App reviews being removed with no notice or reason

Shopify App Store
1

Hi all,

Our app currently has 19 live reviews and 13 removed (all 5-star), so roughly 40% of the reviews are gone. The most recent one came down less than 24 hours after it was posted. That review is posted below, and the merchant is still using the app, we delivred more features they asked for, after the review, and they are happy:

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I fully support moderation. Fake and incentivised reviews hurt honest developers most. But the reviews we’ve lost are from real merchants using the app.

The hard part is we get nothing when a review is removed: no notification, no reason. So I can’t tell whether we’re doing something wrong, the merchant is, or an automated filter is producing false positives.

We have been reporting these to Shopify Partner support; they reply with a sweet templated answer and that the case is now with the governance team; and the governance team has been silent for months now.

Has anyone seen a similar removal rate recently, or found something in how they prompt for reviews that triggers removals?

For Shopify staf:

  • Is there a way to get a reason, or appeal? Partner support responds with a templated answer and then silence.

  • Could developers at least be notified when a review is removed?

Happy to share our app name and details privately with anyone from Shopify who wants to look. I just want to understand the situation and the criteria, so at least I know why our reviews are getting removed.

Thanks for any insight.

2

I’m dealing with exactly the same thing. I’ve got a few customers I’ve been going back and forth with for ages, some with 30+ email chains, who have paid me $100s in subscriptions and been using my app for months. They leave a genuine review, and it’s gone…

Shopify doesn’t seem to care. And to top it all off, I’m still seeing the usual fake-review offenders with reviews claiming an app “changed their life” after about one minute of use, sitting there proudly untouched.

3

Yeah, this is so disheartening. We’ve got a Plus merchant making 6 figures with us per month. They’ve had us installed for 2 years. Their review got removed.

Appeals through Partner support go into a black hole in the Governance team, never to be heard from.

From Partner support a month ago - still nothing.

Just a heads up, the email you receive will come from ecosystem-governance@shopify.com and will be sent to your Business Email Address. Once you receive it, please reply directly in that thread rather than sending a new email.