FTC fines complement maker $600K for deceptive shoppers with ‘review hijacking’

The Federal Trade Commission has ordered a complement maker to pay $600,000 for deceiving Amazon prospects by merging the evaluations of various merchandise to inflate the evaluate scores of its unpopular merchandise.

Investigators discovered that the Bountiful Company exploited an Amazon characteristic often called “variation relationships” which lets firms mix evaluations of sure related merchandise in an effort to simplify the procuring expertise.

The Bountiful Company used this characteristic to merge new and unestablished merchandise with older and extra in style ones. Customers noticed the brand new merchandise with merged evaluations, giving them a misunderstanding that they had been extra in style than they had been.

Internal messages obtained by the FTC confirmed that officers had been conscious that the older merchandise had been doing higher after the merger. One official famous in an e mail that prospects hadn’t cherished one in every of their stress aid merchandise however gross sales “spiked” after the variation.

The variation characteristic is commonly utilized by firms promoting clothes with many out there colours so that each coloration is obtainable on the identical web page. However, the Bountiful Company used the characteristic to group collectively merchandise that had been considerably totally different.

The firm requested Amazon to merge new merchandise with older merchandise with totally different formulations. The Bountiful Company used the variation characteristic on plenty of totally different classes together with stress aid, mind well being and vitamin dietary supplements.

“Boosting your products by hijacking another product’s ratings or reviews is a relatively new tactic, but is still plain old false advertising,” Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, mentioned in February when the costs had been first introduced.

“The Bountiful Company is paying back $600,000 for manipulating product pages and deceiving consumers,” he mentioned.

Amazon, for its half, has cracked down on evaluate fraud, having banned a whole bunch of firms over the previous few years for it.

The Bountiful Company has not been banned from Amazon as of Tuesday afternoon, nevertheless. When requested by The Washington Times whether or not it might be, Amazon was noncommittal.