Changes to review sharing across product variations starting from Feb 12
Starting from February 12, 2026, we’re changing how reviews are shared across products in a variation to improve accuracy and help customers make more informed purchasing decisions. This change will help customers understand product-specific feedback before purchase, increasing trust and potentially decreasing returns.
Currently, reviews are shared across all variations of a product, even when variations have significant differences in features or specifications. This can lead to reviews that don’t accurately reflect the specific variation that a customer is considering.
With this change, reviews will only be shared between variations with minor differences that don’t affect functionality. Reviews will no longer appear for variations with significant differences, which may affect your products’ overall star ratings and review counts.
Reviews will continue to be shared for the following variations:
- Colour or pattern variations of the same product.
- Size variations that maintain the same function, such as king-sized and queen-sized bedding.
- Pack size or quantity variations.
- Secondary scent variations for non-scent-focused products, such as lemon-scented vs unscented cleaning products.
- Different model fitments for the same product type, such as phone cases for different models.
We recognise the importance of reviews for your business. To ensure a smooth transition for both you and your customers, we’ll implement these changes gradually by product category between February 12, 2026, and May 31, 2026. You’ll receive an email notification 30 days before any changes affect your products.
To prepare, we recommend that you review your variations in Manage All Inventory to ensure that they accurately reflect product differences (for example, using colour variation for colour differences, not quantity variation). For guidance on listing variations and product information, go to Listing quality and Variation relationships.
If you need to update your variation themes after the change has taken effect, reviews will be re-shared for eligible products.
For more information about review sharing across variations, go to Review sharing guidelines.
Changes to review sharing across product variations starting from Feb 12
Starting from February 12, 2026, we’re changing how reviews are shared across products in a variation to improve accuracy and help customers make more informed purchasing decisions. This change will help customers understand product-specific feedback before purchase, increasing trust and potentially decreasing returns.
Currently, reviews are shared across all variations of a product, even when variations have significant differences in features or specifications. This can lead to reviews that don’t accurately reflect the specific variation that a customer is considering.
With this change, reviews will only be shared between variations with minor differences that don’t affect functionality. Reviews will no longer appear for variations with significant differences, which may affect your products’ overall star ratings and review counts.
Reviews will continue to be shared for the following variations:
- Colour or pattern variations of the same product.
- Size variations that maintain the same function, such as king-sized and queen-sized bedding.
- Pack size or quantity variations.
- Secondary scent variations for non-scent-focused products, such as lemon-scented vs unscented cleaning products.
- Different model fitments for the same product type, such as phone cases for different models.
We recognise the importance of reviews for your business. To ensure a smooth transition for both you and your customers, we’ll implement these changes gradually by product category between February 12, 2026, and May 31, 2026. You’ll receive an email notification 30 days before any changes affect your products.
To prepare, we recommend that you review your variations in Manage All Inventory to ensure that they accurately reflect product differences (for example, using colour variation for colour differences, not quantity variation). For guidance on listing variations and product information, go to Listing quality and Variation relationships.
If you need to update your variation themes after the change has taken effect, reviews will be re-shared for eligible products.
For more information about review sharing across variations, go to Review sharing guidelines.
5 replies
Seller_IQo80d99W2DzP
Buyers may look at reviews, but in reality they mean nothing. Especially when only a star rating and no comments.
Say 1000 items sold, but only 10 reviews, 8 are 1 star and 2 are 5 star. Only 8 of those items have been returned, 992 have been retained.
All the Buyer can see are the 10 reviews.
What the Buyer cannot see is: The other metrics of 992 items being retained and 990 of those 992 customers not bothering to review the item.
So, would you buy an item with 8 terrible reviews and only 2 good reviews, unlikely?
BUT, if you knew out of 1000 sold, 990 customers must have at least thought the item was ok to keep it, then you may consider that item must be really good to get that many orders and retained.
Perhaps showing how many are retained as a % would be far better. So in this example 99.2% retained - and only show after say 20 orders to give it a fair chance.
Really also it only needs 3 different star ratings:
1 = the Buyer hates the item. Really unhappy so even if Xmas Day, will stop eating to review it.
2 = the Buyer thinks the item is ok (usually though cannot be bothered to waste time to even bother going to issue a review)
3 = loves the item, over-joyed, cannot stop talking about it, even gets out of bed especially to say how great the item was!
Likewise with Seller feedback, just the 3 different star ratings are needed, makes it far easier, and if not rated after 30 days, then give the Seller 3 stars (a bit like eBay do), email the Buyer, so if an issue, then they can remove the feedback rating or issue a new rating within another 30 days.
Others thoughts?
PRODUCT VARIATIONS REVIEWS: I think if the item is similar than share, if enough difference, then it should have a separate listing anyway, not just have a different review status (plus for Amazon to stop altering the parent/child items, leave as they are, once linked, unless a significant item difference)
Seller_ZQyopdiwkUHOZ
This would be a nightmare for fashion sellers. It's so common, especially around Christmas, for people to buy multiple sizes knowing that they can return the one that doesn't fit at no expense to themselves, that fashion items would frequently look like they were lower quality than they actually are.
This would be magnified when talking about items that have the majority of their sales happen around Christmas, and would feed from the search algorithm implementation that buries items than haven't sold in a while and gives a huge bump once a couple sell in short order, because a non-seasonal item can go months only getting a handful of spread sales, then get a major pick up from a couple being picked up on the same day as Christmas presents, meaning they only turn up in search results at a time that they're more likely to be returned.
For categories that don't require free returns, I still don't think it's ideal as I know there are plenty of people out there who will swallow the loss rather than go to the trouble of returning something, because I'm that kind of person. My last 3 purchases on Amazon have been unsatisfactory, but I can't be bothered of going to the trouble of dealing with them.
Lastly, you'd have to exclude any product in a category that doesn't allow returns, and I can't see Amazon running multiple different systems for reviews. Tbh, I can understand it, as buyers wouldn't necessarily know or understand that different systems are being used, so could end up misled.
Seller_RguKGMHvWFmo3
Would have been far better if you had listened to sellers who have made suggestions about the review process such as the commenter above saying that out of 1000 products sold, only 10 returned, 10 reviewed that leaves 980 where a buyer has no clue about its popularity and whether customers liked enough to keep.
Once again Amazon is focusing on the wrong things and making changes to the wrong thing.
Seller_KddUFgEADQxeb
That's fine. My issue is the customer service feedback, declining numbers of customers prepared to leave positive feed back. The rate of feed back is circa 10x less than it was 10years ago and so our feedback has fallen from 97% to 92%. Customers believe that almost 1 in 10 people have a problem. The truth is only 0.04% have an issue they are prepared to complain about. Perhaps this metric could be given more prominence to customers rather than what appears as declining service levels
