It means that all Amazon ratings are potentially bullshit.
There's no way to generalize from one user/seller experience to all of them, but the fact that we don't really have evidence to the contrary definitely does sour the whole experience.
I generally avoid the third party sellers just because I like to use super-saver shipping to save money, but I'll go for the third party if the item is hard to find or the deal is amazing.
I'm sure this isn't wide-spread, but it still very strange behaviour from such an established company. They take down the negative reviews at the drop of a hat, but it takes a mountain of effort to get them re-instated (in fact, they haven't even been yet).
And the worrying bit seems to be that they don't even know their own published policies on the matter: if you don't follow/know your own policies, what's the point in having them? Is it all hot air?
It's also a bit of a worry from the sellers perspective that they can't afford to get even one bad review. I guess this has come about because all the sellers are trying to hard to prevent negative reviews that even one puts you back compared to others.
There's no way to generalize from one user/seller experience to all of them, but the fact that we don't really have evidence to the contrary definitely does sour the whole experience.
I generally avoid the third party sellers just because I like to use super-saver shipping to save money, but I'll go for the third party if the item is hard to find or the deal is amazing.