I wouldn't be so confident on getting canned... I've found this to be an extremely common practice with new consumer electronics from no-name brands on Amazon. I would say more than 50% of such items I buy on Amazon come with an offer for a partial refund if you leave a 5 star review. This is actually the lame deal, typically if you establish a relationship with one of these companies (e.g. by leaving a 5* review for one of those offers) they'll start emailing you offering a 100% refund on certain items they're trying to get the score up on. I know someone who does this kind of thing on a pretty large-scale basis for multiple items per day and then resells them... she seems to make okay returns on it considering the low effort. I imagine you could even resell them right back on Amazon although I don't think she's tried that.
It's definitely against Amazon's policies, but clearly enforcement is not exactly bulletproof.
Will they though? I often hear stories of people reporting this to Amazon, being assured they'll look into it and the same seller still being up 6 months later.
It's definitely against Amazon's policies, but clearly enforcement is not exactly bulletproof.