Yes, they accept reviews from non "Verified Purchasers". This is typically a platform for tiresome SJW soapbox palavering.
> before..delivered
Community Team at one time sanctioned this behavior. Now they don't bother.
> warfare
Were you perhaps paying into the minimum number of seller features? Not FBA?
> ad poison
As an ardent adblocker that's a bridge too far. That's more the province of disincentivizing 419 email scammer fake banks.
> nightmare
The consumer side nightmare is Community Team. Spend some time crafting a high value review then yoink "this review violates our terms" but never mentions which rule or with which language. I empathize with your suffering
"Your review has been removed for violating our rules"
'Which rule?' or 'Which part of my review?'
silence ensues or another link to the rules with no qualification.
Differently abusive are single character "reviews". I _HATE_ Communities Team. Everyone should complain about that first; they have a hand in seller misery. There is no department above them. There are no appeals. There is no recourse.
> that anyone bet their livelihood on Amazon
The safe bet as a side hustle seems to be drop-ship accounts paying neither warehousing nor ad spend.
Amazon Retail Customer Service quality has steadily decreased these prior three years about the same rate as FBA packaging atrocities. Ship a teddybear wrapped in bubbles in a giant box. Ship a laptop in a skin tight box. Send an SSD loose in a soft mailer.
Don't allow Amazon to be your sole selling platform.
On the buyer side ask for retail escalation to "put a note for the Auditors"
Once you write enough popular reviews you will receive email offering a variety of remuneration tactics to whore your dignity - confirming the prior reply. All such email is forwarded through Amazon. They do nothing to stop these solicitations clearly violating seller rules or Amazon Vine.
Amazon takes no actions when this behavior is reported. They really don't care.
Lifx, people who make "smart" lightbulbs, have gamed the amazon seller system to remove critical reviews -- even those by high rank amazon reviewers. They really don't like their product described as: Hardware Malware.
Amazon is Big Data. They could _easily_ identify generated reviews if they wanted.
They don't.
I myself stopped writing reviews as an emotionally abusive department at Amazon discourages critical reviews _albeit_ 5 star. Community Team is staffed by persons with reprehensibly poor English skills not fit to judge review compliance with vague rules.
Don't trust inarticulate reviews.
Don't trust articulate reviews without line breaks.
Don't trust products with more than 800 reviews.
But wait there's more...
Amazon will cancel your account for returning "too many" items. Catch 22.
how?