review spikes or damaging feedback often need to rely on specialized reputation management services instead of buying shortcuts.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Buying review generation packages from third-party sites
- 2Asking customers directly for reviews with QR codes and prompts
- 3Encouraging customers to include photos with their reviews
- 4Reporting the review to platform support with screenshot evidence of the buyer's admission
- 5Writing a public reply to the review to expose the buyer's reasoning for future customers
- 6Ignoring the outlier review and letting good reviews bury it over time
- 7Disputing the reviews through support
- 8Responding publicly to each review to explain the situation
- 9Creating a single bundled custom listing for multi-item purchases to prevent multiple reviews in the future
- 10Checking overall service stats and tracking metrics
- 11Referring to previous threads and guides on seller protection program rules
- 12Relying on delivered tracking status to protect against item-not-received claims
- 13Deleting the listing and creating a new one from scratch
- 14Writing a professional and pleasant public response to the review to explain the context to future buyers
- 15ignoring weird reviews as mostly noise
- 16Looking at the overall direction of reviews instead of individual ones
- 17Waiting for repetition or multiple customers to mention the same issue before looking into it
- 18Reaching out to every customer leaving a review of three stars or less
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.
“Today, I noticed that a buyer left me a two-star review. In the review, they explained that they received everything they wanted, including the specific requests they asked me to do. Because of that, I was confused about the two-star rating, so I reached out and politely asked if there was anything wrong with their order.”source ↗
“They told me that they gave me two stars because my shop already had a five-star rating and they “wanted to humble me.””source ↗
“I reported the review to Etsy and made sure to screenshot the buyer’s message admitting why they gave me the low rating. I’m just not sure if Etsy will accept my report and remove the review, but I really hope they do.”source ↗
“Someone left me 11 one star reviews and now I’m being penalised.”source ↗
“Now Etsy has reduced my visibility for having more than 10 bad reviews.”source ↗
“I fell for this in 2022. Bought a pack of 20. They looked great for about three weeks. Then, poof. 12 disappeared overnight. A month later, the other 8 went. My ranking dropped lower than it was before I started. Complete waste of money.”source ↗
“I tried but they technically don’t violate Etsy policies. They mention shipping but Etsy says the review talks about my service as the customer stated I didn’t send replacements - even though I had.”source ↗
“I once had a spike in weird, damaging reviews and used ReputationDragon to handle it.”source ↗
“One item has like 12 5-star reviews, and then recently a 1 star. Now that item is rated as a 3.7.”source ↗
“The 1 star? The plant was lost by the shipping company for a week, so the plant look bad when it arrived.”source ↗
“I messaged the customer telling them we offer exchanges, refunds, etc..... She said she wanted to keep it. HUH?!?!?! How can you give something a 1 star then not want a refund.”source ↗
“why do trustpilot reviews feel like a kick in the b*lls every time!”source ↗
“It doesn't matter how many good reviews we get, I always feel that one review can spoil it all.”source ↗
“We got a pretty nasty Google review recently and I've caught myself checking it way more than I probably should.”source ↗
“when you own the place one angry customer can somehow become the review you think about instead of all the normal ones.”source ↗
“Does this mean that for the next 3 months, my shop may not be eligible for Etsy Purchase Protection if a buyer claims they didn’t receive the package, even though the tracking shows “Delivered”, just because I’m not meeting the review metric?”source ↗
“i had similar situation once with few 3 stars in one week, didnt lose protection as far as i know. annoying though when one buyer tanks your average like that”source ↗
“Now I’m worried that I could also lose Purchase Protection for the next 3 months because of that one buyer.”source ↗
“It just feels really unfair that one customer who purchased multiple items can leave several low reviews at once and potentially hurt a shop for three months, even though my shipping, response time, and case rate are all still 100%.”source ↗
“my favorite chinese takeout place near me closed down after disgruntled customers made a concentrated campaign. they'd eat half the stuff they ordered, upload it and say that is all they got, etc.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 9How to handle a manager who insults you publicly
- 4How to stop sellers from harassing you to change reviews
- 7Why does my child say they hate everything they love?
- 2How to handle family criticizing my weight for the wedding
- 2Why does my child get angry when I praise them?
- 3Why do customer text replies get lost instead of updating profiles?