Why trust the negative reviews? I'm sure it is common to try to hurt the competition by leaving fake negative reviews. If a company is willing to buy positive reviews, why would they stop at buying negative reviews?
Worse, that way you would end up avoiding the "fair players" who don't leave fake negative reviews with the competition.
Depends on the negative review. You ignore all the "it sucks" reviews. But the ones that go into detail about why it sucks are usually accurate. At least in my experience.
And in terms of trying to game out the fake reviews, I've found relying on the 2 to 3 star reviews are the best. The liars who are trying to trash the product tend towards 1 star. The liars who are trying to sell the product almost always go for 5 stars. 2 to 3 stars, sometimes 4, are usually the people who actually bought it.
Fake reviews aren’t all that cheap, in the scheme of things. Leaving bad reviews on the competition doesn’t have anywhere near the immediate impact on your bottom line as fake good reviews on your own products. I also haven’t seen reports of people being paid for bad reviews, when confessions of people being paid to write good reviews are all over the place.
If someone can post fake negative reviews on Amazon, Amazon can certainly afford to false flag negative reviews on everyone else. So either both parties are truthful or both parties are manipulative. Plus, it takes nontrivial effort to plausibly explain how a product is defective.
In case a popular product is simply handled by Amazon or other sellers, they aren't responsible for the quality itself. Bad review of a keyboard on one site is as valid as on another.
Because it has worked fine in avoiding bad products so far, and while it would suck for fair players to lose my business, as long as I avoid bad products that is what matters most to me as a buyer.
Worse, that way you would end up avoiding the "fair players" who don't leave fake negative reviews with the competition.