How To Leave A Review On Etsy Without Buying

Nothing can hurt your shop more than bad reviews.

Customers rely on the reviews that your shop gets in order to decide if you are a trustworthy seller to buy from.

Without a major brand name on everyone's mind, you'll need to make sure your customer service is excellent in order to reach that coveted five-star rating.

Can Etsy sellers delete reviews and negative feedback?

Both customers and Etsy sellers are unable to delete reviews. However, customers can modify their star-ratings, comments, and photos that they post to your shop within the first 100 days. This is a great way to try and change their minds by providing excellent customer service after a bad review.

What's Etsy's Policy Regarding Deleting Reviews and Negative Feedback?

The Etsy site program does not allow customers or shop owners to delete reviews.

Deleting or removing negative feedback from their shops would make the seller untrustworthy – especially if they aren't meeting the expectations set for them and then hiding their bad work.

Etsy sellers can, however, report particularly inappropriate reviews that they feel are violating the Etsy.com rules and regulations for leaving reviews.

If a review is reported, Etsy will check it out or investigate the situation in order to make sure that the review is, in fact, violating site rules.

If it is decided that it does violate the rules, the review will be removed by the site administrators.

Can Buyers Really Trust Reviews and Feedback on Etsy?

Etsy feedback and reviews are essential for the site to function as a successful eCommerce site.

Etsy.com is a legitimate site that hosts thousands of shops and sees traffic of millions of customers every year. Because of this, they are dedicated to making their site as professional and trustworthy as possible.

Furthermore, reviews can only be left by someone who purchased an item and completed a transaction. This prevents hundreds of fake reviews being left on a shop profile.

However, there are ways for untrustworthy reviews to slip in.

Shady Customers

Customers have been known to leave terrible reviews that aren't very truthful and will claim that their transaction did not go well in order to receive a refund or perks from apologetic shop owners.

This would be considered an untrustworthy review, and customers should read them with caution.

If a shop has almost five stars, but one or two one-star reviews, make sure to take those reviews and comments into consideration before writing off the shop as an "untrustworthy shop."

Edited Star Ratings or Comments

Customers have the ability to edit or change their star-rating and review on a shop within the first 100 days of posting the first review.

This is a great way for sellers to try and fix a one-star rating issue by offering to work with the customer to make their experience better.

However, customers also have the ability to change a good rating to a bad one if they're feeling upset or spiteful with the seller.

If you shop from a regular creator on Etsy and see that someone keeps changing their reviews in the comments section, you may find that they are an untrustworthy customer – or that they are attempting to get a different result out of the seller.

Note: customers can't change their review if they leave a 3-star review or lower, and the seller responds to the comment. Somehow this cements the review in and doesn't allow for a better review later.

How do you Consider an Etsy Shop as "Good"?

Customer reviews are essential to telling other customers whether or not to trust a shop or seller when it comes to their products, but how do you tell a "good" shop from a "bad" one?

Well, there are a lot of things that dedicated, professional sellers will do for their customers, and things that bad sellers will not:

A Bad Shop

If a shop has three stars or fewer, they are considered a "bad" shop – particularly if they don't deliver on their promises or sell stolen or copyrighted artwork or items.

Sellers who are considered to be "bad" at their work will often ignore customer complaints and take forever to ship an item. They may also not deliver the work that they show in their photos, and some shop owners are known to scam customers with fake information.

Etsy.com takes these bad sellers very seriously and will do what it can to remove them from the site.

When a shop has too many bad reviews, the administrators will review the shop and can often decide to remove the shop entirely if they are found to be violating the rules of Etsy.com.

A Good or Great Shop

If, however, a site has close to four stars or higher, you can bet that it is a great shop and most likely will be trustworthy for purchasing from.

Getting four to five stars is more difficult than it sounds, and many sellers covet that five-star rating. This also means that those shop owners will provide excellent customer service in order to keep that rating.

Good Etsy sellers will have these traits:

Quick, constant communication with customers
Excellent materials and photos of their products
Friendly and accommodating
Fast and careful shipping of items
Apologetic for bad interactions or lost packages
Will help customers make custom-made products to their liking

If a bad review slips in on one of those "good" shops, don't worry. Owners always respond to bad feedback – and usually, they will offer to fix the situation or provide a special offer on their shop items.

When you see that an owner isn't responding to bad feedback – and has a lot of it – you'll see that star-rating drop pretty quickly over time.

What Can I do When a Buyer Leaves Negative Feedback?

If you are a long-time Etsy shop owner, you know that negative feedback is always going to be a possibility, even if you do everything right.

After a while, you learn the tips and tricks to taking care of an unsatisfied customer while still keeping our star-rating up.

However, if you're new to the game, there are a few things you should know about negative feedback on Etsy.com:

Star-Ratings and Shop Popularity

Reviews on an Etsy shop are crucial to getting your name out there as a good shop.

Having hundreds of customers with an average of four-star reviews or higher is what skyrockets shops to the top. However, if you only have a handful of both good and bad reviews, getting your name out, there is very difficult.

The good news is that reviews only affect your overall star-rating for up to twelve months. While the reviews remain on record forever, bad reviews will fall to the bottom of the barrel and will no longer affect your shop present-day.

However, the same is true for good reviews, which will inevitably drop off your public star-rating.

This means that you need to live in the "now" in your Etsy shop – and make sure that you are taking care of present customers without dwelling on the old ones.

For more information on how to make and use good reviews for your shop, check out or article here!

How do I Respond to Negative Feedback on Etsy?

Responding to negative feedback on your Etsy shop is as simple as commenting back on their review by clicking on it. When you leave a response to a negative review, you'll want to emulate other five-star shop owners and how they do things.

As we stated before, great shop owners do everything they can to maintain their five-star ratings, and usually excel in customer service.

Great Etsy successes come from those who are:

Professional
Apologetic
Prompt
Informative
Communicative

You want to adopt all of these ideals if you're going to be any sort of small business owner – but especially if your shop is online.

No one really knows the real "you" online and often will forget you're a real person and not a faceless corporation behind a computer screen. Be personable! Be creative!

But most of all, be kind, and the good reviews will start pouring in.

Can I Report a False Review?

You can report any review that is inappropriate, aggressive, or unsafe to Etsy.com for investigation.

Etsy takes the integrity and safety of the site very seriously and will do what it can to keep you and your shop protected.

The benefits of this are:

This is a confidential process, and the customer won't know you reported their comments
You only need to flag it once to get an investigation going
Etsy takes over from there and will make an appropriate action against the review

If you decide to report a review, you may have to wait a few days for the administrators to take a look at it before it can be removed. In the meantime, try not to encourage an aggressive customer, and instead either ignore it or leave one last kind message to your customer base about it.

Don't get sucked into someone else's issues and stay true to yourself and your shop.

How Long do Reviews Stay on Etsy?

As mentioned before, Etsy reviews stay on Etsy forever – however, they only affect your overall star-rating for twelve months.

Once that year is up, the review will stop leaning your rating one way or another – good or bad.

This is because the site wants to remain current, and make sure that your shop is getting good recognition if you've improved over time – and likewise, if you've let your shop spin out of control.

While customers can still see reviews from more than a year ago, they will realize that the review is old, and most likely no longer reflects your shop's integrity or the way that it does business.

Make sure to respond to every bad review with apologies and kind words or attempts to fix the situation. That way, if customers look upon bad reviews later, they will recognize your professional nature and willingness to fix any mistakes.

Can You Hide Reviews on Etsy?

You cannot hide an entire review, but you can hide a photograph if a customer posted something inappropriate or misleading.

For example, if you sell candles, but the customer accidentally posted a picture of the product they received, and it is a hat, you can hide that image to prevent confusion among your customer base.

Here's how to do it:

Go to your reviews on your Etsy shop
Select "Hide this photo from Buyer's link" under that photo review

And you're done!

Remember, this is meant to be used if a customer posts something that is not indicative of your product. If someone posts something completely inappropriate, try reporting it or letting Etsy know, instead. This will hopefully result in Etsy.com administrators notifying the customer of wrongdoing.

Are Etsy Reviews Legit?

Etsy.com is a legitimate site with millions of sales every year.

While many sites have their problems when it comes to rating and reviews, the reviews and comments on Etsy.com are legitimate – except in rare cases.

While it is easy to click on a five-star rated shop and immediately buy, you should always do your own personal research into the reviews, the products, and the Etsy shop before making a final decision.

Using your best judgment is the greatest way to ensure your own success – and great shopping experience!

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