Amazon 'review hijacking' fined $600,000 by the FTC

There has been a fine levied by the Federal Trade Commission against a company that has been repurposing reviews from another product to deceive users, which it calls "review hijacking", which is the act of repurposing reviews from another product to deceive users. Nature's Bounty vitamins and supplements are produced by the Bountiful Company, which is accused of artificially inflating the number of reviews and ratings received by its products on Amazon in order to boost its sales.

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The agency claims Bountiful is abusing the variation feature of Amazon, which enables sellers to add multiple products to one listing when they offer the same item in different colors, sizes, or quantities. Due to the fact that these variations of the same product share the same listing, it is also common for them to have the same reviews and labels applied by Amazon, such as the "#1 Best Seller" and "Amazon's Choice" badges.

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According to reports, Bountiful took advantage of this setup by lumping all of its new products under the same listing as its established products, all while claiming that they were merely variations of the same product, when in fact, these products were completely different from one another. In the eyes of the FTC, this was all to help Bountiful's newer and less successful supplements make more sales, by tricking users into believing that the higher ratings of its more popular supplements also applied to its newer products.

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Bountiful's inclusion of two new products in March 2021 in its Amazon store is one of many examples cited by the FTC in its complaint. These are Nature's Bounty Brain Superfood capsules and Nature's Bounty Brain Focus chewable tablets. It is alleged that the company then added these products as variations of its more well-established Nature's Bounty Ginkgo Biloba 120mg capsule listing, all three of which were found to contain different amounts of ingredients, according to the FTC. There is also a case where Bountiful combines its Immune 24 Hour + soft gels with the highly rated Nature's Bounty Vitamin C 500mg tablets, both of which have different formulas, in an attempt to create a more effective product.

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In the FTC's initial complaint, a former Bountiful employee states that the company continued to use Amazon's variations system with several of its products throughout 2020 and 2021, citing that the method assisted in “ramping” up newer products faster since “they were not selling and we wanted to give them a little boost in Ratings and Reviews to gain visibility and to allow them to borrow the ‘Amazon choice’ badge as well as best seller badge, which worked well for them.”

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Bountiful was also fined $600,000 by the FTC along with an order that it no longer make similar representations in the future and that it no longer use "deceptive review tactics" to take advantage of its customers. There has long been a problem with fake reviews flooding the Amazon platform, an issue that the e-commerce giant has attempted to tackle over the years, in an effort to crack down on the issue. However, "review hijacking" appears to be yet another issue that Amazon will have to deal with in order to keep the products listed on its website up to date.

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"There are no places for fraud in Amazon's store," explains Amazon spokesperson Christy Distefano in an emailed statement to Trade Algo, referring to the company's zero-tolerance fraud policy. In order to prevent listing abuse, we continuously monitor our store to prevent listing abuse. Review abuse is prohibited under our policies. This includes offering incentives like gift cards to encourage customers to leave positive reviews on our website. Those who violate our policies and post inauthentic reviews will be suspended, or banned, or we will take legal action against them."