You can't trust Amazon. period. full stop. Their reviews are total shite, that's for sure. However, you can't trust their product listings either that you'll actually receive what you thought you purchased.

I don't disagree. But for some products it's sometimes hard to find reviews outside of Amazon. I also learned how to spot products that have fake reviews.

Agree. If folks have come across better sources for product reviews, would love to get your recommendation.

There are no universal sources. Each source should be viewed with skepticism. That said, I have found small discords to be pretty good for PC hardware/tech related recommendation. Reddit on the other hand seemed a bit terrible at times with outdated or overly fishy marketing power speaking instead of the consumer.

Yes and no. They have a fake review problem, for sure. But it's usually fairly obvious which reviews are fake and which are not. And Amazon reviews have something I don't really see anywhere else -- pictures. That's a feature I really like.

And when pictures are of a product not actually being sold in the listing... just yesterday I received a product that was NOT what was in any of the photos on the listing including the listing itself. Argh.

That's the primary way fake reviews happen. The seller gets thousands of sales of a high quality, good product, gets great reviews, pictures etc. and then they bait and switch to a cheaper, lower quality product at the same (or higher, because REVIEWS) price with a bigger margin.

Huge problem over there and Amazon has done nothing to stop it.

I wonder how the trustworthy review issue could actually be solved in a non-gameable way. Is this even possible? Truly unbiased opinion?