Community Guidelines

Disclaimer: In the event of any discrepancy or conflict, the English version will prevail over the translation.

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
Reports of violations

What the guidelines apply to

Actions you take, including:
1. Sharing text, photos, videos, links
2. 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 INR 1500 on Amazon.in using any valid payment method for orders delivered 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 INR 1500 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 INR 2000, 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 INR 500 less at my local store."

These comments aren't allowed because they aren't relevant for all customers.

Some comments about availability are OK. For example, you can discuss formats that haven't been released yet: "I wish this book was also available in paperback."

However, we don't allow comments about availability at a specific store. Again, the purpose of the community is to share product-specific feedback that's relevant to all other 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.in, which only supports English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, and Marathi. 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 hate speech.

Sexual content

We still don't allow profanity or obscene language. We also don't allow content with nudity or sexually explicit images or descriptions.

External 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:

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. You are 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 activities

Don't post content that encourages illegal activity like:

Violence
Illegal drug use
Underage drinking
Child or animal abuse
Fraud
Content that threatens the unity, integrity, defense, security or sovereignty of India, friendly relations with foreign states, or public order or causes incitement to the commission of any cognizable offence or prevents investigation of any offence or is insulting any other nation.
Content offering fraudulent goods, services, schemes, or promotions (e.g., make-money-fast schemes, pyramid schemes)

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).

It is not allowed to 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 these 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.

If someone violates the applicable laws of India, policies we might take legal action that may result in civil and criminal penalties.