Seller offered refund if I change my review
Sellers pressure buyers to remove negative feedback by withholding refunds or sending long, guilt-tripping messages about their small business. Buyers often resolve this by securing the refund first, then updating their original low rating to warn others about the seller's manipulation tactics.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Waiting for the refund to safely hit the account before updating the review to publicly expose the extortion attempt.Did this help you?
- 2Reporting the seller to the platform for review manipulation and lying about item origins.Did this help you?
- 3Refusing to change the rating and downgrading the review further to publicly warn others about the harassmentDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I left a 2-star review, and the seller started bombarding me with long AI-generated messages about how hard he worked and how my review would hurt his small business, repeatedly asking me to change it to 5 stars.”source ↗
“I understand he's a small business, but the constant guilt-tripping feels really inappropriate.”source ↗
“This happened to me once. I told them sure, as soon as I get my refund I will update my bad review. As soon as the refund was safely in my account, I went back and updated the one star review with an added bit at the bottom”source ↗
“I already reported them for lying about the shipping location. I will leave the review or maybe even add that they asked for a change after refunding me.”source ↗
“Seller refunded me but asked for me to changed my review first. I didn't promise anything. They refunded me and asked again.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 21Why do purchased reviews disappear and drop my ranking?
- 3Seller refusing refund for AI-generated item not disclosed in listing
- 2Why are my legitimate customer reviews getting deleted?
- 5Having second thoughts after paying a wedding vendor deposit
- 23Why does Etsy automatically refund buyers without seller approval?
- 8How to stop sellers from harassing you to change reviews