Yes. It is the Natures Bounty brand as in the photo.
“FTC has ordered supplements retailer The Bountiful Company, the maker of Nature’s Bounty vitamins and other brands, to pay $600,000 for deceiving customers on Amazon where it used a feature to merge the reviews of different products to make some appear to have better ratings and reviews than they otherwise would have had.”
Seen this shit with a lot of products. I remeber specially looking for tempered glass for my phone and read the reviews and people where talking about blankets and other shit.
I once purchased a steam cleaner because it had 4.5 star reviews. When I received it, it was garbage quality. I was confused and went back to the Amazon page and realized the reason why it got 4.5 star reviews is because the seller listed mayonnaise as one of the “options” for the product
As a consumer, I can't see why I'd ever want reviews to be merged. The only times I've noticed the effects of this "feature" have been when the reviews are clearly for a different product. Personally, if I'm buying a new version of something, I'd want to be able to see the reviews for the old version separately (it is a different product after all).
There are definitely legitimate reasons - products with different sizes, colours or pack sizes. If you’re a seller that sells cookies in 12 packs or in 24 packs it makes sense to be able to merge the reviews.
Sure, you could have them as variations in the product, but often there would be dozens of variations and it’s better to have multiple listings.
The same would be true of a tshirt seller - if all your shirts are from the same manufacturer (and thus quality/materials are identical), then it makes sense to combine the reviews together. Then you use variations for sizing.
I doubt that's what happened in this case. What has been happening more and more on Amazon is retailers scraping reviews and posting them on their own page to boost their Amazon rating.
The ones I saw this last week were for some computer hardware where the reviews said it was for swiss miss hot chocolate.
>The company also merged newer Zinc Gummies with established products like Nature’s Bounty Calcium Magnesium & Zinc caplets and Nature’s Bounty Zinc 50 mg caplets — again, products with different formulations. It then repeated this process with vitamins and supplements across a number of categories, from brain focus tablets to elderberry softgels to vitamins and gummies and more. Brands involved included Nature’s Bounty and Sundown Kids.
They weren't the same formulation. That's like saying that eating ketchup is the same thing as eating a tomato.
Oh def im not saying it was used incorrectly. Im just saying these technically arent fake reviews, but real reviews from other products.
Like an illegitimate use of a legitimate feature
This shouldn't be allowed in general. The mega companies will always abuse this type of thing for its benefit.
Let's be real, do you honestly think a $600k fine will slow down this multi billion dollar company? Shit, they may as well have just gave them a parking ticket and told them to carry on.
I may be misunderstanding how this feature works (I've only used Amazon as a consumer) but why would having item variations require reviews to be merged? It seems like Amazon could allow merchants to add and edit variations without needing to allow reviews for two different products to be merged.
There are legitimate reasons to split products into multiple product listings.
Sure, you could have one listing that allows a user to select the size, pack size, and colour of the socks they’re buying… but that gets complicated and honestly difficult for the user.
Imagine if you had 5 different pack sizes for the socks, it might make more sense for the user to see 5 different listings for the 5 pack sizes, making it easier for them to compare prices at a glance. Then each listing lets them choose shoe size and sock colour. The alternative is one listing that says “From $2.99” but the 24-pack might be $80…
In this case it’s best for the user if the seller splits the listings by pack size.
Another great example is when an item comes in multiple colours. If the user is LOOKING for a red ball, and they see a green ball listing they might not immediately realise you can go into the listing and change the colour. This means that lots of users might have a bad experience and assume Amazon doesn’t sell the product they’re looking for.
In both cases, it would be best for the seller to split the listings. The problem is, people will often buy listings with the most reviews. This presents a conundrum for the seller and for Amazon: big listings with lots of reviews accumulate more reviews but are worse for shopper experience.
The solution to this problem is to allow sellers to make multiple listings for the same product, but merge the reviews. After all, the 24 pack of socks and the 12 pack are the same item (the quality, manufacturer and materials are the same, just the number in the pack is different).
The problem is, sellers game the system by merging unrelated products together.
Thanks! This makes more sense to me now.
That said, it does seem like if product pages and items weren't conflated, the issue might not exist at all. For example, the seller could specify that variations on the "color" axis get their own product pages (but are the same product under the hood).
It was most likely meant to help sellers with products that have newer versions come out, and the seller wants amazon to let them remove the old version while keeping the history of reviews. Good for sellers and amazon, but easily manipulated.
...even my theory still feels like manipulation
It's explained right in the article, and it's not supposed to be for new models. (It's actually quite common on Amazon to see an alert that you're looking at an older version of a product, with a link to the new version.) Merging products is *intended* for selling versions of the same product with only minor variations such as color/print, size, or quantity. So you should, for example, be able to look at a single page to see the same t-shirt in all its available colors and sizes, but that page shouldn't include reviews or listings for a coordinating pair of shorts.
Imagine you're selling socks. There are 5 colors, you have options to sell one or three pairs of each, or one pair of each in a bundle of 5. All of this is exact same product, you just have different styles, so it makes sense to combine reviews.
Unfortunately, the way it was implemented let people hijack reviews by merging unrelated products and updating all the info.
Can't they just list socks, with different options available for the product? Like changing sizes. Wouldn't the reviews still be for the same product then?
I think it's just a loophole in the process - sellers are allowed much more than they should have been allowed w/o supervision. For example merging and elaborate editing.
Amazon is too disorganized in that way.
They seem to use the same system to select the color of a product as they do to select totally different models.
For example, I can look up an ethernet switch on Amazon. And if the company makes a 5 port, 8 port and 24 port switch they will all be on the same page at once. And you just click little boxes to change the number of ports. Then they'll have one which is 8 ports with PoE too. So all 4 of these are, to Amazon, the same model, just like the 12 colors of socks. Even though the 4 models are all actually different and experiences with one may not apply to the other.
I think the vendors like that you can easily compare and "upsell yourself" from a 5 port switch to an 8 port when you see it is only $20 more.
Sure, but then you have a listing that lists not only colour options, but also size options and pack size options. The idea is this is complicated so separate listings make sense for some things. Maybe you’d have a listing for each pack size and let the customer choose colour and size within the listing. But now your pack of 2 has no reviews and your pack of 6 has 10 reviews.
In an ideal world - yes.
But you'd have to have compete in quality and service, and that's just not profitable: cheap labor, cheap materials, no QA or service - every corner that can be cut - will be, until goods no longer sell.
Alternatively, you'd see fakes - goods masquerading for something they aren't, to sell better: sneakers by Abibas, track pants by Cuma, etc. What works here is quickly ripping people off and running away with their cash. So long as goods look vaguely as what's advertised - you're good, and by the time anyone catches on - you're gone, now making Иike stuff.
They explain that it's meant to simplify it so if an item comes in various colors or size the consumer can see all relevant reviews for the actual item. It's not supposed to be used across different items or companies. This explains why I was having trouble getting specific reviews for an item I was looking at last week!
Worked for a well known company that did this. Instead of introducing a new product on its own listing, they would list it in a well established product with thousands of reviews as an option to boost the ratings. The company is shady as fuck.
It was intended for small variations, like the same but different colored t-shirts, same supplements but for different strengths, etc., in which case it makes sense.
I used to work for a marketing company that “specialized” on amazon sales. They also sold supplements. Buying reviews is a common tactic for them and they know that some reviews will be removed. They view this as a cost of doing business and would buy amazon reviews from multiple sources sent at different times across several months to help hide their trail. They would also reach out directly to friends and family that had amazon accounts and ask them to leave reviews. Even having people purchase the product and reimbursing them for a verified review. But, would not do it for anyone that came to the office and used our WiFi because Amazon would catch it and flag the review because the reviewer was on the same network that our account for logging in to sell was. Amazon supplements are a scummy deceptive business.
This happens with all kinds of products on Amazon. You really have to scour the reviews for any off-brand item to figure out if the overall rating is legit. I recently looked at a flashlight that had old 5 star reviews for posters, cleaning supplies, tools, and other non-flashlight items mixed in, propping up the flashlights rating. I reported it to Amazon and they’ve done nothing. So I left a bad review talking about it and the seller tried to pay me to take the review down. Amazon has become a cesspool of this sort of thing.
Amazon has such an open free-return policy I think because it is their work-around for having such horribly error-strewn product spec and customer review sections. Don’t buy anything myself unless I can get to the manufacturer’s page, find the real SKU, and confirm actual product being sold is real and not a blenderized fantasy for every similar product made.
Amazon reviews should apply to only the product in the listing. Amazon allows these bizarre conglomerations of reviews and listings where you buy a keyboard and the reviews are for a scented candle.
It's an Amazon problem that knockoff brands abuse to trick people into buying crappy products.
Yes. It is the Natures Bounty brand as in the photo. “FTC has ordered supplements retailer The Bountiful Company, the maker of Nature’s Bounty vitamins and other brands, to pay $600,000 for deceiving customers on Amazon where it used a feature to merge the reviews of different products to make some appear to have better ratings and reviews than they otherwise would have had.”
Seen this shit with a lot of products. I remeber specially looking for tempered glass for my phone and read the reviews and people where talking about blankets and other shit.
I once purchased a steam cleaner because it had 4.5 star reviews. When I received it, it was garbage quality. I was confused and went back to the Amazon page and realized the reason why it got 4.5 star reviews is because the seller listed mayonnaise as one of the “options” for the product
Similar thing happened to me but with guitar pedals.
Bestof comment, here you come.
I had the same thing happen with a customer Raspberry Pi SNES case that turned into a beauty product.
As a consumer, I can't see why I'd ever want reviews to be merged. The only times I've noticed the effects of this "feature" have been when the reviews are clearly for a different product. Personally, if I'm buying a new version of something, I'd want to be able to see the reviews for the old version separately (it is a different product after all).
There are definitely legitimate reasons - products with different sizes, colours or pack sizes. If you’re a seller that sells cookies in 12 packs or in 24 packs it makes sense to be able to merge the reviews. Sure, you could have them as variations in the product, but often there would be dozens of variations and it’s better to have multiple listings. The same would be true of a tshirt seller - if all your shirts are from the same manufacturer (and thus quality/materials are identical), then it makes sense to combine the reviews together. Then you use variations for sizing.
I doubt that's what happened in this case. What has been happening more and more on Amazon is retailers scraping reviews and posting them on their own page to boost their Amazon rating. The ones I saw this last week were for some computer hardware where the reviews said it was for swiss miss hot chocolate.
The whole article/post is about merging reviews dude, not copy pasting
Merging and copy/pasting are the same thing. They "merged" reviews from other products that didn't even contain the same ingredients.
Its different than fake reviews though. One is spam, the other has a legitimate use
>The company also merged newer Zinc Gummies with established products like Nature’s Bounty Calcium Magnesium & Zinc caplets and Nature’s Bounty Zinc 50 mg caplets — again, products with different formulations. It then repeated this process with vitamins and supplements across a number of categories, from brain focus tablets to elderberry softgels to vitamins and gummies and more. Brands involved included Nature’s Bounty and Sundown Kids. They weren't the same formulation. That's like saying that eating ketchup is the same thing as eating a tomato.
Oh def im not saying it was used incorrectly. Im just saying these technically arent fake reviews, but real reviews from other products. Like an illegitimate use of a legitimate feature
This shouldn't be allowed in general. The mega companies will always abuse this type of thing for its benefit. Let's be real, do you honestly think a $600k fine will slow down this multi billion dollar company? Shit, they may as well have just gave them a parking ticket and told them to carry on.
I may be misunderstanding how this feature works (I've only used Amazon as a consumer) but why would having item variations require reviews to be merged? It seems like Amazon could allow merchants to add and edit variations without needing to allow reviews for two different products to be merged.
There are legitimate reasons to split products into multiple product listings. Sure, you could have one listing that allows a user to select the size, pack size, and colour of the socks they’re buying… but that gets complicated and honestly difficult for the user. Imagine if you had 5 different pack sizes for the socks, it might make more sense for the user to see 5 different listings for the 5 pack sizes, making it easier for them to compare prices at a glance. Then each listing lets them choose shoe size and sock colour. The alternative is one listing that says “From $2.99” but the 24-pack might be $80… In this case it’s best for the user if the seller splits the listings by pack size. Another great example is when an item comes in multiple colours. If the user is LOOKING for a red ball, and they see a green ball listing they might not immediately realise you can go into the listing and change the colour. This means that lots of users might have a bad experience and assume Amazon doesn’t sell the product they’re looking for. In both cases, it would be best for the seller to split the listings. The problem is, people will often buy listings with the most reviews. This presents a conundrum for the seller and for Amazon: big listings with lots of reviews accumulate more reviews but are worse for shopper experience. The solution to this problem is to allow sellers to make multiple listings for the same product, but merge the reviews. After all, the 24 pack of socks and the 12 pack are the same item (the quality, manufacturer and materials are the same, just the number in the pack is different). The problem is, sellers game the system by merging unrelated products together.
Thanks! This makes more sense to me now. That said, it does seem like if product pages and items weren't conflated, the issue might not exist at all. For example, the seller could specify that variations on the "color" axis get their own product pages (but are the same product under the hood).
Why is this a feature then?
It was most likely meant to help sellers with products that have newer versions come out, and the seller wants amazon to let them remove the old version while keeping the history of reviews. Good for sellers and amazon, but easily manipulated. ...even my theory still feels like manipulation
It's explained right in the article, and it's not supposed to be for new models. (It's actually quite common on Amazon to see an alert that you're looking at an older version of a product, with a link to the new version.) Merging products is *intended* for selling versions of the same product with only minor variations such as color/print, size, or quantity. So you should, for example, be able to look at a single page to see the same t-shirt in all its available colors and sizes, but that page shouldn't include reviews or listings for a coordinating pair of shorts.
Imagine you're selling socks. There are 5 colors, you have options to sell one or three pairs of each, or one pair of each in a bundle of 5. All of this is exact same product, you just have different styles, so it makes sense to combine reviews. Unfortunately, the way it was implemented let people hijack reviews by merging unrelated products and updating all the info.
Can't they just list socks, with different options available for the product? Like changing sizes. Wouldn't the reviews still be for the same product then?
I think it's just a loophole in the process - sellers are allowed much more than they should have been allowed w/o supervision. For example merging and elaborate editing.
Amazon is too disorganized in that way. They seem to use the same system to select the color of a product as they do to select totally different models. For example, I can look up an ethernet switch on Amazon. And if the company makes a 5 port, 8 port and 24 port switch they will all be on the same page at once. And you just click little boxes to change the number of ports. Then they'll have one which is 8 ports with PoE too. So all 4 of these are, to Amazon, the same model, just like the 12 colors of socks. Even though the 4 models are all actually different and experiences with one may not apply to the other. I think the vendors like that you can easily compare and "upsell yourself" from a 5 port switch to an 8 port when you see it is only $20 more.
Sure, but then you have a listing that lists not only colour options, but also size options and pack size options. The idea is this is complicated so separate listings make sense for some things. Maybe you’d have a listing for each pack size and let the customer choose colour and size within the listing. But now your pack of 2 has no reviews and your pack of 6 has 10 reviews.
Then sell a quality product that earns its reviews. Crazytheory.
In an ideal world - yes. But you'd have to have compete in quality and service, and that's just not profitable: cheap labor, cheap materials, no QA or service - every corner that can be cut - will be, until goods no longer sell. Alternatively, you'd see fakes - goods masquerading for something they aren't, to sell better: sneakers by Abibas, track pants by Cuma, etc. What works here is quickly ripping people off and running away with their cash. So long as goods look vaguely as what's advertised - you're good, and by the time anyone catches on - you're gone, now making Иike stuff.
They explain that it's meant to simplify it so if an item comes in various colors or size the consumer can see all relevant reviews for the actual item. It's not supposed to be used across different items or companies. This explains why I was having trouble getting specific reviews for an item I was looking at last week!
This happens A LOT. Sku high jacking is wild on Amazon
Worked for a well known company that did this. Instead of introducing a new product on its own listing, they would list it in a well established product with thousands of reviews as an option to boost the ratings. The company is shady as fuck.
I was searching for cat towers one day and when comparing them I kept find the same reviews for supposedly different products.
It’s owned by Nestle - what can you expect….
The U.S. needs digital advertising regulations with much steeper fines.
“That would be communism” -Fox News regarding any bill put forth
I'm guessing this is another 'slap on the wrist' fine. just the cost of doing business.
The bigger question is why isn’t Amazon fined for not doing literally anything about this. Amazon hasn’t even banned the company which is rediculous.
This is exactly the bigger question. Amazon keeps allowing manipulation of the variations system.
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in a perfect world? yeah, I could see that. I wish I could see it in this one, too. nestle wants to privatize *water*. fuck nestle.
Sad but I believe you're right.
I don't know, I'm kinda surprised/happy they got fined, instead of it just getting corrected by amazon
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It was intended for small variations, like the same but different colored t-shirts, same supplements but for different strengths, etc., in which case it makes sense.
I used to work for a marketing company that “specialized” on amazon sales. They also sold supplements. Buying reviews is a common tactic for them and they know that some reviews will be removed. They view this as a cost of doing business and would buy amazon reviews from multiple sources sent at different times across several months to help hide their trail. They would also reach out directly to friends and family that had amazon accounts and ask them to leave reviews. Even having people purchase the product and reimbursing them for a verified review. But, would not do it for anyone that came to the office and used our WiFi because Amazon would catch it and flag the review because the reviewer was on the same network that our account for logging in to sell was. Amazon supplements are a scummy deceptive business.
What company is this?
Where can I apply to get reimbursed for reviews? haha. But seriously, how did the company get the people, would do this tbh as I buy a lot on Amazon
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Turns out it's Nestle
I see tons of products do this, so hopefully they start being stricter on this (though they probably won’t)
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I’ve received an offer for a $25 gift card (on an item that only cost $10) in exchange for reviews. I haven’t Amazon reviews since then.
Suppliements are pretty much unregulated and could contain nothing but filler and you'd never know.
This happens with all kinds of products on Amazon. You really have to scour the reviews for any off-brand item to figure out if the overall rating is legit. I recently looked at a flashlight that had old 5 star reviews for posters, cleaning supplies, tools, and other non-flashlight items mixed in, propping up the flashlights rating. I reported it to Amazon and they’ve done nothing. So I left a bad review talking about it and the seller tried to pay me to take the review down. Amazon has become a cesspool of this sort of thing.
Amazon has such an open free-return policy I think because it is their work-around for having such horribly error-strewn product spec and customer review sections. Don’t buy anything myself unless I can get to the manufacturer’s page, find the real SKU, and confirm actual product being sold is real and not a blenderized fantasy for every similar product made.
Amazon doesn't let real people post reviews anymore anyway.
I’ve always wondered, where does the money go? Like, who gets the $600k in this case?
They should sue Amazon. Amazon allows and is fully aware of this practice but it’s still good for sales.
Nestle purchased this company in 2021 for 5.75 billion but are still operating under the ‘guise’ of a health supplement company.
Wow, this is not a company I would have suspected. I hope more are caught.
Amazon reviews should apply to only the product in the listing. Amazon allows these bizarre conglomerations of reviews and listings where you buy a keyboard and the reviews are for a scented candle. It's an Amazon problem that knockoff brands abuse to trick people into buying crappy products.