Reviews gone on website?

We migrated to Trustpilot for our reviews. You should be seeing them on there.

https://nootropicsdepot.com/matrine-powder/

https://nootropicsdepot.com/matrine-capsules/

Are you not seeing them? All the old reviews should have migrated over. If you don't see yours in there, we can send you an invite to make it again. Just email [email protected] with your info, and we can go through the system and send you a review invite.

Why did we make this change? One of the big issues we have had with product reviews is regulatory compliance. Because the built-in review system in Bigcommerce has us "approve" reviews, and puts all that control on us, it put us in a weird position. We were sandwiched between openly allowing customers to say what they want on a product, the FTC guidelines surrounding that, and then the FDA regulations on the other side. All three of of those are kind of in opposition of each other. Customers want to be able to say what they want. However, the FDA says that if we have control over which reviews are approved and show up, we are responsible for what they say. This resulted in multiple blackmail lawsuits we had to deal with in the background, due to disease claims customers made on those reviews. If someone says they have ADHD, and that Sabroxy helped them, the argument can be made that the intended use of that product was to treat a disease. This is a violation of FDA guidelines. After we dealt with those lawsuits, the decision was made that because we had the ability to edit the reviews, we had a regulatory duty to remove those disease claims. This meant that we had to manually go through each customer product review to edit them. This resulted in confusion by customers, because sometimes it would take us significant amounts of time to get to them, so people's reviews would not show up for a while. Then when they did show up, they might be edited to remove references to diseases. Most of the time people were understanding of that, but sometimes people would not be. They would say we were trying to stifle consumers or silence them, when all we were trying to do was comply with laws and regulations, and prevent blackmail civil lawsuits. It was a big hassle for everyone, but the best solution we could think of in the interim. However, then there was the other elephant in the room: the FTC.

So the FTC guidelines are actually in direct conflict with the FDA guidelines in this instance. The FTC says that product reviews cannot be editorialized or controlled in any way. This means that editing a review to remove references to something like ADHD, or just not approving the review because of the claims, is not allowed according to the FTC. However, the FDA says that you are responsible for that if you have control over them, so we had to choose to follow FDA or FTC guidelines. Then us and customers get caught in the middle, and nobody wins. Not to mention, we are all about transparency. Getting stuck in the middle on this issue just comes across as not transparent, so all around it is a shitty situation. So what is the solution? This is where Trustpilot comes in.

After meeting with our regulatory attorneys, and having conversations with the Trustpilot team and their regulatory team, we decided to partner with them to solve this. The big issue for us was the fact that Bigcommerce natively puts the onus and control over product reviews on the brands. Because of that, compliance with everything was impossible. However, what if we no longer had control over reviews? What if it was all completely independent of us? This would solve the regulatory issue, while also improving transparency. With Trustpilot, they act completely independent of us. We have absolutely no control over what is said in reviews or what reviews can show up. It's all handled by Trustpilot, which has a content integrity team who's sole job is to ensure transparency in reviews. If a customer wants to make a review of a product, they are free to do so, and we no longer do we have the ability to allow or disallow that. This takes the risk off of us, so that we don't have to make decisions on a lose/lose basis for regulatory compliance. This allows customers to say what they want to say with complete transparency.

So that is some context and information surrounding the change, and why we went this route. We want nothing more than for consumers to be able to openly and honestly discuss the products they buy. It's just sometimes the legality and regulatory compliance surrounding that makes it difficult or impossible. By taking that control out of our hands, we give consumers that control and transparency they want, while still allowing us to stay in compliance.