The vine program is a disaster for Amazon reviews credibility IMO. The reviewers are almost never invested in the product and most come down to <i>&quot;this product does the thing it says it will do!&quot;</i> and then goes on to some largely irrelevant surface details <i>&quot;looks great, fits just right in my purse&quot;</i> and perhaps compares it to items in a completely different class instead of its actual competition <i>&quot;these $90 headphones are much better than my iphone ones&quot;</i>. Some do make a good effort and can be supplementarily useful but they just don&#x27;t have the same concerns as people looking to shell out full price.<p>I understand Amazon&#x27;s (face value) motivation for it; decent products that are passed by because nobody reviewed it. But once you have one or two decent reviews all they do is add to the noise. Some sectors I&#x27;ve been looking at lately (eg USB chargers) are absolutely flooded with them to the point where it can be hard to find regular reviews. I used to use sorting by average customer review as a quick hack to see some of the best products in a sector, now it is often synonymous with &quot;most spammed&quot;; they are killing a key USP.<p>It&#x27;s all very well playing the &quot;we are transparent and non-coercive&quot; card but the reality is people are very unlikely to start rocking the boat when you are handing them free stuff, no matter Amazon&#x27;s position. And call me sceptical but don&#x27;t forget the role of the selection process.<p>I&#x27;m sure it helps sales in the short term but long term it&#x27;s a massive own goal. IMO they could salvage it by enforcing a 2 freebie reviews limit, or allowing users to filter them-- especially in the overall star rating.