Sometimes you’ll leave a review on Etsy and want to go back and edit it for some reason…Maybe you want to upgrade or downgrade the review, or add a photo to it.
If you’ve left a review on Etsy and want to edit it, you can do that if it’s still within the original 100-day period from the estimated delivery date, which is when the review period starts. After that, you can’t edit the review. If the seller responds to the review at any time during that 100-day review period, that locks the review in, and it won’t be editable either.
So depending on what’s happened since you left the review, you might or might not be able to edit it!
Table of Contents
- Can I edit a bad review on Etsy?
- Can I edit a good review on Etsy?
- How does an Etsy review get locked in?
- Can a buyer have a review removed on Etsy after the review period?
- Can Etsy sellers remove reviews?
Some of the links in this article are affiliate links that will pay a small commission if they’re used to purchase something. To see the entire affiliate policy click here.
Can I edit a bad review on Etsy?
If you’re a customer who left a bad review, but the seller contacted you and fixed whatever was wrong, it’s helpful if you change the review to let other customers know that the problem was taken care of.
You can upgrade a bad review and edit your comments by going to your purchases and reviews section in your personal profile and finding the review that you want to edit. If the review is still within the 100-day review period, there will be a link to click on that will let you edit the review. You can select that and change the star rating and add comments about the positive customer service that you received.
If the link that you see says “Why can’t I edit my review?” it means that you can’t change the review.
This could be because the review period is over, or that the seller responded to the review.
When the seller responds to a review it locks the review in and makes it un-editable. I’ll talk about that a little more further on.
If you want to remove the review completely you’ll have to contact Etsy about that (see the section about removing reviews below) but you could also edit it and just delete the comments on the review and leave a period, since you can’t leave an empty review.
But if you want to remove it completely, read about that below.
Can I edit a good review on Etsy?
You can edit a review of any kind as long as the seller hasn’t responded and the review window is still open. There’s also no limit to how many times the review can be edited as long as it hasn’t been locked in, so you can edit it by adding a photo or changing your comments as long as the review isn’t locked.
Once the seller responds, though, you won’t be able to add photos or more details to the review.
Sometimes I have customers who post comments about how they plan on adding photos to their review later, but since I try to respond to all of my reviews I usually lock them out. (Sorry.)
Since Etsy doesn’t tell customers that the seller responded to a review, you won’t find out that it’s locked until you go back to edit it.
If that happens, you can still contact the seller through the Etsy messaging system if you need to.
How does an Etsy review get locked in?
If the seller responds to a review that you leave, the review is automatically locked and you won’t be able to edit it. This happens even if the review period is still open.
If the seller responds to the review then deletes their response, the review will still be locked and un-editable.
If you come to edit the review and see no response, but you can’t change anything in it, it could be that the seller responded, then tried to edit their response but deleted it instead.
Until recently, when sellers on Etsy leave a review response it didn’t give us the option of editing it, it only lets us delete the response or contact the buyer.
Now we can edit responses, but only on the Etsy seller app, so a lot of Etsy sellers don’t know that’s even an option.
And it doesn’t let us edit the response on desktop, so every now and then you’ll see a locked review because the seller didn’t post a response after trying to edit the first one.
Can a buyer have a review removed on Etsy after the review period?
What if you’re left a review, the seller responded or the review period has expired, but you want to have the review removed for some reason? Etsy can do that for you if you can verify that you’re the person who bought the thing that you reviewed. They can do this even if the review period is long gone or the seller has responded.
Contact Etsy support and ask for the review to be removed. They’ll verify your information and the order information, ask what product the review was for and when it was left, etc., and when they verify that you’re the person who ordered it, they’ll remove the review completely.
If the review period has passed you won’t be able to leave a new review. If the original review period is still active you may or may not be able to leave a new review, but you should assume that you won’t be able to!
I’ve had Etsy remove reviews that I left that were good at first, but then something happened and I didn’t want the review to be public anymore.
As long as you can prove that you’re the person who made the original purchase, Etsy can remove the review and you don’t need to give them a reason. They also don’t notify the seller that a review has been removed, so they probably won’t even notice.
To see the full Artisan Shopping Directory sections, including signups for discounts, click here.
Can Etsy sellers remove reviews?
Etsy sellers can’t remove or delete reviews, so we can help by pointing you in the right direction, but we can’t change or remove reviews ourselves.
Consumer protection laws don’t let us (or Etsy) manipulate reviews unless it’s for a really specific reason, so the customer has to be the one to change their own reviews.
If we do get a review that’s completely inaccurate, or that contains things like personal information, threats, or profanity, we can ask Etsy to remove the review.
Etsy makes the decision about what they can legally remove and what they have to leave up, but there are certain things that they’ll take down.
Sellers don’t have any control over that, though, so if you need to remove the review you’ll have to contact Etsy to do that.
I wrote an article about how to contact Etsy support, since they don’t make it easy!