Amazon does fake reviews for their products themselves. Just go and have a look at the one line five star reviews of kindles to get some idea.
It's going to take more than a line from some random guy to convince me of this claim. I've found Amazon gives amazing customer support, and works very hard for good reviews. Unless you can point to some evidence, then I will assume it's nonsense.
I am not commenting on Amazon customer service, which is great. I am talking about the 5 star reviews posted on Amazon products by people who have only ever posted either just one review in their entire life, or they post multiple 5 star reviews, but all on a single day, because that was the day they were paid to write these reviews. I just went to Amazon Fire TV page and randomly selected these samples from the first two pages of 5-star reviews: All these one line reviews have been posted today, April 10, 2015, and all of them are Amazon Verified Purchases; meaning, Amazon has verified that these individuals have really bought and paid for the products. Review 1 Review 2 Review 3 Review 4 Review 5 There was a plague of such reviews on the Amazon fire phone page a couple of months ago when the phones rating was going down the drain. These reviews are only there to ensure that the average star rating of the product does not go below 4 stars, nothing else. I first noticed such reviews on Amazon when I was shopping for their kindle e-ink reader 3 years ago.
Whenever I buy an item from Amazon, they always send me an email asking me to review the item. I sometimes do so -- when an item is exceptionally good or exceptionally bad. They always publish my reviews verbatim, even when I submit extremely harsh critiques. I am pretty good (NOT perfect) at figuring out which reviews are honest & which are shills. But any time that I get a lemon, Amazon gives me have ample time to return it for a full refund -- painlessly. As for those who sell good reviews for pay - it's reprehensible, but I doubt that the courts will intervene with anyone's right to be the back end of a pig. Caveat Emptor As for Kindles -- I own 3 of them. They're "good value." I rated only 1 of them --3 stars. It was published.
