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> In a zero-trust marketplace it is impossible to ascertain the truthfulness of such statements.

Spot check via secret shopping. Get a few complaints about a seller doing this, place an order to an Amazon.com employee's home address and have that employee report in whether there's a "pay for review" in the package. Easy.

Can't come from their competitor that way.

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some places will only put this in like 1/4 or 1/10 of the packages, so this isn't sure-fire either.

Sure, but then that reduces the effectiveness of such techniques by 1/4 or 1/10, while still carrying the risk a secret shopper finds it.

you don't need 100% of customers to leave a positive review, that would actually be suspicious in itself!

a couple hundred or a couple thousand 5-star reviews is plenty anyway. It's the old "don't be greedy and get noticed" thing.

plus, you can get an initial bump from taking another item and changing the name, or buying from one of the "free item for positive review" services. The fake reviews just need to be enough to offset the ongoing bad reviews. 1/10 boxes is fine.

Can't Amazon but 100 boxes, open then and look for the note, and close and bring back to the store and sell again?

Or don’t buy anything not fulfilled by amazon?

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