Amazon is missing an opportunity here. Yes, these reviews are a problem but they are also causing this problem because of the rules surrounding reviews and the way they use them.

I say this from first hand experience. One of the businesses I own sells on Amazon. We don't game the system but sometimes feel pretty stupid doing so. You would not believe the lengths to which competitors will go to cause damage to other sellers.

Rule: Anyone, regardless of whether they purchased the item or not, can leave a review.

Consequence: It is easy to buy reviews to either bolster your position or damage competitors. The fact that non-purchaser reviews are allowed means that people with no contact with your product are just as visible as those who do.

Rule: Reviews are anonymous.

Consequence: There is no accountability. Anyone can make up a pen name and go to town.

Rule: The seller is not given access to the reviewer's real identity and order number and cannot communicate with them except for public comments (which are always a bad idea as you can be baited into a flame war by a smart competitor).

Consequence: Again, anonymity means no consequences at all. A reviewer can call you a "fraudulent scam artist" and your product "fake" and they are nearly 100% immune from having to respond to their accusations. Again, this is gamed by nasty actors in the system.

Rule: Amazon will not remove reviews.

Consequence: Nasty or inaccurate reviews remain and there's nothing you can do about it.

Rule: There is no mechanism through which a seller can engage with an unhappy buyer to fix a problem before a review goes public.

Consequence: OK, this is more of a "would be nice to have this feature" than a rule. The point is that in the real world if a customer of yours has a problem they will usually email of phone you to discuss their grievance and, if you run a reputable business, you'll do all you can to make them happy. On Amazon they can come to the site angry, blast away and have no resolution whatsoever because the seller has virtually no way to identify them and reach out. In a better world a negative review would be routed to the seller with 48 hours for resolution before it posts. This would benefit the buyers and give sellers the opportunity to offer amazing customer service.

When selling on Amazon you are selling within a totalitarian regime with bipolar disorder. They don't even follow their own rules. On top of this Seller Support can sometimes be more dangerous then helpful due to lots of people in there being totally clueless or incompetent. Contacting them is an absolute last resort.

Example: We had a case where a customer ordered 3 units of one of our products and only received 1. They left a 1 star negative PRODUCT REVIEW pretty much stating that. Product review rules state that they are not for fulfillment reviews. They are for, well, product reviews. Do you think Amazon Seller Support removed that damaging review? Nope. They kept parroting the line "this is within published guidelines" and sent us a link to the guidelines. The third paragraph or so in the guidelines says, to paraphrase, "product reviews are not for fulfillment problems".

Why didn't we ship this customer the 3 units they ordered? Well, here's where it gets interesting. We don't ship anything! Amazon does! All of our product sits at various Amazon warehouses and we pay them for fulfillment! So, Amazon allowed a 1 star negative PRODUCT REVIEW to stick even though they screwed up fulfillment.

It doesn't end there. We wanted to contact the customer to ship them the missing 2 units for free and make good on the order. The problem is that Amazon does not provide sellers with the identity of reviewers or any order or contact information. We could not contact this buyer no matter how much we begged and pleaded with Amazon to let us fix this order. What's worst is that THEY refused to contact the buyer themselves. Theline was "the customer has to call our customer service line". Well, how the FUCK do we make that happen?

Usage:

Amazon integrates customer product reviews into their product search ranking algorithm. This means that negative reviews make your products rank lower in search results. This alone opens the door to gaming the system because, well, if you want to rank better just buy a pile of good reviews any way you can.

Why do you have to do this? Aside from the fact that there are various "review wars" going on within Amazon (where shady sellers will pay review farms to knock your product down) there's the unbalance in the system.

Who is more motivated to leave reviews? Happy or unhappy people? Well, the vast majority of buyers don't leave any reviews. I've been using Amazon since day one and can't remember the last time I left a review. Happy buyers rarely do leave reviews. This means that the most motivated are those who have a problem, serious or not, relevant or not, fake or real.

Amazon does not seem to weigh this into their use of product reviews for ranking. Negative reviews must take into account the average rate of reviews and review scores given for a given category.

What do I mean by this? If you are selling a weight loss product there's a far greater probability of negative reviews whether the product is good or not. Why? Because people would rather sit at home watching TV than go use your bike or whatever to lose weight. Result? Unhappy buyer who then goes to Amazon to take it out on you. If, on the other hand, you are selling a screwdriver, chances are that if the quality is reasonable nobody is going to bother leaving a review, good or bad. The system does not take into account the reality of the motivation behind leaving reviews and unfairly ranks and damages products based on this scale.

Another aspect of this is the time from purchase to review. If you sell a weight loss product it is likely that someone leaving a review BEFORE THEY GOT THE PRODUCT (which does happen) or 2 DAYS AFTER THEY GOT IT should not leave a "Does not work. Actually gained 2 lbs" review. The system is so broken...

Fraudulent reviews would evaporate overnight if reviews where not a control variable in the ranking algorithm, anonymity was removed and sellers where given a reasonable opportunity to deal with grievances before reviews go public. And, yes, of course, you don't get to leave a review unless you actually bought the product.

I could go on, but that's the basics.