Multiple sellers are reporting that Amazon’s return flow is now prompting customers to rate products with a 5-star widget during the return process itself — specifically positioned above the “Continue” button after a customer has already selected a return reason like “Defective.” This represents a notable shift in how Amazon collects feedback and raises important questions about review integrity and customer experience.
What’s Happening
- Screenshots from multiple independent sellers show a 5-star rating prompt appearing mid-return, not post-return
- The prompt appears after a customer has already indicated a problem (e.g., selecting “Defective” as the reason)
- The widget is positioned directly above the action button, making it a prominent part of the flow
- This behavior has been corroborated across separate seller accounts, suggesting it’s a platform-wide change, not a test or isolated incident
Why This Matters
- Review quality risk: Customers returning defective items may be incentivized to leave positive ratings to expedite the return, skewing your product’s review profile
- Metric tracking: If you monitor star ratings as a health indicator, this change may create artificial spikes or distortions in your data
- Customer psychology: The timing may influence behavior in ways that don’t reflect genuine product satisfaction
What to Watch For
- Monitor your recent reviews for unusual patterns (e.g., 5-star ratings paired with negative written feedback)
- Track whether your star rating climbs despite stable or declining sales, which could indicate this flow is affecting your metrics
- Document any changes you observe in your review composition over the coming weeks
How Squatio helps
Squatio Decode includes Sentiment IQ, our review analysis engine, which can help you identify and flag potentially inauthentic or misaligned reviews — such as 5-star ratings paired with critical written feedback or other anomalies. If Amazon’s mid-return rating prompt is creating a mismatch between star ratings and review sentiment, Sentiment IQ will surface those patterns, helping you understand which reviews reflect genuine customer experience and which may be artifacts of the new flow. This is especially valuable if you’re trying to distinguish real product issues from review-flow distortions.
Have you noticed this prompt in your own returns flow, or seen unexpected patterns in your recent reviews that might correlate with this change?
Source: https://www.ecomcrew.com/amazon-rating-request-during-returns/