amazon "street market"

My first post is going to be about the most recent frustration about Amazon. I am a fan of Amazon. Or let me rephrase: I used to be a fan of amazon. I rely on reviews about everything: restaurants, services, products. I always read reviews and I used to trust Amazon's reviews when making a decision on a purchase.
In recent years however Amazon became an oline "street market" where you can get easily ripped off.
I have purchased an Ipad Air for my kids (coz kids nowadays are cool like that, lol). Seemed like a nice deal and there were thousands of good reviews. Great! Order placed. The item took it's sweet time to be delivered (which is ok with me) and that gave me some extra time to read in depth the reviews online. And like any normal person I went for the 1* reviews which i must say were very few. They all warned of the device not being new and to beware. So the iPad arrived beautifully sealed in plastic, in it's original box i must add. The first thing I did is checked the serial number on the device online. You can check the serial number of your Apple product on their website, it tells you how many months you have left for your warranty etc. to my surprise the Ipad was purchased and activated 5 months prior to me getting it. The seller just took an used ipad, fraudulently repackaging it, sealing it as new and selling it!! When I contacted them their first response was the iPad is new. The second time I mentioned I have verified the serial number snd they replied with "apologies" that it must have been a mistake and i can return it to them for inspection and refund. I then went through Amazon and returned it, a fairly easy process and got my refund in 2 days.
But now the annoying part for me, Amazon won't let me post a negative review about the seller. I made 6 attempts to review the purchase, every time the review bounces back under the reason that it doesn't meet the guidelines. I have written dozens of reviews becore and this is the first time I notice this! It makes me think that Amazon has an interest in these kind of sellers getting only good reviews. I am not an expert on how this goes down. So if you are buying a gift for someone or you are not tech savvy and don't check things like serial numbers etc you fall in their trap. Chances are more than half of buyers were scammed in this way and they never even realized it, hence the nice positive reviews. Only a handful of negative reviewers magically were left through.
My opinion is, do not buy electronics from Amazon. Read reviews in depth. It's time consuming but worth it. You will find unknown brands with thousands of great reviews then if you read till the end there is a disclosure "I received this item free of charge in exchange for my honest opinion". I highly doubt the honesty of their opinions. So many websites giving you 90% off items on Amazon in exchange for reviews. Usually crapy items, but hoarders don't care. Sorry if you are one of those people and you cursing now saying it's not true. Brand names took years of trial and error, market research, lab tests and all kind of expenses to build their name. Little crapy companies selling shit on Amazon build their "name" by giving their crap for free to a few thousands people and ask them for reviews. they promise you with more cheap crap if you write reviews, then review the other cheap crap they paid you with and so on. Buyers beware!
So that's the story. Feeling better now that it's out in cyberspace, lol.

P.S. Dear cyberspace, are there trustworthy places for reviews anymore?

Intro

I have a confession. I don't like blogs. Although a great hidden treasure at times for recipes and ideas,  I find it time consuming to read through endless baloney. No offense to bloggers. Some put tremendous time and effort in making it worth while but I'm not a fan. That being said, I found myself unable to express my frustration about things anywhere else except on a blog. Spamming my facebook seems unfair to the handful of "friends" I have. Twitter has limited number of characters so you can't pour your heart out really, so here I am:)