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How to Automate Review Requests on Amazon UK Safely

Automate Amazon review requests in the UK without breaking the rules: what Amazon allows, how the API works, CMA risks, and what to check in a tool.

Published 17 October 2026 By Osellpa editorial team Amazon seller advice

Seller checking an order request on laptop

You can automate review requests on Amazon UK, but only in one way that is safe: by automating Amazon’s own Request a Review action through the Selling Partner API (SP-API) or a tool built on it. Amazon writes and sends the message. You decide which eligible orders get it, and the software removes the repetitive clicking. Custom email sequences, incentives and selective targeting are where sellers get into trouble, and in the UK the legal stakes rose in 2025.

This guide explains what Amazon already does for you, what the official automation covers, how the process works step by step, what the CMA rules mean for your operation, and what to check before you connect a tool to your account.

TL;DR

Amazon’s Request a Review can be used once per order, between 5 and 30 days after delivery, and asks for both a product review and seller feedback.
Compliant automation means calling Amazon’s Solicitations API, so the buyer gets Amazon’s standard message, not your own wording.
Never automate incentives, review gating, requests for review changes or off-platform outreach. UK law now bans fake and concealed incentivised reviews.
An API request does not flag the order in Seller Central, so your tool needs its own record of what it has sent.
Judge any tool on official SP-API use, logs and suppression rules, not on promises of more five-star reviews.

What Amazon already does without you
What “automating” review requests really means
How compliant automation works, step by step
A worked example
The UK rules you must design around
Do reviews from automation look like bots?
Automation or Vine for a new product?
What to check before you connect a tool
Our view on review automation
Where Osellpa fits
Setting it up well: practical tips
FAQ
Sources

What Amazon already does without you

Before you add software, know the baseline. Amazon’s own systems already prompt buyers for reviews at no cost to you. Seller forum guidance on this is blunt: customers are already reminded by Amazon, and pestering them can backfire with a negative review, as one experienced seller put it in a Seller Central forum thread.

The manual Request a Review button on the order page adds a nudge on top of that. It has clear limits:

One request per order.
Available between 5 and 30 days after delivery. The window is measured from delivery, not from the order date.
It asks for a product review and seller feedback together.
Orders outside the window, already solicited, or otherwise ineligible will not receive another request.

Automation does not change these rules. It only applies them for you, order by order, without a person opening each one.

What “automating” review requests really means

Sellers use the phrase for two quite different things.

Automating Amazon’s own request

This uses the official route. Amazon’s Solicitations API workflow lets you check whether an order is eligible and, if it is, send the standard product review and seller feedback request. The message is Amazon-generated and not customisable. That is the point: it removes the chance of pressure, selective targeting or wording that breaks the rules.

Sending your own messages

Amazon’s UK communication guidance allows review or seller-feedback requests through Seller Central templates, third-party applications in the Appstore, or the API. It requires the communication to fall within 30 days of order completion and to contain the 17-digit order ID in the buyer’s preferred language. Custom promotional sequences, follow-up chains and anything that steers buyers by sentiment are the risky end of this. If you are asking whether to build a clever email funnel, the answer for UK sellers is no. Use the standard request.

How compliant automation works, step by step

Whether you build it yourself or use software, the process is the same. This follows the Selling Partner API documentation.

Connect an authorised SP-API application. Amazon requires authorisation from you as the selling partner.
Hold the right role. The developer application needs the Buyer Solicitation role (or the Product Listing role, as Amazon specifies).
Retrieve eligible actions. Call getSolicitationActionsForOrder for each order. Do not rely on date arithmetic alone.
Filter for delivered orders inside the permitted period.
Send one request. If productReviewAndSellerFeedback is available, call createProductReviewAndSellerFeedbackSolicitation.
Log the order ID and the response.
Monitor outcomes. Watch for 403 errors, ineligible orders and rate-limit responses.

One detail catches many sellers out. An API request does not visibly flag the order in Seller Central. A second request for the same order returns HTTP 403, and a manual click after an API request also fails. So your automation must keep its own record of what it has sent, or check eligibility first every time. If you use software, ask how it handles this. If you also click manually on some orders, expect some of those clicks to fail.

Rate limits matter at volume. A developer who built a tool on this endpoint reports a limit of one request per second per seller, with a burst of five. Treat that as a developer’s account rather than official policy and check the current figures in Amazon’s documentation. Either way, a sensible tool queues requests rather than firing them all at once.

A worked example

Say you sell a kitchen scale and ship 40 orders a day through FBA. Without automation, someone has to open each order between day 5 and day 30 and click. In practice that means a daily chore, and orders slip past day 30 unnoticed.

With automation, the software checks each delivered order daily. If Amazon reports the action as available, it sends the request and records the order ID. If Amazon reports it as unavailable, for example because the order was refunded or already solicited, it records that and moves on. Nobody decides which customers look happy. Every eligible order is treated the same way. That uniformity gives you a more representative sample of customer experience, which is the commercially useful goal. It also keeps you on the right side of Amazon’s rules.

Order eligibility branches to request or record

The UK rules you must design around

UK sellers face a stricter environment than many older seller guides describe.

Amazon’s policies. Amazon prohibits compensation for reviews, asking only for positive reviews, and asking customers to remove or change reviews. Its Community Guidelines are the reference.
The law. Fake reviews are explicitly banned under the DMCC Act, and Amazon has committed to stronger detection and sanctions, including possible selling bans for businesses using bogus reviews. The CMA’s fake reviews guidance covers commissioning fake reviews and concealed incentivised reviews, and says banned reviews include those incentivised by any means.
The penalty. The provisions apply to commercial practices from 6 April 2025. The CMA says the regime can expose an infringing business to a fine of up to 10% of global turnover, depending on how the law applies and is enforced.
Enforcement activity. The CMA’s online consumer reviews case page tracks its ongoing work, including action under its new powers in 2026.

If you are unsure whether a specific practice is lawful, take advice from a solicitor who knows consumer law. Do not rely on a software vendor’s assurance.

What never to automate

Offers of refunds, vouchers, free products or discounts in return for reviews.
Routing happy buyers to Amazon and unhappy ones to a private channel (review gating).
Requests that ask customers to edit or remove a review.
Outreach to buyers outside Amazon.
Messages that ask only for positive reviews.

The rule of thumb: if the automation behaves differently depending on how the buyer feels, it is a problem.

Do reviews from automation look like bots?

Shoppers sometimes ask whether Amazon reviews can be bots. Amazon says it uses automated and human checks, and in the UK only customers who have spent at least £40 on Amazon in the previous 12 months can submit ratings and reviews. Automating the request does not create reviews. A real buyer still has to choose to write one.

A missing Verified Purchase label does not by itself prove fraud either. Amazon treats review eligibility and the label as separate concepts. Amazon has also said it blocked more than 200 million suspected fake reviews globally in 2022. Unusual patterns are a reason to report or investigate, not proof that every review is automated.

Automation or Vine for a new product?

The two solve different problems. Amazon Vine is invitation-only for reviewers, who receive items free of charge and are expected to publish honest, unbiased reviews. Seller enrolment is a separate Seller Central process. Amazon’s seller material says eligible products can receive up to 30 authentic reviews, but its example timeline is not representative of every brand, so do not treat it as a guarantee.

A new ASIN can use both: Vine for early, disclosed feedback and the official request flow for ordinary delivered orders. Neither guarantees a positive outcome, and Vine is not a seller-controlled request sequence.

What to check before you connect a tool

UK sellers can find third-party automation in Amazon’s Selling Partner Appstore. Amazon’s listings describe tools that automate the official Request a Review flow. Verify the current permissions, marketplace coverage, pricing, data access and cancellation terms yourself before connecting your account.

Use this checklist:

Question	Good answer	Warning sign
How does it send requests?	Official SP-API, Amazon-generated message	Custom email funnel or off-platform contact
Does it check eligibility first?	Yes, per order	Date rules only
Can you see what was sent?	Order-level log with responses	No history
Can you suppress orders?	Yes, for refunds, returns and disputes, applied to everyone equally	Suppression based on sentiment
What does it promise?	Time saved, consistent coverage	More positive reviews
Does it handle 403 and rate limits?	Queues and retries sensibly	Fails silently

The CMA found in July 2025 that 54 of more than 100 reviewed businesses appeared potentially non-compliant, as noted on its case page. That is a practical lesson for buyers of software: audit logs, clear suppression rules and accessible policies are core features, not extras.

Our view on review automation

We build analytics and automation tools for Amazon sellers, and review requests are one of the jobs we think should be automated, because they are repetitive, rule-bound and easy to miss. The work is not hard to understand. It is just tedious when done by hand, and a missed 30-day window cannot be recovered.

Our view on review automation — overview diagram

What we would not automate is judgement about buyers. Amazon deliberately made its API standardise the message and make eligibility explicit, so software can remove clicking without handing the seller control over who gets nudged. We think that is the right design for sellers too. A review profile built on a representative sample of real experiences is more trustworthy to shoppers, and far safer for your account, than one built on selective asks.

We also think reviews belong in the same picture as the rest of your numbers. Review volume affects conversion, conversion affects ad efficiency, and ad efficiency affects profit. That is why we put review requests alongside profit tracking, PPC optimisation, inventory and reimbursement tracking in one toolkit connected to Amazon’s API, so you are not juggling spreadsheets and separate logins. If you are watching how advertising interacts with organic sales, our guide to checking 30 days of TACoS for ad cannibalisation shows the kind of cross-checking we mean.

— Harry

Where Osellpa fits

Automated review requests are part of the Osellpa toolkit, alongside profit tracking, PPC optimisation and inventory management. Plans are priced by tier: Launch at £10 per month or £96 per year, Scale at £20 per month or £192 per year, and Advanced at £40 per month or £384 per year. You can compare them on the Osellpa pricing page. Whichever tool you choose, run it through the checklist above first.

Setting it up well: practical tips

Start with a small test. Connect, run for a week, and compare the tool’s log to a sample of orders in Seller Central.
Do not mix manual and automated requests on the same marketplace unless you know how your tool handles the duplicate 403 response.
Keep the product experience first. A request cannot fix a faulty product or a late delivery. Check returns and customer messages alongside review volume.
Watch stock. Reviews drive sales, and sales drain inventory. If you run low, your ranking suffers. Our guides to automating replenishment without letting FBA fees eat margins and calculating FBA headroom cover that side.
Respond to negative reviews through proper channels. Fix the cause, use Amazon’s customer service tools where appropriate, and never ask the buyer to change a review.
Review your setup periodically. Amazon updates its policies, so recheck your tool’s permissions and behaviour every few months.

FAQ

Does Amazon automatically request reviews?

Yes. Amazon’s systems already prompt buyers for reviews at no cost to you. The manual Request a Review action adds one further request per order, available 5 to 30 days after delivery. Automation tools simply apply that same action to every eligible order.

Is there a review request tool for Amazon?

Yes. Amazon’s own Request a Review button is built into Seller Central, and third-party tools in the Selling Partner Appstore automate it through the SP-API. Choose on the basis of official API use, logs and suppression rules, and check pricing, permissions and cancellation terms before connecting.

Can Amazon reviews be bots?

You cannot assume so. Amazon uses automated and human checks, and UK reviewers must have spent at least £40 on Amazon in the previous 12 months. A missing Verified Purchase label does not prove fraud. Report anything suspicious through Amazon rather than treating it as proof.

Is there an Amazon reviewer programme in the UK?

Yes, Amazon Vine is available in the UK. It is invitation-only for reviewers, who receive products free of charge and are expected to give honest, unbiased reviews. Sellers enrol eligible products separately through Seller Central, and Vine is not a guarantee of positive reviews.