As someone who really likes Amazon, I really hope someone at Amazon read this and brings it to Jeff Bezos. The fake reviews are absolutely killing Amazon's usefulness to me. This, and the practice of grouping reviews for unrelated items (notorious for things like phone cases).
I am guessing that this is probably the result of doing data analytics and finding that sales increase by allowing these shady practices. But eroding your brand and making the site less useful to loyal customers will eventually catch up to you when dedicated customers leave and evangelize other services.
What's funny, is it's really upset me that Newegg has headed in this direction as well... It's better than most things when you're looking for very specific products, but the generic items on Amazon are horrible.
I am guessing that this is probably the result of doing data analytics and finding that sales increase by allowing these shady practices. But eroding your brand and making the site less useful to loyal customers will eventually catch up to you when dedicated customers leave and evangelize other services.
Please fix it!