Retailer Trend Nova simply bought slapped with a $4.2 million tremendous by the Federal Commerce Fee (FTC) for paying an outdoor agency to advertise constructive critiques on behalf of the $450 million firm. Allegedly, all unfavorable critiques had been reported to have been suppressed till they had been cleared by Trend Nova first. This case of doubtful popularity administration is the primary of its variety for the fee.
“Misleading overview practices cheat customers, undercut trustworthy companies, and pollute on-line commerce,” stated Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Client Safety. “Trend Nova is being held accountable for these practices, and different companies ought to take observe.”
On its official Twitter web page, the fee gave additional clarification of its case towards the corporate. “Trend Nova used a third-party on-line product overview administration interface to routinely submit four- and five-star critiques to its web site and maintain lower-starred critiques for the corporate’s approval,” posted the FTC.
Trend Nova doesn’t agree with the FTC’s findings, chalking it as much as a fault of the third-party’s software program. Terry Fahn, a senior exec for Sitrick & Co. and spokesperson for Trend Nova, stated the allegations had been “inaccurate” and that his shopper’s error was in counting on the skin firm’s “autopublish” function as an alternative of reviewing the way it labored.
Fahn was additionally “extremely assured that it might have gained in court docket and solely agreed to settle the case to keep away from the distraction and authorized charges that it might incur in litigation.”
Nonetheless, this isn’t the primary time that the corporate has been accused of shady enterprise practices. Practically a year-and-a-half in the past, the FTC ordered Trend Nova to pay a $9.3 million tremendous for deceptive clients about transport occasions and flat out not refunding funds for unshipped merchandise.
Across the similar time, the L.A.-based Garment Staff Heart attacked the model for the way it dealt with wages and layoff firstly of pandemic. “The corporate instructed us that [they] had been going to shut down for the coronavirus,” stated then 19-year-old Paulina Miguel to Remake. “They instructed us they had been going to shut down and never open it till April twentieth. However we simply heard that the corporate didn’t actually shut, they simply instructed that to among the staff.”
GWC director Marissa Nuncio stated she was conscious of the rampant wage theft and underpayment per a 2019 Division of Labor investigation, and it predominantly affected the (feminine dominated) Latinx and Asian immigrant employee inhabitants corporations like Trend Nova favor to rent. “We all know from our ongoing work that Trend Nova has been a foul actor for fairly a while,” she stated, “and we’ve seen horrible wages of their provide chain for fairly a while.”
