Appealing a review to an admin

This lesson prepares you to: Raise an appeal, and know the grounds that are and are not accepted.

What an appeal is for

An appeal asks a Helm admin to look at a review that breaks the rules. It is not a request to remove a rating you think is unfair. Those are different things and mixing them up is why most appeals fail.

Grounds that are accepted

• Abuse or harassment. Personal attacks, slurs, threats.
• Personal information. A review containing somebody's address, phone number, real name or private messages.
• Wrong subject. A review that is clearly about a different product or a different seller.
• Content that has nothing to do with the purchase. A review used as a soapbox.
• Extortion. "Give me a discount or this stays at one star." Report this every single time.
• Family safety. Anything unsafe for a platform with minors on it.

Grounds that are not accepted

• "It is unfair." A buyer is allowed to have had a bad experience.
• "It was the carrier's fault." Real, and still their experience. Reply and explain it instead.
• "I already refunded them." Refunding does not buy back the review. It very often earns an edit, though, because the buyer chose to change it.
• "They never contacted me first." Nobody is required to.
• "It is dragging my average down." That is what an average is.

How to raise one

You get one open appeal per review, so the same row cannot be appealed repeatedly. Make it count.

1. Open the review on your shop and raise the appeal from it.
2. State the ground, not the grievance. "This contains my home address" gets acted on. "This is completely unfair" does not.
3. Point at the specific words. An admin reading a long review needs to know which part.
4. Send it once and wait. Filing four appeals on the same review does not speed it up.

The outcomes

Both outcomes are recorded. Which brings us to the reason any of this is worth believing.