Hijacking reviews of other products is a relatively new ploy to mislead consumers in online stores. For the first time, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is taking action against this type of fraud. The US Commerce Agency skimmed $600,000 from Nestlé subsidiary The Bountiful Company to distribute to victims (Ref. C-4791). The company abused a function in the Amazon.com webshop in 2020 and 2021.
Amazon offers the option of grouping several similar products under one entry. This is intended, for example, for selling otherwise identical shirts in different sizes and colors. Since the products (should) be essentially the same, Amazon also summarizes the ratings entered by customers.
The Nestlé subsidiary sells food supplements under the Nature’s Bounty brand, among other things. Some pills are great sellers and have good reviews, others are slow sellers. The company has unfairly remedied this: It has added poorly performing products to the listings of individual bestsellers on Amazon.com, even though the composition and implied effects are completely different.
The trick works
With resounding success. The high ratings of the established pills rubbed off on the slow sellers, which suddenly made them sell well. “Unfortunately, people didn’t love our ‘Stress Comfort’ products,” the FTC quoted from internal company emails, “the second we varied product pages (sales skyrocketed) and continued to grow.” “
The trick isn’t limited to the reviews: in an attempt to boost sales of new products that are NOT selling, we wanted to give them a boost in the reviews to make them more visible and allow them to be highlighted as ‘Bestseller’ and ‘Amazon’s Choice’,” reads another incriminating Bountiful Company document.
No sense of injustice
The FTC recognized the machinations as false or misleading advertising and unfair competition. She issued a cease-and-desist order against the company and siphoned off $600,000 from it. The money will go towards partial reparations for injured US consumers.
Amazon.com prohibits misleading or manipulative reviews.
(Image: Amazon.com/Daniel AJ Sokolov)
The Bountiful Company, on the other hand, still finds nothing wrong: The company only accepted the FTC measures to avoid a long and expensive appeal. “We stand by our products and business practices and are confident that consumers have not been misled or harmed,” the Nestlé subsidiary told US media. However, the requirements are now being met.
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