A wifi troubleshooting blog post has been making the rounds, and the entire sordid ordeal seems like a subplot from the beginning of WALL-E.

Recounting the facts of the case:

The hero author has a wifi issue. Instead of trying to isolate the fault, the hero author buys a new highly-rated-by-reviews wifi dongle that does not solve the issue.
The hero author's brother sees the wifi issue. Instead of helping to debug, the brother buys a new wifi dongle which also fails to resolve the issue.
The hero author gives up on hardware solutions, and finally isolates the fault to software.

The first purchase was highly rated because the vendor bribed prior purchasers in return for positive reviews. Amazon must be playing whack-a-mole with vendors like this; though why wouldn't Amazon just provide a checkbox?

Were you coerced or bribed to provide this review?
We will publish it so you can get your reward and then send our goons to reform the vendor.

Nowadays, it's just easier to buy something and hope that it will fix our problems?