Fashion Nova will pay $4.2m to settle claims it blocked bad reviews from its website

Online retailer Fashion Nova, known for its fast fashion, has agreed to pay $4.2m to settle allegations that it hid bad reviews of its products from the website.

The Federal Trade Commission said on Tuesday that the California-based retailer “misrepresented that the product reviews on its website reflected the views of all purchasers who submitted reviews,” when in fact Fashion Nova was suppressing reviews with ratings lower than four stars out of five. The agency said that this is its first case involving a company’s efforts to conceal negative customer reviews.

According to the FTC, Fashion Nova used a third-party online product review management software to automatically post four and five star reviews to its website, while withholding the thousands of low-star ratings.

“Deceptive review practices cheat consumers, undercut honest businesses, and pollute online commerce,” said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, in the statement. “Fashion Nova is being held accountable for these practices, and other firms should take note.”

In a statement provided to The Independent, Fashion Nova spokesperson Terry Fahn said: “The Federal Trade Commission’s allegations against Fashion Nova are inaccurate and deceptive. Fashion Nova never suppressed any website reviews, and it immediately and voluntarily addressed the website review issues when it became aware of them in 2019. Fashion Nova is highly confident that it would have won in court and only agreed to settle the case to avoid the distraction and legal fees that it would incur in litigation.”

This is the second case that the FTC has filed against Fashion Nova. In 2019, the agency announced that Fashion Nova would pay $9.3m to settle charges that the company “didn’t properly notify consumers and give them the chance to cancel their orders when it failed to ship merchandise in a timely manner”. Fashion Nova also reportedly illegally used gift cards to compensate consumers for unshipped merchandise instead of providing refunds.

This is not the first time that Fashion Nova has faced public backlash for deceptive practices. In 2020, Fashion Nova customers reported receiving texts and emails from the company suggesting they use their government stimulus checks to shop online. After millions of Americans received $1,200 emergency stimulus checks from the government, the retailer sent out a promotion text to customers that read: “When that stimulus deposit hits. Save up to 80 per cent off site wide.”

“Fashion Nova is so wrong for this, the stimulus isn’t for shopping its for people who need it during such hard times, this is so ignorant,” one person posted on Twitter.

Fast fashion has gained popularity in recent years for its low prices and fast shipping. However, the “dangerous addiction” to fast fashion is linked to fuelling both the climate crisis and the rapid build-up of plastic in oceans worldwide.