Marketplace Review Management: Seller Ratings and Negative Reviews

The lasting way to raise your marketplace rating is to make review collection a routine, reply to negative reviews quickly and concretely, and fix the operational problem that caused the complaint at its source. In Turkey, the legal framework for this became much clearer on 1 August 2026: only people who bought the product may review it, negative reviews must stay online for at least a year just like positive ones, and buying reviews is explicitly banned.

So the answer to "how do I get a negative review removed?" is usually "you can't, but your reply can change its impact." This guide is written for sellers on Turkish marketplaces such as Trendyol and for brands selling to Turkish consumers through their own stores.

Are product reviews and seller ratings the same thing?

No. Marketplaces track two separate signals:

• Product reviews: The stars and comments a buyer gives the product itself. They appear on the product page and can affect everyone selling the same item.
• Seller or store rating: A score that reflects your store's overall performance. The marketplace calculates it not only from stars but also from operational criteria it sets itself.

Trendyol explains how its seller rating is calculated in the seller rating courses on Trendyol Akademi, and the rating breakdown in your seller panel shows which criterion is pulling your score down. Because the weightings change over time, we recommend checking your own panel rather than third-party blog lists claiming "criterion X counts for Y percent."

In practice the two are linked. A product that ships late, arrives incomplete or does not match its description comes back both as a low product review and as a complaint that lowers your store rating.

What changed for online reviews in Turkey on 1 August 2026?

An amendment to Turkey's Commercial Advertising and Unfair Commercial Practices Regulation, published in the Official Gazette on 1 July 2026, took effect on 1 August 2026. The revised Article 28/B directly affects sellers and marketplaces that collect consumer reviews online:

• Only people who purchased the product or service may review it. Reviews from channels where the purchase cannot be verified may not be published.
• After the necessary checks, reviews are published for at least one year without distinguishing between positive and negative, sorted by an objective criterion such as date or score.
• If separate scores are collected for the product, the delivery and the seller, all of them are shown in the same area in an easily accessible way.
• When the seller resolves the consumer's grievance, this is published without delay, after verification, in the same place as the original review.
• No agreement may be made and no service may be purchased to obtain untrue reviews or endorsing statements aimed at boosting sales.
• Reviews containing health claims that breach the rules may not be published, and reviews without purchase verification may not be used in advertising.

Article 28/C, which covers complaint websites, also changed: the complaint platform gives the seller 48 hours to respond before publishing a review, and if no response arrives in that window the review is published as is. A store that does not monitor complaint sites can lose its right of reply without noticing.

Can you get a negative review removed?

Not just because it is negative. Marketplaces must display their review publication rules in the review area or through a link, and a review can only be removed if it breaks those rules (insults, sharing personal information, content unrelated to the product, or other grounds the platform sets). Base your request on those rules; saying "this review is unfair" is not enough on its own.

In most cases the more effective route is to solve the problem and make that visible. Thanks to the new rule above, once you resolve the customer's grievance, that information can be published right next to the original review. A shopper who visits the product page later sees that a problem happened and that it was solved.

How should you respond to negative reviews?

A good reply has four parts: acknowledging the problem, an apology or thanks, a concrete fix and a contact channel. Getting defensive, blaming the customer or pasting the same template under every review sends a bad signal to the other shoppers reading it.

Two examples:

For a late delivery complaint: "We are sorry your order arrived late. We checked the dispatch date; the delay happened in our own preparation process, and we changed our warehouse schedule this week. If you message us through the store inbox with your order number, we will look into it for you personally."

For a size or fit mismatch: "Thank you for your feedback. After your review we updated the size chart on the product page with measurements in centimeters. You can start an exchange through the returns process, and if you get stuck, reach us through the store inbox."

Points to watch:

• Do not include personal information such as order numbers, phone numbers or addresses in your reply; invite the customer to the marketplace's messaging channel.
• Do not promise compensation you have not agreed to or a change you will not make.
• Avoid replies that make health claims about the product; this is especially risky for food supplements and cosmetics.
• Write a short, personal thank-you under positive reviews too; a store that only answers complaints looks defensive.

What should you do to collect more reviews?

Most satisfied customers do not write a review on their own, so reminders help. The right timing is to wait until the product can actually be used: a few days after delivery for a T-shirt, a few weeks for a kitchen appliance.

Send reminders only through channels the marketplace allows, such as an insert card in the package, the marketplace's messaging system or its own review reminder. Using customer data you received from the marketplace for other purposes can conflict with both the platform's rules and personal data protection law.

Be especially careful with discounts, gifts or points in exchange for reviews. Any reward conditional on a positive review falls under the regulation's ban on "agreements to obtain endorsing statements," and even unconditional rewards are restricted by many marketplaces' seller rules. Say "we would love your review," not "give us 5 stars."

Accounts offering to "buy reviews" or "post reviews for you" are still easy to find. All of these services fall within the ban in the final paragraph of Article 28/B; they create legal risk and can expose your store to sanctions under the marketplace's own rules.

How do you reduce negative reviews at the source?

Review management is the last link in a chain of product and operational issues. Group your most frequent complaints every month; in most stores a few themes stand out clearly.

• Expectation gap: If images and descriptions present the product differently from reality, fixing the product page works better than any reply. See our post on marketplace product listings for title, image and description structure.
• Delivery and stock: An order that shows as in stock but cannot be fulfilled turns into both a cancellation and a complaint. Our marketplace inventory management post covers stock synchronization.
• Packaging: If damaged-on-arrival complaints keep repeating, change the box and the filling material.
• Answering questions: A store that is slow to answer product questions pushes an uncertainty that could have been cleared up before purchase into the period after purchase, which means into a review.

Weekly review routine

1. Read new product reviews and store ratings, and answer the ones waiting for a reply the same day.
2. Check complaint sites; the response window is 48 hours.
3. Report every issue you resolve to the marketplace so it appears next to the original review.
4. Turn recurring complaints into fixes on product pages, stock and packaging.
5. Watch the rating breakdown in your seller panel; do not act before you see which criterion has dropped.

If you want to manage your store's reviews, ratings and operations together, take a look at our marketplace management service.