FTC comes slamming down on a website as its new rules to create ‘truthful and accurate reviews’ take effect

The chances are if you’ve ever done your research on an item online, you have checked out consumer reviews. It’s a good way of ensuring what your average person thinks of an item but, as a recent FTC case shows, it can be easily manipulated. 

The FTC has announced a new crusade to stomp out bad, bought or manipulated reviews. The US agency has most recently taken aim at Sitejabber, a site that uses AI to aggregate consumer scores for websites to inform consumers of reputability. 

The FTC alleges Sitejabber “deceived consumers by misrepresenting that ratings and reviews it published came from customers who experienced the reviewed product or service, artificially inflating average ratings and review counts.”

This is to say that customers appear to have reviewed aspects of a site or checkout experience, and that review was then used to weight the overall score of a site’s product, effectively misleading consumers. Reviews were collected by ‘GGL Projects’ which “does business at Sitejabber” at the time of purchase, and from what I can see, many consumers were consistently sent notifications asking them to review the service, before being left alone. 

I opened up the site myself and the first review on the page was for ‘EpicSpots’ saying “Only hit the link to confirm that I got my order. Do not want to write a review”. That review gave the company four of five stars. Another order says “I don’t know yet I have to see where this is going first.” Some reviews expressed that they were only writing their review to stop follow-up emails asking them to do so. 

Importantly, the results of these reviews shaped the overall rating for those companies, which then made it onto Google searches. In theory, this means that, if you search for a service and see a good review score from a company, that score could be artificially inflated by consumers merely rating the checkout experience. The FTC has voted to issue an administrative complaint 5-0, which are only issued when it has “reason to believe that the law has been or is being violated, and it appears to the Commission that a proceeding is in the public interest”

Each violation of this complaint once it has been put forward will carry with it a civil penalty of up to $51,744. It’s important to note that being charged is part of the process and actually seeing the consequences of that violation could take some time. 

If all goes to plan, this should make consumer reviews a little more transparent going forward.