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  FTC Settles Allegations for Supplement Marketer Regarding Hijacking Ratings and Reviews on Amazon.com and Using Them to Deceive Consumers
  

  The following describes a government action that has been resolved by either a settlement or a decision by a court or administrative agency. If the matter is being appealed, it will be noted below.

  On 2/16/2023, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a proposed order to settle allegations against a marketer of vitamins and other supplements called The Bountiful Company (Bountiful) for abusing 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.
  
  This marks the FTC’s first law enforcement challenging “review hijacking,” in which a marketer steals or repurposes reviews of another product. Bountiful carried out this deceptive tactic by merging its new products on Amazon with different well-established products that had more ratings, reviews, and badges, the FTC said.
  
  Bountiful, based in Bohemia, New York, manufactures vitamin, mineral, and other nutritional supplements. Its brands include Nature’s Bounty and Sundown. Bountiful sells its supplements to Amazon, which then sells them to consumers on Amazon.com.
  
  According to the FTC, 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 color, size, quantity, or flavor. Products with a variation relationship share the same product detail page on Amazon.com and appear as alternative choices, so shoppers can compare and choose among similar products. The product detail page of products that are in a variation relationship displays the total number of ratings, the average star rating, and the reviews for all of the products in the variation relationship, the FTC said in its complaint. They also share any “#1 Best Seller” or “Amazon’s Choice” badges.
  
  According to the FTC’s complaint, during 2020 and 2021, Bountiful asked Amazon to create numerous variation relationships for its supplement products with different formulations. According to one internal Bountiful communication, the company created variations with some new products “to try and ramp them faster as they were NOT selling and we wanted to give them a little boost in R[atings]&R[eviews] to gain visibility and allow them to also borrow the ‘amazon choice’ badge and best seller badge which worked.”
  
  The FTC’s complaint alleges that by manipulating 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. In addition to requiring that Bountiful pay $600,000 as monetary relief for consumers, the proposed order prohibits Bountiful from making similar types of misrepresentations and bars the company from creating a variation relationship – or using other deceptive review tactics – that distort what consumers think about its products or services.

  On March 14, 2024, the FTC announced that it is sending more than $527,000 in refunds to consumers who bought certain Nature’s Bounty and Sundown vitamins and supplements from Amazon.com. The FTC alleged that these products were marketed deceptively by The Bountiful Company.
  
  The FTC is sending 32,689 refund checks to eligible consumers. Recipients should cash their checks within 90 days, as indicated on the check. Consumers who have questions about their payment should contact the refund administrator, Analytics, at 1-844-455-2768 or visit the FTC website to view frequently asked questions about the refund process. The Commission never requires people to pay money or provide account information to get a refund.

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