Hi. We really glad you’re enjoying this article on The Big Tech Question. If you love this article more than your immediate family, can you please click this dubious-looking link and leave us a five-star review on Amazon!
If you’re not enjoying this article (and, Lord knows, you wouldn’t be the first) then please click this dubious link so we can usher you into a backroom and bribe you to go quietly, instead of leaving a one-star rant?
If you’re sick of getting this kind of email every time you order something from an Amazon Marketplace seller, you’re not alone. Order anything from a MacBook to a bog brush, and within days the pathetic begging letter will arrive, as vendors crave your affection like a six-week-old puppy. And unlike Fido, there’s no easy to way to put them down.
Sometimes the begging descends into outright bribery. Here’s David Artiss detailing how one watchstrap vendor offered him a measly dollar to put an extra star on his Amazon review. I’ve also been sent letters through the post (presumably to cover up any evidence trail left by using Amazon’s official email system), offering me additional trinkets if I leave a five-star review for the product I’ve just bought. Consequently, I now place more faith in Noel Edmonds’ ability to cure cancer than I do Amazon reviews.
How to stop the Amazon reviews emails
The rotten news is there’s no way simple way to switch off these messages. Amazon doesn’t provide any means to disable messages from Marketplace Vendors in its skimpy Communication Preferences settings. Even with all promotional emails switched off, I still get plagued with this nonsesnse.
The surefire way to avoid such messages is to buy only from Amazon itself, but that does vastly reduce the variety of goods you can order from the retailer. To ensure you’re only seeing goods being sold by Amazon itself, search for an item (“headphones” in our example shown below) and, in the list of filters that runs down the left-hand side of the screen, tick Amazon.co.uk.
The alternative is to apply filters to your emails. All of these begging letters arrive with the words “Amazon Marketplace” in the sender’s name, so you can filter off all emails containing those words.
In Gmail, for example, click the Settings cog and then choose Settings. Choose the Filters and Blocked Addresses tab. Type “Amazon Marketplace” in the From field and press Continue, then tick Skip Inbox and Apply The Label, and create a label called Amazon Marketplace.
Henceforth, whenever a new begging email arrives, it should simply nestle in the Marketplace folder and not darken your main inbox. You may need to check it from time to time if a Marketplace order goes astray or you’ve contacted a vendor about something, but it’s less irritating than the constant pleas for reviews.
If you’ve found a better way to deal with these, please let us know in comments below. We’ll email you in ten minutes to remind you to leave us a comment, just in case you forget…
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