For credibility, I am the founder & CEO of Zentail (YC12), we have supported billions of dollars of Amazon GMV and our software helps sellers create winning lis

For credibility, I am the founder & CEO of Zentail (YC12), we have supported billions of dollars of Amazon GMV and our software helps sellers create winning listings. TLDR: Review programs aren't downright evil, but this one is egregious. Most people here are enraged by fake reviews, I think that's more than fair, but I also encourage everyone to think broader about the issues here. In general, review programs are necessary to prime the pump and Amazon has even rolled out their own version. Reviews are a critical piece of a winning listing on Amazon and without a path to get your product in front of consumers, you have no path to get reviews and only the incumbent products win. That's pretty bad for everyone, especially the consumer, it's not how a free market should operate. What's egregious here (outside of violating Amazon terms) is getting a refund only for a 5 star review. I strongly believe you should be able to give out a free product for a review, but that review should be honest. I understand that the incentives might make someone want to leave a positive review, but with proper guidance and even selection of quality reviewers you can mitigate that. Here's the big truth: at some point an Amazon listing has to live on it's own. At some point, your product will start to sell organically and there will be so many organic reviews, it will sink a listing really fast. The market opportunity to incentivize reviews (or even pay for fake reviews) with a bad product is actually pretty poor, good luck making enough profit to support all those free products you just shipped.