Reviewing Amazon Products

As some of you might remember; I have been getting products from a website called Elite Deals, that come with a discount coupon which makes testing the product almost free. Every day, they have a lisst of products online, and you just look through the list and see if there is anything that youu would like to try.
Our last adventure was a water purifier system that lists at a little under $200; but Amazon has for under $50.
With the coupon discount, we got ours for $15 , and now they have them for only $10.

Anyway, here is my question, and I am hoping that someone here might have an answer for me. Since I started buying these coupon items and writing the reviews on Amazon, I have also started getting emails that appear to be from other amazon sellers , asking me if I would like to try their product and write a review.

As an example, today, I just received an email asking if I wanted to test a set of solar motion-activated yard lights. They show a link to their company on Amazon, which lists the light at retail $60, Amazon price of $18. I can get the lights for $2 , to test and write a review.
I am going to write to Amazon and ask if these offers are legitimate or if they are some kind of scam; but I also thought that maybe @Ken Anderson , or someone else who buys a lot from Amazon might have had some experience with this.
If this is actually legitimate, then I would like to get some of these products and review them. One of the links that I checked out for a backpack did say "be the first to review this item"; but I am not sure if that was asking for product testers, or just for someone who purchased the item to write a review.
Does anyone know about how this works and whether it is legitimate or not ?

 

I have no experience with it, but I do know that people are often offered products at large discounts in return for a review on Amazon.com. I have also seen that these reviews do not have to be complimentary.

 

Here is a screenshot of one of the offers that I just received today.
I have been getting these kinds of emails for a month or so now, basically since I joined the Elite Deals . At first, I just thought that someone was trying to "sell" me their ED coupon code, and one offer asked me to pay them for the product, if I remember right. I think they said I had to paypal them the $2 (or whatever) and then they would send me the discount code.
This looked pretty fraudluent to me, and I have been deleting all of the similar emails since then.

After writing my first post here, I also emailed Amazon and asked them if sellers do legitimately ask people to test the products, via an email.
I also wrote to the purported seller and asked them to send me the tester discount code. If they send me the code, then I will use it and see if it works to purchase the product. If they ask me to send money, then I am still going to believe it is a scam !

 

I can't speak to any particular offer but have come across several reviews that stated that the reviewer had purchased the product at a substantial discount for the purpose of writing a review, and have also noticed some of these reviews were nevertheless uncomplimentary. There may be scams claiming the same thing, but there is also a legitimate way to do this. My impression though, was that it was done through Amazon.com, and that it was offered to people who had high ratings on reviews that they had done.

 

Here is my update thus far. I heard back from Amazon customer service, and they really didn't address the question at all. they just said that sellers are allowed to give discounts for reviews, which we already know is true. People who order with the Elite Deals website do just that, we get huge discounts, and write a review.
So anyway, the seller (?) wrote back to me with a discount code for the solar lights, and I used the code and bought the solar lights. The code worked fine; so I paid $2 for a nice set of solar lights and we can put them out in the yard or in the driveway.
I received another one that was for a set of virtual reality glasses, and that one came with the code to buy them, and the email was the same as the seller; so I am sure that one was legit. It is looking like the offers are real, and not scams.
I don't have any need for VR glasses, so I am skipping those; but if anyone here wants to try them, I will give you the discount code.

 

So, I keep getting these amazing offers every day now. I have finally learned why I am getting them !
One of the companies which wrote to me with a discount offer mentioned that I am in the "top 10,000" Amazon reviewers.
Now, that doesn't even sound really great to me; but I am not sure where in that list I am at.
Apparently, it is high enough up on the list that the sellers now want me to write reviews for their products.
Some of the items are things that we don't need, so I will not waste money buying them even at a discount, and some of the discounts are only 10-20% off, so not that great of a savings in any case.

However, it did motivate me to spend this evening writing more reviews on all of the products that we have purchased recently, in hopes that some of those sellers will ask me to review their products.
I figured that the things that we buy and review should be the kinds of products that sellers would ask me to try, although I do not know if that holds true , or not.
But, at least now I know why I have all of the offers, and that it is not some sort of a scam. Now, I am actually looking forward to reading through the possibilities each day to see what new things are being offered !
What started me having such an interest in reviewing products was wanting to be invited to Amazon Vine, which is where Amazon actually offers you products to try. You have to qualify as a good reviewer before they will invite you to the program, so I have been trying hard to write a review for each item we purchase from Amazon.

 

You are exactly right about some of these reviews on Amazon, @Chrissy Page . I have looked at reviews where one person had copied and pasted another person's review, word for word !
Obviously, they were only doing it for some benefit to themselves, and not because they had something to say about the product, good or bad.
Mostly, I do about the same as you, I will read a few of the reviews, both the good and bad ones, to see what they are saying to expect from this product.
You can expect that some people are going to get one that doesn't work right, or falls apart right away; but if several people are giving the same complaint, then I tend to think that this could be a definite problem with this item.
On the other hand, I also understand the sellers wanting to give some people a good buy in exchange for getting reviews. I have seen products that have no reviews, and I am sure those do not sell as well as ones that people are buying and reviewing.
Since we order from Amazon all of the time, and I love saving money on things we use and need; I am happy to keep writing reviews and getting discounts on products. My email is a lot more interesting now ! !

 

I have done some reviews on products that I bought elsewhere, and then came across the same product on Amazon.com but I do give more weight toward reviews from verified purchases.