{"id":187556,"date":"2025-12-17T03:19:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T03:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/187556\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T03:19:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T03:19:08","slug":"tv-advertising-company-caught-lying-to-consumers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/187556\/","title":{"rendered":"TV advertising company caught lying to consumers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Someone<\/p>\n

\n

Photo: Unsplash\n<\/p>\n

A TV advertising company has been caught out for lying to consumers and leaving fake reviews on its website.<\/p>\n

The Commerce Commission says Brand Developer Limited (BDL), which trades as The TV Shop, has been convicted of 13 charges for breaches of the Fair Trading Act over a period of nearly four years.<\/p>\n

The court’s judgement is yet to be released to media.<\/p>\n

The Commerce Commission said the company misled customers about free or bonus items for a product.<\/p>\n

Staff also posted reviews on its website without disclosing their connection to the company, while at the same time removing some low rating reviews.<\/p>\n

“The law is very clear – businesses must not mislead consumers through reviews that are not what they seem,” Commerce Commission Deputy Chair Anne Callinan said.<\/p>\n

“When people are looking to buy a product, they will often read online reviews to help them make an informed decision. Consumers should be able to trust that the reviews posted are genuine,” Callinan added.<\/p>\n

The court also found The TV Shop denied customers their rights under the Consumer Guarantees Act if something went wrong with a product they had purchased.<\/p>\n

Judge Sellars KC said the relevance of a number of staff reviews, identified by the Commission during the case, was “to demonstrate that the posting of undisclosed staff reviews was not an anomaly but the result of a concerted effort by BDL”.<\/p>\n

Judge Sellars KC also accepted an expert witnesses’ opinion that “BDL’s review omission systematically lowered the availability of negative information about its products to consumers”.<\/p>\n

Sellars also pointed to a to a “pattern of BDL employees representing to aggrieved customers that its terms and conditions and company policies take precedence over New Zealand consumer law”.<\/p>\n

The company will be sentenced next year.<\/p>\n

Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo: Unsplash A TV advertising company has been caught out for lying to consumers and leaving fake reviews…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187557,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-187556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}