You've probably read consumer reviews if you've done any research online. It's an easy way to find out what the average person thinks about a product, but as a recent FTC lawsuit shows, it can also be manipulated.
The FTC announced a new campaign to eliminate bad, bought or manipulated online reviews. The US agency recently targeted Sitejabber, which uses AI to aggregate scores from consumers for websites in order to inform consumers about reputability.
The FTC claims that Sitejabber "deceived customers by falsely representing that the ratings and reviews they published were from customers who had experienced the reviewed product or services, artificially inflating the average ratings and review count."
It is said that customers supposedly reviewed certain aspects of a website or checkout experience. This review was then used as a weighting for the overall score, misleading consumers. GGL Projects, which "does biz at Sitejabber", collected reviews at the time of purchase. From what I can tell, many consumers received notifications asking them to rate the service before being left alone.
I opened the site and the first review was for 'EpicSpots,' with the words "Only click the link to confirm I received my order." Do not want to leave a review. This review gave the company four out of five stars. Another order states "I'm not sure yet, I need to see how this goes first." Some reviews stated that they only wrote their review in order to stop receiving emails asking them to.
These reviews were important because they shaped the overall rating of the companies. This rating was then used in Google searches. This means that if you are searching for a service, and see that a company has a high rating, it could be artificially inflated by consumers who only rate the checkout experience. The FTC voted 5-0 to issue an administrative complaints, which are only issued if it has "reasonable belief that the law has or is being broken, and it appears to them that a proceeding would be in the public interest".
Once the complaint has been filed, each violation will be subject to a civil penalty up to $51,744. It is important to remember that being charged with a crime is only the beginning of the process. The consequences of the violation may not be apparent for some time.
If everything goes according to plan, it should make consumer reviews more transparent in the future.
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