Seven online shopping malls based on social networking services (SNS) have been caught that deceive consumers by posting reviews with complaints about products to the bottom of the bulletin board and posting only good reviews.

The Fair Trade Commission today (21st) said that it has imposed a total of 33 million won in fines and ordered corrective actions on seven SNS-based shopping malls for violating consumer protection laws in e-commerce.

An SNS-based shopping mall is a place that is promoted by Instagram and sells products through a separate internet homepage or deals through SNS altogether.

According to the Korea Fair Trade Commission, Boogun FNC, which operates an online shopping mall,'Imbly', makes product reviews appear to be sorted according to the latest, recommended, and rated order.
Complaints were dropped to the bottom.

The company also decorated the product as exposed according to objective criteria, such as high sales volume in the menu called'Best Item', and actually changed the posting ranking randomly according to the circumstances of the shopping mall such as inventory.

Among the 32 products seen in the'Best Item' menu, there were also products that ranked 50th out of sales.

The reviews that Haneul Sky, which runs an underwear shopping mall, does not recommend products, has been dropped to the bottom of the bulletin board so that consumers cannot easily find it.

In addition, the e-commerce law allows you to apply for an exchange or refund within one week of receiving the item, but the company has announced that it is not possible to exchange or refund products older than five days.

86 Project, Glander, On the Flow, Look At Min, and Lindemond also have exchange and refund periods that are guaranteed by the law, but they have arbitrarily shortened the period to advertise or stick to the exchange standards.

It did not provide any information that consumers should know, such as the date of manufacture of the product, nor did it notify that a legal representative could cancel the transaction if a minor bought it.

To this end, the FTC issued a corrective order to correct actions such as imposing a fine of 6.5 million won per penalty on Bugun F&C and Haneul Sky, and deliberately lowering bad reviews.

The remaining five shopping malls were also ordered to correct the fines.