Amazon has the power to fix this. They don't seem to care. Simple logic and heuristics would be enough. Amazon allows anyone to post a review. You don't even

Amazon has the power to fix this. They don't seem to care. Simple logic and heuristics would be enough. Amazon allows anyone to post a review. You don't even have to buy the product. That is fundamentally wrong. That's the first easy step: If you did not buy the product on Amazon you cannot post a review. Amazon allows people who receive deep discounts to post reviews. That is ripe for manipulation. And so, the second filter is simple: If someone doesn't pay at least N%, say 50%, for a product they don't get to post a review. Amazon allows people to post a review at any time, even before the product ships. You can post a review for toothpaste before you actually use it. The third filter would include a variable purchase-to-review period. The length of this period is different depending on the type of product. Maybe someone who buys a USB cable can post a review a couple of weeks after actually receiving it --but not sooner. Someone buying weight loss pills might need to wait 60 days. In other words, introduce some common sense into a process that would only allow actual retail buyers of a product to experience the product for a reasonable amount of time before allowing them to post a review, positive or negative. It goes beyond that. Negative reviews need to be routed to the vendor before they appear publicly on Amazon. Why? Amazon needs to give vendors a first shot at solving the problem. The current system is moronic. People can give a USB cable a bad review because they don't like the color. The thing might work just fine but the person wanted a different shade of green and can give the product a 1 star review. This is nonsense. In general terms, Amazon reviews, due to Amazon's own incompetence, are pretty much worthless these days.