Cruise Bruise Blog
June 20, 2009
June 20, 2009
FTC To Crack Down On Paid Testimonials In Online Communities And Blogs
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has finally had enough complaints about companies paying individuals to post online testimonials via "word-of-mouth marketing" without disclosing such compensation.
The FTC is changing the word of their Guides Concerning the Use to Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising (16 CFR Part 255) to include online viral marketing.
Changing this law for the first time since 1980, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requested comments and provided an analysis of changes and revisions to their Guidelines involving Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising on the Federal Register on November 28, 2008, and requested public comments by January 30, 2009. The period for public comments was extended into March, 2009.
The FTC says the relationship between a non-objective consumer and the company creates a conflict of interest connection that deceives the consumer and they are taking action this summer.
The new rules would require those who post online testimonials to say if they were compensated in any manner to create the product review, whether receiving cash, merchandise or trips as compensation.
The FTC could order violators to stop the postings and pay restitution to customers, and it could ask the Justice Department to sue for civil penalties.
One woman blogging on TravelingMom she took a cruise as compensation for a review for Disney Cruises aboard Disney Wonder. Then, she came back to her travel blog and wrote about how fantastic the cruise was. It seems, by some coincidence, she was treated like royalty for the duration of the cruise.
The new FTC rules will not just apply to blogs but to any medium where a person who is suppose to be an impartial consumer, but who actually gets copmpensated to give a testimonial. That would include they say websites like eBay, Twitter, Amazon and online forums also known as message boards such as Cruise Critic.
That brings us back to the Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines Infiltrates Cruise Critic fiasco that I reported on some time back. RCCL was paying consumers to post bought and paid for reviews in the forums at Cruise Critic (CC) with the help of the site administration.
CC was contacted by RCCL and asked to contact their members for a special offer and CC handed them over, facilitation the deception on potential new cruises who might have thought all the postings on CC were objective testimonials, not those bought and paid for by the cruise industry.
Many members at CC were outraged and complained very loudly in posts, that were then quickly deleted by CC admin. The practice of deleting posts that unfavorable to CC and their partners has been a long time problem at CC, but only became evident when entire threads were removed and members were immediately banned. Member began jumping ship like crazy, wanting nothing to do with a board that had betrayed their trust.
Immediately the sites long term members with 10,000 posts and more began damage control saying "you can tell who is being honest and who is not". That theory only worked for long-timers who knew their way around the users of the site. New members. less web savvy, who had no understanding of the cyber rambo clique wars and battle plans many CC members used to dominate the areas of the board and to manipulate others and their posts.
Admin at CC tried to hush it up, which may the roar louder, as CC members posted what was going on other boards across the web. Suddenly under heavy fire, like the site had never seen, the decided to post a thread to address the topic, but still worked to cover up their complicity.
This problem of forum cyber rambo clique wars is not unique to CC it has gone on since at least the late 1980s when message boards, known today as forums or communities, really were boards, known as Bulletin Board Services (BBS). They were the predecessors to the Internet as we know it today.
Friends, family and boot-lickers got free run of the boards by a webmaster who had total control over who was allowed to join every word that was posted. That has not changed today. Forums as a whole are known for rampant game playing and freedom of speech manipulation.
After I reported the FTC violations going on at CC, a visitor reported to me that he had made a complaint to the FTC. With the new law in effect, perhaps this summer, the FTC would have the ammunition to go after offenders like pro-cruise industry forums, their owners and their members who work to deceive consumers.
It proves one thing for a fact, if enough people complain loud enough, action will be taken to protect consumers. It also is the beginning of the fall of these underground "community" webmasters who have thought for decades they were invincible.
Where the FTC finds board owners, including their parent company where applicable, facilitated the deception they are sure to suffer the wrath of the FTC.
June 20, 2009
Norovirus Strikes Down Passengers On Coral Princess
Was it a new outbreak, or was Norovirus on every cruise since February, is a question that will likely never be answered. A total of 128 were reported ill on Coral Princess's May 18 to May 25 cruise, including 121 (6.05%) passengers and another 7 crew members.
On the February 3 to 13 cruise there were 252 (12.6%) passengers sick and 19 (2.1%) crew for a total of 271 ill. The numbers were higher in February, but it could mean that the numbers dropped below the CDC reportable level, then began to escalate up to a reportable level again on the May 18 cruise.
Since the CDC doesn't require the ships to report all sick, only high levels of sick, it is hard to say how many were sick on how many cruises. Since the risk is high on a cruise with 271 reported ill, subsequent passengers should have been warned if there were any ill at all on the prior ship.
You can read the passenger contract all you want, but if the cruise line does not disclose illnesses to those who have booked before they board, the passenger does not make an informed choice.
With all the bad news recently about Princess Cruises between the outbreaks and the recent fire, they may want to consider renaming their line, Ugly Step-Sister Cruises. A princess they are not.
