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“After a long string of unbroken 5-star reviews, someone left me a bad review for no real reason—it just seems spiteful. What can I do?”
Oh no! Today's listener received a bad review on Etsy through no fault of her own. Is there anything she can do to appeal?
This is both a logistical/practical question as well as a psychological one … when you get a bad review, it doesn't feel good. So I want to talk about that as much as the actual process of "Is there any action you can take to improve or remove that review from your listing?"
Recently I got a bad review… and I'm wondering how should I handle it? I've been selling on Etsy for a while and sell on average 10 items a month. It's a start! But after a long string of unbroken 5-star reviews, someone left me a bad review for no real reason—it just seems spiteful. What can I do? I wrote to Etsy but they just sent me a form letter in response, saying that they won't do anything. Would love to hear your thoughts about this.
First of all, my condolences! I've been there.
Appealing to the platform will probably not work at all—to have any chance of success, you need to be able to demonstrate that there are legitimately false claims in the review, or that it otherwise doesn't meet the rules that the platform establishes.
So if you really do want to fix this, your best bet is usually to work with the person who left the review. They can typically go back and change or remove their review if they choose to.
Otherwise, your best option is to learn to let it go—Frozen style—and just focus on getting more positive reviews.
Also, this can feel really personal, so I encourage you to depersonalize it a bit and think about your own experience with reviews: if anything has only positive reviews, you might actually be skeptical about it.
Look on Yelp at the listing for your favorite restaurant. If it's been around for any amount of time, I bet you can find a lot of people who don't like it. That's not going to stop you from going, right? If you are looking on Amazon and something has only positive reviews, again, you might wonder … is that really legit?
I know this doesn't help you get that bad review removed, but hopefully it puts it in some context for you. Your long-term goal is to focus on getting more positive reviews. Put your energy toward that and congratulate yourself that you have now joined the club of real creators—everyone who creates and sells something online will eventually have this experience.
