Community Guidelines
Guidelines for keeping the Amazon community helpful, relevant, meaningful, and appropriate.
The community is a place to share your thoughts and experiences (positive and negative) with other customers. The following guidelines explain what's allowed and not allowed.
By using community features, you agree to our Conditions of Use and Privacy Notice. You also agree to follow these guidelines, which we update from time to time. Community features include:
- Reviews (including star ratings)
- Questions and answers
- Helpful votes
- Lists and registries
- Profile pages
- Amazon Follow
- #FoundItOnAmazon
- Amazon digital and device forums
- Abuse reports
Table of Contents
- What the guidelines apply to
- Who can participate
- What’s not allowed
- Seller, order and shipping feedback
- Comments about pricing and availability
- Content written in unsupported languages
- Repetitive text, spam, pictures created with symbols
- Private information
- Profanity, harassment
- Hate speech
- Sexual content
- Links
- Ads, conflicts of interest, promotional content
- Compensated reviews
- Plagiarism, infringement, impersonation
- Illegal and dangerous activities
- Consequences for violations
- How to report violations
What the guidelines apply to
- Actions you take, including:
- Sharing text, photos, videos, links
- Marking a review as
helpful
- Interactions with other community members and Amazon
The guidelines don't apply to content in products or services sold on Amazon (example: content of a book).
Who can participate
If you have an Amazon account, you can:
- Create and update shopping lists, wish lists, and registries
- Update your profile page
- Participate in digital and device forums
To do any of the following, you need to have spent at least £40 on Amazon.co.uk using a valid credit or debit card in the past 12 months:
- Create reviews (including star ratings)
- Answer customer questions
- Submit helpful votes
- Create idea lists
- Follow other contributors
Promotional discounts don't count towards the £40 minimum spending requirement.
What's not allowed
Seller, order and shipping feedback
We don’t allow reviews or questions and answers that focus on:
- Sellers and the customer service they provide
- Ordering issues and returns
- Shipping and packaging
- Product condition and damage
- Shipping cost and speed
Why not? Community content is meant to help customers learn about the product itself, not someone’s individual experience ordering it. That said, we definitely want your feedback about sellers and packaging, just not in reviews or questions and answers.
Comments about pricing and availability
It’s OK to comment on price if it’s related to the product’s value. Example: For only £29.99, this blender is really great.
Pricing comments related to someone’s individual experience aren’t allowed. For example,
don’t compare the price of the same product at different stores: Found this here for £5 less than at my local store.
Comments like this aren’t allowed because they aren’t relevant for all customers.
Content written in unsupported languages
To ensure that content is useful, we only allow it to be written in the supported languages of the Amazon site where it will appear. For example, we don’t allow reviews written in French on Amazon.com, which only supports English and Spanish. Some Amazon sites support multiple languages, but content written in a mix of languages isn’t allowed.
Learn which languages are supported on this Amazon site.
Repetitive text, spam, pictures created with symbols
We don’t allow contributions with distracting content and spam. This includes:
- Repetitive text
- Nonsense, gibberish
- Content that’s just punctuation or symbols
- ASCII art (pictures created with symbols and letters)
Private information
Don't post content that invades others' privacy or shares your own personal information. This includes:
- Phone number
- Email address
- Mailing address
- License plate
- Data source name (DSN)
- Order number
Profanity, harassment
It’s OK to question others' beliefs and expertise, but be respectful. We don’t allow:
- Profanity, obscenities, name-calling.
- Harassment, threats.
- Attacks on people you disagree with.
- Libel, defamation, or inflammatory content.
- Drowning out others’ opinions. Don’t post from multiple accounts or coordinate with others.
Hate speech
It’s not allowed to express hatred for people based on characteristics like:
- Race
- Ethnicity
- Nationality
- Gender
- Gender identity
- Sexual orientation
- Religion
- Age
- Disability
It's also not allowed to promote organizations that use such speech.
Sexual content
It’s OK to discuss sex and sensuality products sold on Amazon. The same goes for products with sexual content (books, movies). That said, we still don’t allow profanity or obscene language. We also don’t allow content with nudity and sexually explicit images or descriptions.
Links
We allow links to other products on Amazon, but not to external sites. Don't post links to phishing or other malware sites. We don’t allow URLs with referrer tags or affiliate codes.
Ads, conflicts of interest, promotional content
We don't allow content if its main purpose is to promote a company, website, author, or special offer. We also don't allow people to create, edit, or post content about their own products or services. The same goes for products and services offered by:
- Friends
- Relatives
- Employers
- Business associates
- Competitors
We don't allow reviews written as a form of promotion. For example, we remove reviews posted by someone with a direct or indirect financial interest in the product, or any other conflict of interest. See more examples of reviews we don't allow.
For questions and answers, we don't allow anyone with a financial or close personal connection to the brand, seller, author, or artist to post questions. They can post answers, but only if they clearly and conspicuously disclose their connection. Example: "I represent the brand for this product." We automatically label some answers from sellers and manufacturers. In that case, additional disclosure is unnecessary.
For community content other than reviews and questions and answers, you can post about products and services for which you have a financial or close personal connection to the brand, seller, author, or artist-as long as you clearly and conspicuously disclose the connection. Example: "I was paid for this post." However, brands and business can't participate in the community in ways that divert Amazon customers to non-Amazon websites, services, applications, or channels to conduct marketing or sales transactions. That includes advertising, special offers, or "calls to action." Content posted through brand, seller, author, or artist accounts about their own products or services doesn't need additional labeling.
For details and more examples, read our promotional content guidelines.
Compensated reviews
Reviews should reflect your honest opinion. That's why we don't allow reviews that are created, edited, or removed in exchange for compensation. Compensation includes cash, discounts, free products, gift cards, and refunds. Some common examples of what's not allowed:
- Your order arrives, and there's a gift card in the package. To redeem it, you first have to post a positive review.
- After leaving a negative review, you get an email with an offer of a refund if you change or remove the review.
- You receive a text message that promises a full reimbursement if you buy a product and post a review about it.
Exceptions:
- We allow reviews of free products received through the Amazon Vine program. We label these reviews with "Vine Customer Review of Free Product."
- It's OK to review a free or discounted book (advanced reader copy) that you received from an author or publisher. However, they can't require a review in exchange or try to influence the review.
Plagiarism, infringement, impersonation
Only post your own content or content you have permission to use on Amazon. This includes text, images, and videos. It's not allowed to:
- Post content that infringes others' intellectual property (including copyrights, trademarks, patents, trade secrets) or other proprietary rights
- Interact with community members in ways that infringe others' intellectual property or proprietary rights
- Impersonate someone or an organization
Illegal and dangerous activities
Don't post content that encourages illegal activity like:
- Violence
- Illegal drug use
- Underage drinking
- Child or animal abuse
- Fraud
We don’t allow content that advocates or threatens physical or financial harm to yourself or others. This includes terrorism. Jokes or sarcastic comments about causing harm aren’t allowed.
It’s also not allowed to offer fraudulent goods, services, promotions, or schemes (make-money-fast, pyramid). Don’t encourage the dangerous misuse of a product.
Consequences for violations
Violations of our guidelines make the community less trustworthy, safe, and useful. If someone violates the guidelines, we may:
- Remove their content
- Limit their ability to use community features
- Remove related products
- Suspend or terminate their account
- Withhold payments
If we find unusual reviewing behavior, we might limit the ability to submit reviews. If we reject or remove someone’s review because it violates our promotional content guidelines, we won't accept any more reviews from them for the same product.
Misconduct may also breach applicable laws, and can lead to legal action and civil and criminal penalties.
How to report violations
Use the Report
link near the content that you want report.
If someone offers you compensation to create, edit, or remove a review report it using the Report Review Compensation form.
After we receive your report, we’ll investigate and take appropriate action.
Follow these steps to find more information about Amazon Community and how to contact us:
- Visit Customer Service.
- Select Help with something else (if this button is displayed).
- Select Something else.
- Select Amazon Community.
- Select the most appropriate option from the list of Amazon Community features.
