Amazon Has Just Registered to Sell Ocean Freight
This deal is huge, but I hope Amazon starts doing a little better diligence on their sellers.  I was initially drawn to Amazon for their amazing customer reviews - they were usually current and  decently, well-written - but most importantly they offered a resassurance that websites without product reviews didn't have.<p>Over the past year, I've noticed a HUGE uptick in the quantity of fake 5-star reviews.  They are so blatant it's frightening, and they usually go unnoticed in Amazon's default "Most Helpful" sorting.<p>In particular, the Home Office Desk Chairs landscape is pretty insane: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Home-Office-Desk-Chairs-Furniture/b?ie=UTF8&node=3733721" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Home-Office-Desk-Chairs-Furniture/b?ie...</a>.  I was trying to find a chair back in September, and I was appalled by some of the reviews I was seeing.  Top selling products, with several hundred reviews that averaged out to 4/4.5/5 stars.<p>This is a screenshot from back in September: <a href="http://imgur.com/qbCz0yE" rel="nofollow">http://imgur.com/qbCz0yE</a>, and it only contains a small sample of the "Awesome, highly recommend" reviews spattered around.  You'll notice this pattern on virtually every chair on Amazon, except the Aamazon basics chairs which wer launched sometime in late September / early October.  Their reviews seem pretty good so far (i.e. real), but unfortunately for me I had purchased a chair from eBay before these launched.<p>These patterns are pretty frighteneing (especially considering a lot of people are actually buying these things), especially considering I've experienced the same issues when shopping for others things.<p>Has anyone else had an experience like this? Or am I losing it?