The 10 Review Platforms Who Got FTC Warning Letters

Ten review management platforms were put on notice by the FTC. Here they are and what got them into trouble.

The 10 Review Platforms Who Got FTC Warning Letters
Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm / Unsplash
  • Near Media gained access to the FTC letters through a FOIA request. The 10 companies include familiar and unfamiliar names.
  • The letters were triggered by “gating” or selective publication language on the platform’s website and don’t mean the platform actually violated FTC guidelines.
  • The review ecosystem is rife with problems. Multiple parties are blameworthy beyond those identified in the letters.

Along with fining Fashion Nova for review suppression and providing marketer and review-platform guidance, the FTC sent  these letters to 10 review platforms "placing them on notice that avoiding the collection or publication of negative reviews violates the FTC Act."

Near Media made a FOIA request and received copies of the letters that were sent on January 25th. The FTC letters (pdf of all letters)  quoted parts of the websites of these platforms that raised concerns.

We offer up these excerpts to help all platforms and businesses better understand what the FTC is likely to find problematic so you too can avoid the "pleasure" of receiving one of these.

You will find some familiar names as you scroll down the list.

The 10 Recipients of 'the Letter'

Each recipient listed below includes the company name, excerpt from the website that the FTC cited as putting them in possible violation and the FTC's response.


1. GoSite, Inc - Your website includes the following description of how clients can use GoSite's review tool:

"You can also send review requests to specific, happy customers to help counteract a negative review and improve your ratings. To prevent negative reviews from posting in the first place, GoSite's review tool has a built-in filter, which allows you to respond to negative reviews privately--through email--rather than having customers post publicly."

The provision or use of either one of these functionalities would violate the FTC Act if it results in a misleading impression about what consumers think about a product or service.


2. Grade Us, LLC - Your Grade.us website describes your Review Funnel Layouts as follows:

"Choose from a variety of segmented layouts that guide happy customers to the review sites important to you and recover unhappy customers before they share a negative experience publicly."

The provision or use of either one of these functionalities would violate the FTC Act if it results in a misleading impression about what consumers think about a product or service.


3. Mindbody, Inc. - Your website indicates that clients can build their online reputations by:

"automatically prompting [their] best customers to leave a review" on the clients' own websites or through Google, Facebook, or other social review sites."

The provision or use of this functionality would violate the FTC Act if it results in a misleading impression about what consumers think about a product or service.


4. Oggvo, LLC - Your website indicates that clients can use your services to:

"keep [their] valuable reputation under lock and key with a proven system that surveys dissatisfied clients so [they] can handle the situation," and "capture unhappy clients before they do irreparable damage."

The provision or use of any such functionality would violate the FTC Act if it results in a misleading impression about what consumers think about a product or service.


5. Rallio - Your website includes the following description of your REVV service:

"Our platform generates a quick post-sale text survey to your customers so they can provide feedback about their experience in your store. Customers who respond positively are prompted to leave a review and linked directly to that store's Google, Facebook, or Yelp page. . . . If a customer responds to your survey with a rating of 3 or below, they will be prompted to leave a comment and request further assistance. Your team is alerted via email of the poor experience, and the customer can be contacted directly before they post a negative social review about your company!"

The provision or use of either one of these functionalities would violate the FTC Act if it results in a misleading impression about what consumers think about a product or service.


6. Adentro, Inc. - Your website describes your Reputation Builder tool as follows:

"Unlike other platforms, Adentro sends negative feedback ... directly to you so that you can resolve the issue through a one-to-one relationship with your customer. Positive feedback is encouraged to be shared on merchant-friendly social sites like Google, TripAdvisor and Facebook!"

The provision or use of either one of these functionalities would violate the FTC Act if it results in a misleading impression about what consumers think about a product or service.


7. DR Media Holdings, LLC - The DealerRater website states:

"Bad reviews happen to everyone, but DealerRater is the only platform that gives you a second chance to make a first impression. You'll have an opportunity to respond privately and offer resolution to negative feedback before the review gets posted."

The provision or use of this functionality would violate the FTC Act if it results in a misleading impression about what consumers think about a product or service. You should review your policies and practices to ensure that you are neither engaging in any improper step described above nor providing clients with the means to do so.


8. EyeRate Inc. - Your website describes how clients can use EyeRate’s:

"review requesting system" to "increase positive online reviews" and "resolve negative feedback before it gets posted."

It states that a business should ask customers to rate the business from 1-5 stars and then "direct 4-star and above raters to your online review profiles" but "Task 3-star and below raters to leave feedback before directing them to" those profiles.

You argue that this strategy is effective because, after leaving feedback, "most negative star raters will not take the time to post an online review." The provision or use of this functionality would violate the FTC Act if it results in a misleading impression about what consumers think about a product or service.


9. Signpost Inc. - The Signpost website offers to:

"make it easy for happy customers to write reviews about your business on sites that matter" and "get constructive feedback offline to protect your online reputation and company brand."

It is unclear how you accomplish such results, but if these functionalities result in a misleading impression about what consumers think about a product or service, their provision or use would violate the FTC Act.


10. Reputation.com, Inc. - Your website indicates that clients can use customer survey software to:

"create unique survey paths based on responses."

It is unclear what these "unique survey paths" involve, but if these functionalities result in a misleading impression about what consumers think about a product or service, their provision or use would violate the FTC Act.


The Letter's Impact

Once a company has received such a letter from the FTC, it is effectively on notice that if subsequent violations are uncovered and the noted issues were not fixed, the company is then likely to receive to a fine, a consent order and public censure. It is likely as part of that process, the FTC will examine how clients of these platforms complied as well.

The letters reflect a superficial examination by the FTC of the platform's website and should not be construed as an indictment. In some of the cases, however, it's clear the platform was providing its clients with "the means and instrumentalities to easily... suppress negative ... reviews on their websites and mislead consumers that the reviews displayed accurately reflected the views of all purchasers who submitted reviews."

As you read through the concerns for each platform recipient you realize, in several cases, the concerns do not themselves violate the FTC's guidelines and could simply be a useful feature. For example, allowing branching in a survey tool, as Reputation.com has done, makes perfect sense as long as it is not used to gate users when asking for external reviews or if both sets of users are offered an equal opportunity to leave a reviews at the end of the survey.  

Glass Houses

The whole of the review industry is a bit of a glass house on the issue of fake and biased reviews. While the FTC singled out a few players many more have similar practices and policies. This goes for  Google and Amazon on down to the many review platforms that assist businesses in soliciting reviews.

Google and Amazon, protected under Section 230 and not directly liable for review spam or fraud, have through neglect and carelessness allowed their domains to become polluted with fake positive reviews and negative review attacks. Getting Google, for example, to act on these is extraordinarily difficult and often futile, despite their claims about the marvel of their moderation processes.

The FTC has some responsibility here as well. The problem with fake reviews has been obvious for at least 10 years. During that time reviews have become nearly indispensable to the functioning of large swaths of public life from picking a doctor to choosing a car, from picking a vacation rental to finding a reliable seller on Ebay. Yet the FTC has expended little time or effort in creating clear and unambiguous guidance, even now.  They have spent even less time with effective enforcement or partnering with state Attorneys General to explore solutions.

Everyone Is to Blame

There are also the many companies and platforms that attempt to help businesses cope with the weird and irrational worlds that Google, Amazon, Facebook and Yelp have created.

Some of the practices from these companies, like review gating, are no different than what businesses have been doing since the dawn of commerce and capitalism, asking happy customers for testimonials. And selective review display is much the same.

Obviously with gating, the handwriting has been on the wall since Google's prohibition. Now it is obvious that preferential moderation and different treatment of positive and negative reviews must also go away. Some vendors will change their platforms and some will continue to just hide in the corner with a wink and a  nod, offering under the hood that of which they can not speak publicly.

Last but not least are the agencies and businesses that insist on these features and implement them on the ground. We have learned that things like gating actually do not improve ratings and do dramatically reduce review volume. And yet businesses think that they need the feature.

Although in the end, like Fashion Nova, these businesses will carry the brunt of any FTC fines.  If you are a business using one of the above platforms you should review your settings to be sure that you are not the next Fashion Nova.

Will There Be a Solution?

The problem is that reviews, as the collective wisdom of the crowd, have taken on a critical role in our economy, helping to inform customers when they need to decide on new vendors and products in a wired world.

None of the players above have properly accepted the role that reviews play in society, nor their responsibility in maintaining a healthy review ecosystem.

In an ideal world Google and Amazon would be held to account and clean up their dominant and problem-rife spaces. The FTC and states would create consistent and meaningful guidelines and enforce them. The review platforms would also change their flows and products to ensure that every review is a fair one.

Reviews are so much more than testimonials or an endorsement and yet the FTC, rather than embracing the differences and treating reviews as a separate beast, lump regulations of reviews under those of endorsements.

Given Google's and Amazon's histories, the FTC's underfunding and focus on antitrust and the review platforms' perceived self interest, I am not optimistic these issues will be resolved in the near term.

If they are not solved long term, then the critical value that reviews provide to both consumers and business will be lost.


As many of you know I was a co-founder of GatherUp which was subsequently sold in 2019 to the same company as Grade.Us. I was employed by them until Febuary 2020. Subsequent to that time I have acted as an independent consultant to them. That relationship ends at the end of this month.

Adam Dorfman, a frequent auther on our site, is employed by Reputation.com

Other posts in this series on the FTC:

The 10 Review Platforms Who Got FTC Warning Letters
Ten review management platforms were put on notice by the FTC. Here they are and what got them into trouble.
FTC’s Review Guidelines Part 2: Platforms
The FTC’s guidance for review platforms is sweeping. But enforcement will be selective and “closed platforms” are the most likely targets.
FTC’s Review Guidelines Part I: Business Marketers
The FTC’s new guidelines simplify many things about review solicitation and moderation, but other areas are now murkier.
With $4.2M Fine, FTC Kills ‘Review Gating’
The agency signaled it’s going to get tough on brands and platforms that engage in review manipulation.
FTC to 700+ Brands: Deceptive Endorsements Will Lead to Financial Pain
The FTC is trying to lay the groundwork for substantial fines against high-profile violators of its endorsement and review guidelines.