Marketplace Pulse, an ecommerce intelligence firm which is collecting data about Amazon and their sellers, has revealed some information about Amazon shoppers behavior during COVID-19 quarantine. Over the past thirty days, Amazon buyers have left about a million negative reviews about sellers. This is more than two times over the usual amount. Buyers have been unhappy for the most part of the year actually. This year 13% of buyers had a negative shopping experience during the year compared to 5% in the previous year. The most common reason was failed promised delivery deadline. Previously, delivery problems were rare because most orders were processed by the FBA and buyers just started to enjoy Amazon’s 1-day free shipping with their Prime membership. That was cut short and went back to a good old week worth of wait.
According to Marketplace Pulse’s analysis of millions of recent sellers’ reviews, negative reviews have been growing since March. In the U.S., 87% of seller reviews were positive last month, compared to 95% a year ago. Just two months ago, mid-March, it was still 93%. While a small percentage change, the number of negative reviews rose from 150,000 to 420,000. Half of those were for sellers based in China, with the U.S.-based sellers accounting for 25%.
Amazon’s U.S. marketplace is not the only one affected by negative reviews, however. In Australia, for example, a quarter of reviews were negative at the end of April. In Japan, where negative reviews are rare, they increased from just above 2% to over 10%.
Part of the reason for the increase in negative reviews is the rise in overall sales volume, which increased both positive and negative reviews.