I found a piece of equipment I needed on Lowes.com. It had mostly 5 star reviews but a significant number of 1 star reviews. It seemed like it would suffice so I went to Lowe's and bought it. The equipment self destructed after several uses. I called the manufacturer who sent a repair kit to arrive in 10 to 14 business days. I needed my equipment to work yesterday, not in a few weeks so I called up Lowe's and found it was still returnable. I did return it but stupidly bought another identical item rather than take the time to go shopping elsewhere. The new equipment fell apart during the first use of less than 30 minutes. A minor problem but tedious to repair.
From there I left a less than complimentary 1 star review about the quality of the equipment while commending Lowe's for their return policy. My review generated a response from the manufacturer's rep with instructions which I followed. The manufacturer did sent parts but they sent the wrong parts. I called again and was told they didn't actually stock the part that fell off my machine. Too bad, so sad. I had to either return it to Lowe's for refund or remove parts and mail back to them so they could justify reimbursement.
Here's where it gets funny. I posted a followup review that wasn't any nicer than the original. Lowe's not only failed to post my new review, they removed my original review.
Then by arranging the sort order of the site from oldest reviews to newest reviews I noticed the first 75 reviews carry the notation of [This review was collected as part of a promotion.] And guess what? That was the end of the long string of 5 star reviews and that is where the long string of one star reviews began. Deleting my original 1 star review did bring the ratio of 1 star to 5 star reviews to under 30%