Product reviews are one of the most reliable ways we can determine whether the item or service is of good quality or not. The Bountiful Company, the maker of the supplements in question, used an already-established listing to boost a new product.
Hijacking Product Reviews
The US Federal Trade Commission fined the supplements company for "hijacking" reviews on Amazon. The Bountiful Company abused an Amazon feature by adding its new products to listings that already have good reviews.
Like many online retailers, customers may find some products that come with variations of the same item with different colors, sizes, flavors, and more. This particular feature is what The Bountiful Company used to introduce new products.
Instead of creating an entirely new listing, they added a new product to an already existing listing to deceive customers into thinking that it is a well-established supplement that has been tried and tested by others.
As a result, The Bountiful Company is paying back $600,000 for manipulating product pages and deceiving consumers, according to the Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protections, Samuel Levine.
Levine expressed that while boosting products or hijacking another product's ratings or reviews is a relatively new tactic, it is still seen as false advertising. The company has been abusing the feature on Amazon between 2020 to 2021.
According to an internal communication in The Bountiful Company, the review hijacking was done to try and ramp them faster, seeing as they were not selling. The company wanted to give it a little boost in ratings and reviews to gain visibility.
They reasoned that the products are just "borrowing" the Amazon Choice" badge and the best seller badge. Apparently, the tactic had worked. The company claims that sales spiked the second they variated the pages and continued to grow.
The FTC's Final Order
The Federal Trade Commission approved the final consent order against The Bountiful Company, which was a unanimous decision, which will have the mentioned company pay the $600,000 fine given by the FTC.
This was the first time that the Commission had fined someone for such an offense, wherein a marketer stole or repurposed reviews and ratings of another product, which may also stand as a warning for other vendors who are doing it or attempting to do so.
Aside from The Bountiful Company paying the six-figure fine, they have also been prohibited from conducting a similar type of misinterpretation, along with using deceptive tactics to trick customers about its products on Amazon.
An Amazon spokesperson expressed that there is no place for fraud in Amazon's stores. They added that they have proactive measures in place to prevent listing abuse as they continue to monitor their store, as mentioned in Engadget.
Amazon also assured that "more than 99 percent" of the products that customers view in the marketplace only contain authentic reviews. If a user does find a fake review, they are encouraged to report the product so that Amazon could review it.
