[ilostmyshoes]

I've also personally seen a pattern in low score reviews on Amazon or other shopping sites where the person leaving the low score just simply didn't understand how to use the item properly, in some cases this is a majority of the bad reviews.

Another is when they had a problem with something external to the item itself such as shipping.

[derbOac]

One time I was reading reviews of teapots on another company's (not Amazon) website. They seemed like really well-made beautiful porcelain teapots, and I couldn't figure out why there were so many people leaving disappointed reviews about the teapots cracking. Eventually after noticing certain details and reading certain reviews, I realized the reviews were all from people who had been using the teapots to boil water, as if they were kettles. Suddenly these comments went from reviews of the teapots to an index of how many people don't understand the difference between a teapot and kettle.

[pydry]

I feel like there's a big gap in retail websites for reviews that encourage more back and forth between the reviewer and reviewee and maybe some independent arbitration to draw this stuff out.

Something like a cross between an issue tracker and a lightweight court of law.

If Amazon were whacked around the head with an antitrust stick like Microsoft was in 2001, this is the kind of innovation that might actually flourish from newer startups.