Dive Brief:
- The Federal Trade Commission ordered Sitejabber to stop misleading customers with ratings and reviews in violation of the FTC Act Wednesday.
- The FTC alleges Sitejabber, an online review platform, artificially inflated customer ratings and review counts by publishing reviews from customers who hadn’t received or experienced the product or service they purchased.
- “Platforms don’t have free rein to mislead people about the consumer reviews shown for companies and their products,” Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a prepared statement. “Along with our rule on fake reviews and testimonials, cases like this one show that we’ll act to stop all forms of deception in the review ecosystem.”
Dive Insight:
The FTC is cracking down on fake reviews in an effort to protect consumers and promote fair markets.
The agency’s rule banning the sale and purchase of fake reviews went into effect last month. That rule bans the use of reviews from people who do not exist as well as those who have not experienced a product or service.
The FTC voted to issue the complaint against Sitejabber and accept the consent agreement 5-0. Once the order is published to the FTC’s website as final, the FTC can seek civil penalties of up to $51,744 for each violation.
The allegations center on point-of-sale reviews, which Sitejabber requested at the time of sale rather than after customers had received or used their purchase.
At that point, Sitejabber asked customers to “rate your overall shopping experience so far” and “type a quick message about your shopping experience so far,” according to the FTC’s complaint.
It then published these reviews on its platform, misleading consumers about the nature of the reviews, the FTC charged.
The FTC alleges that in addition to misleading customers on its platform, Sitejabber also provided clients with product review tools that allowed them to publish and misrepresent product ratings from customers who had not yet received the product.
FTC Commissioner Melissa Holyoak issued a concurring opinion. An online review platform can be beneficial to consumers and businesses, she said, but design choice matters.
“And Sitejabber’s design choice here conflated real customer feedback about shopping choices with an actual rating for a product, harming its clients and consumers,” Holyoak said.
In response to a request for comment, Sitejabber directed CX Dive to its statement on the FTC’s order.
“In response to the FTC's recent allegations regarding misleading reviews on Sitejabber, we want to firstly express our strong support of the FTC’s new rules for reviews and testimonials and reaffirm our longstanding commitment to online transparency,” Sitejabber said.
Sitjabber said that it made product changes to its point-of-sale reviews in the beginning of 2024 in response to the FTC’s proposed rule and that it has been operating in compliance since.
“While we disagree with the implied intent and impact of the FTC’s allegations, we have always supported increased transparency and regulation around reviews,” the company said. “It was a difficult decision, but we ultimately chose to settle, as most of the FTC’s concerns had already been addressed by our earlier changes, and the agreement did not involve any further significant alterations to our practices or any civil penalties.”
