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I've been using ReviewMeta to assist identifying the "real" reviews and learning the unadulterated score. I don't know if it handles "bait-and-switch" as mentioned in TFA, but it's steered me away from a lot of products that seemed reasonable based solely on reviews. I especially like that it can recognize false bad reviews which are often left by competitors.

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I also use ReviewMeta and it does handle review hijacking. It's not a great experience as a customer, but if I combine ReviewMeta and Amazon reviews and search I still get pretty good products. My basic guidelines are that it needs at least 4 stars (preferably closer to 4.2-4.7) and the product can't be a "fail" on ReviewMeta. I also am wary if ReviewMeta is a "warn".

I don't trust Amazon reviews without a review checker anymore, they used to be much better. The highest reviewed products are often some of the worst. Any product with a 4.8 or better is immediately suspect (though some are fine, especially if they don't have as many reviews).

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