The Federal Commerce Fee banned companies from writing and shopping for their very own evaluations in an August ruling. Now, it is alleging {that a} buyer assessment web site, 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 criticism alleges that Sitejabber collected evaluations on the level of sale, or earlier than prospects acquired or skilled a services or products. In a single instance, prospects had been requested to price their total buying expertise out of 5 stars and write one thing shortly instantly after trying out.
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These fast rankings and evaluations, or Instantaneous Suggestions Survey outcomes, change into a part of a web site’s profile on Sitejabber. The FTC says this might mislead individuals into considering prior prospects rated a enterprise’s services or products extremely once they had been truly simply score the buying expertise.
“Presenting [Instant Feedback Survey] outcomes as post-fulfillment evaluations and rankings can mislead shoppers into believing {that a} enterprise’s excessive assessment depend and excessive score means hundreds of consumers have had optimistic experiences with the enterprise’s services or products, when in truth the rankings and evaluations displayed primarily mirrored solely prospects’ experiences buying on the enterprise’s web sites,” web page 4 of the FTC criticism reads.
Keep away from FTC Scrunity on Your Web site Opinions
Companies can keep away from FTC scrutiny by ensuring their Instantaneous Suggestions Survey rankings and evaluations are unentangled from their product rankings and evaluations — so prospects clearly know what’s being rated.
This is among the FTC’s first enforcement actions underneath its new rule.
“Together with our rule on faux evaluations and testimonials, circumstances like this one present that we’ll act to cease all types of deception within the assessment ecosystem.” FTC Bureau of Client Safety director Samuel Levine acknowledged.
The FTC’s earlier rule on faux evaluations and testimonials stops companies from shopping for or promoting faux evaluations, together with AI-generated ones.
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