Fashion Nova Suppressed Lower-Starred Reviews Pennsylvania Class Action

When consumers are considering buying something online, they often rely on reviews to help make a decision. In fact, the complaint for this Pennsylvania class action says that “ninety-three percent (93%) of adults in the United States read reviews before making online purchases.” But Fashion Nova, LLC, the complaint alleges, artificially inflates the value of its merchandise by suppressing reviews awarding it from one to three stars.

The class for this action is all those who live in Pennsylvania who bought an item from Fashion Nova’s website in New Jersey between March 23, 2016 and December 25, 2018.

Fashion Nova has a few bricks-and-mortar stores, but it sells most of its clothing, accessories, and other products online. This means that most customers will not have a chance to examine its merchandise. Reviews are therefore likely to be important to customers.

But the complaint quotes a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) press release from January 2022 as saying, “From as early as late 2015 through mid-November 2019, Fashion Nova chose to have four- and five-star reviews automatically post to the website but did not approve or publish hundreds of thousands lower-starred, more negative reviews.”

The complaint displays images of some one- to two-star reviews that have been left on Fashion Nova’s website since it stopped suppressing bad reviews. These point to problems with the company’s merchandise that could be significant to other consumers, for example, that a certain garment runs small, that an item was of poor quality, and that an item arrived with the zipper already broken. These reviews, because of their lower number of stars,

The complaint alleges, “In sum, from 2015 to 2019, consumers relied on [Fashion Nova’s] representations that the Products were highly rated by fellow consumers and did not have any issues.”

How was the suppression accomplished? The FTC report, as quoted in the complaint, says that the company “installed a third-party online product review managements interface. The interface allow[ed] users to choose to have certain reviews automatically post based upon their star ratings and hold lower-starred reviews for client approval prior to posting.”

Fashion Nova, the complaint claims, did not approve or publish what the FTC calls “hundreds of thousands of lower-starred, more negative reviews.”

The complaint says that without Fashion Nova’s “misrepresentations, material omissions, and deceptive practices in its website,” consumers would not have made many of their purchases on the website or would only have been willing to pay significantly less money for the products.

The only count is violation of the Pennsylvania Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law, which forbids “unfair methods of competition” and “unfair or deceptive acts or practices[.]”

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Consumer
Tags: Deceptive Advertising, Fraud, Unfair Business Practices