[JadeNB]

I had never heard of Amazon Vine before, but am willing to assume that there are a ton of problems with it; but this post doesn't clearly articulate them. It seizes on problems with two reviews, and seems premised on the idea that "I know my product is flawless, so the problem for any reviews that are less than 5 stars must be with the reviewer."

(The case doesn't seem very clearly made—despite the highlighted policy—for why it should be inappropriate for someone to write about their observations of someone else's experience with the product, only why it would be inappropriate to write "I hear lots of people don't like this" or similar. Also, the complaint about reviewers leaping to judgements is surely accurate, but more a problem with (at least non-expert) reviewing in general than with this particular program.)

[athorax]

  "I know my product is flawless, so the problem for any reviews that are less than 5 stars must be with the reviewer."

I disagree with this sentiment. They seem to fully recognize that plenty of people won't like their product, but the issue here is getting negative reviews from people who likely would have never spent actual $ purchasing it and therefor aren't in the same frame of mind as an actual customer.

[fastball]

Ok, but that has nothing to do with implementation and everything to do with concept, which should be obvious to anyone who is thinking about participating in Vine before they do so.

[athorax]

Agreed, but that also doesn't change the fact that Vine appears to have serious flaws in its reviewer selection process