I recently got an email offering 50% off a seller's products if I left a good review. This is happening on all marketplaces, not just Amazon. The only way I see to truly solve the problem is only allowing verified buyers to leave a review.
I signed up with a throwaway e-mail account. They sent a step-by-step guide to go to Amazon, enter a specific search term, scroll until I found their product, purchase it, and then send them the receipt for reimbursement.
They didn't ask me to write a review. They only wanted to generate the appearance of organic search traffic to their product.
So in order to even make the first few sales they need to generate a bunch of fake reviews.
This is extremely well known phenomenon especially in the Chinese market where it is also extremely standard to get a bunch of fake reviews to get the ball rolling on sales. Guess what, it happens in the US too.
I don't endorse it, but the sellers are just doing what the buyers incentivize them to do.
I've tried raising the issue repeatedly with Amazon, but I've now given up and look forward to the random crap I get sent almost on a monthly basis.
I didn't, but did report it to Amazon (no idea if they cared at all.)
They could ship an empty box if they just needed a tracking number. If the customer isn't coming into the feedback loop, they don't need the product.
The people who work on this at Amazon read HN, but this article won't be their first exposure.