[epo]

I think that requiring that you must have purchased the item before you can leave a review is key.

Of course giving a bully pulpit to people who can leave consequence-free complaints and negative feedback is key to Amazon's bogus sense of "community".

[bugsy]

Hm, looking up a couple products I have recently bought, very few reviews for them say "Verified Purchase". Yet most of these reviews are helpful. The useless ones are ones that say things like "Received it quickly!" from purchasers confused that they are not buying from ebay.

So following your protocol would get rid of these useful reviews which benefit me and others.

In the case being discussed, the customers that returned it as "not as described" did in fact purchase it from amazon, otherwise they would not be able to return it to amazon. So they would still be included.

[epo]

I personally don't value the opinions of people who just leave reviews out of a desire to see their words appear on a website somewhere (and the irony of writing this doesn't escape me).

I do agree with your view (directly below at the time of writing) that the root problem may be Amazon's refund mechanism which requires you to provide a reason. "Not as described" covers everything from "you said it was a book, I received a bag of carrots" to "I didn't understand it" or "I didn't agree with it".