Home Consumer Feds: Lord & Taylor Paid For Online Reviews

Feds: Lord & Taylor Paid For Online Reviews

data breach

Can you trust what you read in Social Media when it comes to product reviews and endorsements?

One of the country’s oldest and most trusted Hi-End Retailers just got nailed by the Feds for allegedly paying “reviewers” thousands of dollars to post favorite reviews of a new product.

According to the FTC:

“Over the same weekend in March 2015, Lord & Taylor gave 50 select fashion influencers a free Paisley Asymmetrical Dress and paid them between $1,000 and $4,000 each to post a photo of themselves wearing it on Instagram or another social media site. While the influencers could style the dress any way they chose, Lord & Taylor contractually obligated them to use the “@lordandtaylor” Instagram user designation and the hashtag “‪#‎DesignLab‬” in the caption of the photo they posted. The company also pre-approved each proposed post.”

“In total, the influencers’ posts reached 11.4 million individual Instagram users over just two days, led to 328,000 brand engagements with Lord & Taylor’s own Instagram handle, and the dress quickly sold out.”

BTW: This is UNPAID, I may be poor, but I’m not “beholden” to anyone at this time. ‘Cept the Mrs…and the dog.

Here’s the FTC release

Last March, some 2 dozen companies got charged with paying for online “reviews”. Ever do business with any? According to the press release, these were the 19 companies penalized by the FTC: Here’s the list

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By Al Sunshine, SouthFloridaReporter.com, Consumer Investigator, Mar. 16, 2016

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Al Sunshine is a South Florida-based Broadcast and Digital Journalist whose career has spanned more than 40 years at the local and national levels. His award-winning investigations have triggered more than a dozen state and local consumer protection laws and his work’s been cited in Congressional Testimony before the U-S House of Representatives. He is best known for his “Shame On You” features for CBS Miami which sought to expose businesses, agencies and individuals defrauding or deceiving consumers, as well as endangering the safety and welfare of the general public. In 2013 Al retired from CBS Miami to set up his own Digital News Business, “Sunshine News, LLC” and Al continues to blog for the Radio, Television, Digital News Association, sponsors of the prestigious Edward R. Murrow Awards”. An avid environmentalist, Al is one of the founding members of the “Miami Pine Rocklands Coalition”. The Florida Non-Profit is fighting to save and restore the last 2% of Pine Rocklands found only in South Florida and nowhere else in the continental United States. Al was recently elected its President.