The Federal Commerce Fee banned companies from writing and shopping for their very own critiques in an August ruling. Now, it is alleging {that a} buyer overview website, Sitejabber, printed “deceptive” scores and critiques on behalf of the 130,000 companies on its platform. The FTC’s proposed order would cease Sitejabber from “misrepresenting” buyer scores and critiques “sooner or later.”
The FTC’s criticism alleges that Sitejabber collected critiques on the level of sale, or earlier than clients acquired or skilled a services or products. In a single instance, clients have been requested to price their total procuring expertise out of 5 stars and write one thing rapidly instantly after trying out.
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These fast scores and critiques, or Prompt Suggestions Survey outcomes, develop into a part of a website’s profile on Sitejabber. The FTC says this might mislead individuals into pondering prior clients rated a enterprise’s services or products extremely once they have been truly simply score the procuring expertise.
“Presenting [Instant Feedback Survey] outcomes as post-fulfillment critiques and scores can mislead shoppers into believing {that a} enterprise’s excessive overview depend and excessive score means 1000’s of consumers have had optimistic experiences with the enterprise’s services or products, when actually the scores and critiques displayed primarily mirrored solely clients’ experiences procuring 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 scores and critiques are unentangled from their product scores and critiques — so clients clearly know what’s being rated.
This is likely one of the FTC’s first enforcement actions below its new rule.
“Together with our rule on pretend critiques and testimonials, circumstances like this one present that we’ll act to cease all types of deception within the overview ecosystem.” FTC Bureau of Client Safety director Samuel Levine acknowledged.
The FTC’s earlier rule on pretend critiques and testimonials stops companies from shopping for or promoting pretend critiques, together with AI-generated ones.
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