Top Reviewers On Amazon Get Tons Of Free Stuff

They get to choose items from a list, so I'd hope they choose stuff they can use.

I will often instantly move on from items with no reviews, while stay on the page to carefully read reviews otherwise, and often the negative reviews will clearly point out downsides that won't affect me, or at least make me think the item is ok for the price, so I'm not that surprised.

Certain mediocrity is sometimes preferable to the uncertainty of no reviews.

I think it's a case of correlation, not causation: a product gets negative reviews if there are people buying it. Essentially, a product without reviews is a product that people aren't buying (hence, not reviewing).

Also, a negative review might end up being positive for someone else. I have recently been looking at reviews of Sony noise-cancelling earphones, and made sure to read the negative review(s) as well. One reviewer gave it one or two stars because they thought the noise-cancellation functionality was not worth it. Somewhere, though, in his negative review he mentioned that the sound quality is excellent. Having older version noise-cancelling earphones and being happy with them, I assumed he got a faulty pair and decided to buy them anyway. (I actually ended up buying Onkyo earphones, but that because I ended up by their booth at the last IFA, tested the headphones and fell in love)

This is true for me with third party sellers. I've had bad experiences where small third party sellers list products incorrectly on Amazon and I have to go through the process of returning the product. A negative review can provide evidence that users are getting shipped the right product in the right condition.

In these cases, I often don't care whether the user actually likes the product. I just want to know they got the right product in good condition.

Makes sense. A negative review implies that the product was delivered. No reviews calls into question the legitimacy of the seller.

There is an interesting talk by Jason Cohen about honesty in business including Canon's experiment with negative reviews: http://vimeo.com/48549019

As a hibernating vine reviewer, I guess I also disagree.

I was offered mostly books to review. You sometimes get an early print full of spelling errors, which was quite a pain to read, especially if the book was not to your liking (most weren't to my liking). So, although I didn't pay for the book, I have spent a few hours fighting the urge to use it as compost. No way I will think more favourably about the book. However, I did spend some time thinking about the books I read and did try to write useful and balanced reviews because I felt as if I was paid to do so, and that it wouldn't be fair not to. This is despite not having to review every item you receive.

Only once I managed to get some earphones for reviewing . they were terrible compared to what I would normally buy, and so would have never bought them otherwise. And that was that I wrote in my review. Would I be more negative if I had to buy the earphones? I don't think so. I'd return them to Amazon and probably not write a review at all.

I stopped reviewing for Vine after a short while. Since I couldn't give or throw the stuff they sent me, I imagined me drowning in a pile of terrible, misspelt books after going deaf by rubbish earphones. I actually don't know how I got to be a Vine reviewer in the first place. I didn't have that many reviews (less than 10 when I started, if I remember correctly). Anyway, to begin with it felt like a honour (and a chance to bag free goodies) and at the end it was a chore (and discussions with myself whether it's moral to throw the stuff away) and I stopped.

They do say if someone got it through vine.

Are you implying they got free stuff for reviewing the review system of Amazon so more people start reviewing ? :-)