What is review gating, and why does it get sellers banned?

Review gating is asking a customer how happy they are, and then showing them a different next step depending on what they said. Score it highly and you get the review page. Score it poorly and you get a private complaints form that nobody else ever sees.

Why it is tempting

Because the first version of the argument sounds responsible. You are catching problems before they become public. You are giving an unhappy customer a route to a refund instead of a rant. Nobody set out to commit fraud; they set out to do customer service and reached for the nearest tool.

And it works, in the narrow sense. Ratings go up. That is exactly the problem.

Why it is prohibited

A star rating is supposed to be a sample of what customers think. Gating makes it a sample of what your happiest customers think, while still presenting it as the former. Every platform that hosts reviews treats this as manipulation:

• Amazon forbids any attempt to influence reviews, and selectively soliciting positive ones falls squarely inside that.
• Google prohibits review gating by name in its contributed-content policy.
• Trustpilot requires that invitations go to customers without regard to their likely opinion.
• The FTC has taken enforcement action against companies that suppressed negative reviews, which makes this a legal exposure in the US, not only a policy one.

How to spot it in a tool you are paying for

Vendors rarely use the phrase. They describe the mechanism as a benefit. Treat all of these as the same thing:

• “Intercept unhappy customers before they review.”
• “Route 4- and 5-star customers to Amazon.”
• “Negative feedback goes straight to your inbox instead.”
• Any threshold setting that decides who is shown the review link.

If there is a satisfaction question on screen one and the destination on screen two depends on the answer, the tool gates reviews, whatever the marketing page calls it.

What to do instead

You do not have to choose between catching problems and staying compliant. You can do both — you simply cannot use the answer to decide who sees the review link.

• Show everyone the same screen. Review links and your contact address together, for every customer, regardless of what they scored.
• Ask your questions first, and act on them privately. A survey tells you the handle snapped on three orders this month. That is the fix, and it is worth more than the one review you might have suppressed.
• Read the distribution, not an average. Five 1s and five 5s average to a 3, and so do ten 3s. Those are completely different businesses.

Monact is built so this is not a choice you have to keep making — see how we stay compliant.