Honest Question - would you actually buy something where most of the reviews are 'honest and unbiased' ones from reviewers like us?

There have been a couple times where I've received complete garbage products to review. Like actual trash. For example, I got a small pillow that was full of polyester (or cotton? the 'normal' filling for pillows), but also what looked like clothing scraps, newspaper, wood chips, and pieces of yarn. There were loose threads everywhere, filling poking out, and lumps. The product page on Amazon had around thirty 5-star reviews all raving about the quality and how beautiful it was. There were no reviews with photos, probably because they received the same miserable looking pillow I did. I tried to contact the seller to talk about it and see if this was the norm or if I got a defect. No response. I wound up not leaving a review at all because the review website that I got the product through bans users who leave negative reviews without discussing them with the sellers first.

What are your thoughts? After this experience, I'd say no, I probably wouldn't consciously buy something that had been on one of these popular product testing sites. There are some quality products and good deals, but it seems like they're mostly just knockoffs and junk. I've received a couple other items that were almost as bad as the pillow, so I know my experience isn't that atypical.

I know the point of these websites is to help new sellers get their products ranking on Amazon and start getting actual sales but some of the stuff that's being sold is actual junk. Plus, some of us are requesting every vitamin, phone case, and supplement we can find because they're all free or we want to increase our Amazon reviewer ranking. There's no way to review so much stuff in a week or two when you're getting 5 boxes a day. Most of these 'honest' reviews are fake.