US fines supplements retailer $600K for ‘review hijacking’ on Amazon

SAN FRANCISCO: In a first such case, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has approved a final consent order against supplements retailer The Bountiful Company for 'review hijacking', in which a marketer steals or repurposes reviews of another product.

In addition to penalising Bountiful $600,000, the final order prohibits Bountiful from making similar types of misrepresentations and bars the company from using deceptive review tactics that distort what consumers think about its products or services.

According to the FTC, The Bountiful Company abused a feature of Amazon.com to deceive consumers into thinking that its newly introduced supplements had more product ratings and reviews, higher average ratings, and '#1 Best Seller' and 'Amazon's Choice' badges.

The FTC's complaint alleged that by manipulating Amazon.com product pages, Bountiful misrepresented the reviews, the number of Amazon reviews and the average star ratings of some products, and that some of them were number one best sellers or had earned an Amazon Choice badge.

The case against Bountiful marked the FTC's first law enforcement challenging 'review hijacking'.

Bountiful took advantage of an Amazon feature that allows vendors to create or request the creation of 'variation' relationships between some products that are similar but differ only in narrow, specific ways - such as colour, size, quantity, or flavour.

For example, the company began selling two new products: Nature's Bounty Stress Comfort Mood Booster and Nature's Bounty Stress Comfort Peace of Mind Stress Relief Gummies.

It requested that Amazon combine the new products in a variation relationship with three of its established products, all with different formulations.

"Boosting your products by hijacking another product's ratings or reviews is a relatively new tactic, but is still plain old false advertising," said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection.

"The Bountiful Company is paying back $600,000 for manipulating product pages and deceiving consumers."