I genuinely don’t understand what Amazon is thinking with this one. A few weeks ago, sellers started noticing that Amazon is now prompting customers to leave a star rating while they are returning a product. Think about the selection bias here. You are asking for a product rating at the exact moment a customer has decided they don’t want the product. Of course those ratings are going to skew negative. Over enough volume, this has the potential to systematically pull down the star ratings of legitimate products across Amazon. And the sellers most exposed are the ones actually playing by the rules. If you refuse to manipulate reviews, you have no way to offset a new stream of ratings being collected from customers during one of the most negative moments in their entire purchase journey. Meanwhile, sellers willing to use black hat tactics to protect their ratings have an even bigger advantage. How is that good for the marketplace? I don’t know what the logic is here. Is Amazon trying to push more sellers toward returnless refunds? Is there some broader strategy around its paid review programs? Or did nobody fully think through what happens when you insert a review request directly into the return funnel? Whatever the reason, this is another unilateral marketplace change that can materially affect the economics of thousands of businesses. Ratings drive conversion. Conversion drives organic rank. Lower conversion means more advertising just to maintain the same sales. And eventually sellers start asking a very simple question: Why launch my next product on Amazon? That is the part Amazon should care about. We want Amazon to remain the best marketplace in the world to build great products. But changes like this make legitimate sellers increasingly hesitant to take the risk of launching something new. This also seems like one of the easiest things Amazon could reverse. There isn’t an obvious fee attached to it. There isn’t some massive infrastructure change required. Just stop asking customers to rate products while they’re returning them. It would be a small change for Amazon. But it would send a pretty meaningful signal to sellers that Amazon is listening.

Any article gets better when @michaelpatron0 and I get to tag-team the interview.

The typical story of one of the founders in our group of 800 businesses being impacted by Amazon policy changes

My community has $15b of yearly sales on Amazon with 800+ members. These are small businesses. They employ real Americans and support local communities. They do not have large margins to absorb shocks. Every year Amazon squeezes them more and supports overseas Chinese sellers instead of local American businesses. Now Amazon is hitting sellers with even more of a squeeze all back to back: 1.Amazon has moved many sellers to DD+7 Meaning funds are held until 7 days after delivery, not simply paid out on the old cadence. 2.Amazon just added a 3.5% fuel/logistics surcharge on fulfillment fees. 3.To top it off now Amazon Ads charges will be pulled directly from disbursements rather than floating on a credit card. That combination matters. Amazon already forces sellers into an environment where ads dominate visibility. So now the same platform that pressures brands to spend more on ads is also tightening payout timing and pulling more cash out before sellers ever see it. For a very large business, this is just a minor annoyance. But for a small business making payroll just got 50x harder. Less cash on hand means: less inventory more stockouts more debt more strain on small teams and ultimately a worse customer experience This is not “supporting small business.” It is starving the brands that create so much of the value customers come to Amazon for. @WSJ @business @nytimesbusiness @BusinessInsider @ReutersBiz @CNBC @APBusiness If you’re covering Amazon, local communities hit by a hard economy and large companies trying to squeeze hardworking Americans hit me up.

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