Last week, Amazon ended it years-old policy of hooking up its reviewers with free or deeply discounted products, which many had complained skewed the ratings into more positive numbers of stars, causing them to appear further towards the top of ratings lists by as many as two stars.

The new policy takes away the vendor freebies, except in the case of books in the Amazon Vine program where reviewers trusted by Amazon are still able to receive advance copies.  According to an Amazon spokesman, reviews that were received prior to the policy change are only being retroactively removed if they are excessive, and don’t comply with prior policy.  That leaves a huge number of reviews with false ratings that will continue to leave buyers leery of their validity.

Amazon also needs to deal with the verified purchase program, where a reviewer who purchases a reviewed item from Amazon receives a “verified purchase” icon on the review.  The program causes readers of reviews without the icon (meaning that the item was purchased at another site or store) to believe that the review is less trustworthy.  If Amazon reviews are to be as unbiased as possible, this program also needs to be revamped.

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