The Federal Commerce Fee banned businesses from writing and shopping for their very own evaluations in an August ruling. Now, it is alleging {that a} buyer overview website, Sitejabber, printed “deceptive” rankings and evaluations on behalf of the 130,000 companies on its platform. The FTC’s proposed order would cease Sitejabber from “misrepresenting” buyer rankings and evaluations “sooner or later.”
The FTC’s complaint alleges that Sitejabber collected evaluations on the level of sale, or earlier than clients obtained or skilled a services or products. In a single instance, clients had been requested to fee their general purchasing expertise out of 5 stars and write one thing shortly instantly after trying out.
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These fast rankings and evaluations, or Prompt Suggestions Survey outcomes, change into a part of a website’s profile on Sitejabber. The FTC says this might mislead folks into considering prior clients rated a enterprise’s services or products extremely after they had been really simply ranking the purchasing expertise.
“Presenting [Instant Feedback Survey] outcomes as post-fulfillment evaluations and rankings can mislead customers into believing {that a} enterprise’s excessive overview depend and excessive ranking means hundreds of shoppers have had constructive experiences with the enterprise’s services or products, when the truth is the rankings and evaluations displayed primarily mirrored solely clients’ experiences purchasing on the enterprise’s web sites,” web page 4 of the FTC criticism reads.
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Companies can keep away from FTC scrutiny by ensuring their Prompt Suggestions Survey rankings and evaluations are unentangled from their product rankings and evaluations — so clients clearly know what’s being rated.
This is likely one of the FTC’s first enforcement actions underneath its new rule.
“Together with our rule on fake reviews and testimonials, circumstances like this one present that we’ll act to cease all types of deception within the overview ecosystem.” FTC Bureau of Shopper Safety director Samuel Levine said.
The FTC’s earlier rule on pretend evaluations and testimonials stops companies from shopping for or promoting pretend evaluations, together with AI-generated ones.
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