UPDATE: Hello Bello has since corrected the major issue noted in this post. Below is the original post in its entirety.
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First, a brief background…
Whether you have a child in diapers or not, you have probably heard about the recent launch of Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard’s new baby care line: Hello Bello. They are leveraging their celebrity status to garner lots of attention for their new brand. They have been on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and The View promoting Hello Bello (just to name a few).
The surprise launch happened February 25, 2019. The “affordable, plant-based” products are only available on their website (hellobello.com) and at Wal-Mart.
Fully stocked shelves were quickly emptied, as the buzz around this new brand spread quickly. Just three days later, the company announced via twitter that they were behind on shipping.
Now, here’s the problem…
Deceptive Practices
The Hello Bello website has 204 customer reviews dated prior to the launch date.
There are 11 pages of glowing reviews. Overall, the diapers get a 5-star rating.
Considering the product hadn’t launched yet, it can be assumed that all 204 reviewers received free product in exchange for their review.
Out of the 204 reviews, only 4 reviewers disclosed that they received free product in exchange for their review. 2 others stated that they received a free sample. The rest of the reviewers, all 198 of them, did not disclose the fact they received free product in exchange for a review. Despite this, Hello Bello went on to publish these reviews on their website anyways. This is extremely deceptive and misleading. And dare I say illegal. The FTC has laws against this type of practice.
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Essentially, when a reviewer receives a product for free, their review is biased (whether intentional or not). This biased review can be misleading to the consumer. To mitigate this, the reviewer (or company) must disclose that the reviewer received free product.
Several reviewers did mention that they “received” the product. But this isn’t good enough. The relationship between the company and the reviewer is not clear. The reviewer could easily be referencing “receiving” the diapers in the mail. Or “receiving” the diapers as a gift, as it is often the case that friends and family gift diapers to new and expectant parents.
One may argue that it is clear that the reviewers received the diapers for free based on the mere fact that the reviews are all dated before the launch date. However, I don’t think that’s a reasonable assumption. This may be true for some consumers who bought the day of the launch or who heavily researched the brand. However, I don’t think most people, especially as time passes, will be aware of the launch date or make the connection between the launch date and dates of the reviews.
Here’s what the FTC says on the appropriate way to handle on-line reviews:
My company runs a retail website that includes customer reviews of the products we sell. We believe honest reviews help our customers and we give out free products to a select group of our customers for them to review. We tell them to be honest, whether it’s positive or negative. What we care about is how helpful the reviews are. Do we still need to disclose which reviews were of free products?
Yes. Knowing that reviewers got the product they reviewed for free would probably affect the weight your customers give to the reviews, even if you didn’t intend for that to happen. And even assuming the reviewers in your program are unbiased, your customers have the right to know which reviewers were given products for free. It’s also possible that the reviewers may wonder whether your company would stop sending them products if they wrote several negative reviews – despite your assurances that you only want their honest opinions – and that could affect their reviews. Also, reviewers given free products might give the products higher ratings on a scale like the number of stars than reviewers who bought the products. If that’s the case, consumers may be misled if they just look at inflated average ratings rather than reading individual reviews with disclosures. Therefore, if you give free products to reviewers you should disclose next to any average or other summary rating that it includes reviewers who were given free products.
Statistics on the Hello Bello Reviews
Breakdown of reviews:
- 5 star reviews: 165, or 81% of total reviews
- 4 star reviews: 27, or 13% of total reviews
- 3 star reviews: 11, or 5% of total reviews
- 2 star reviews: 1, or less than half a %
- 1 star reviews: 0, 0%
The average of all the reviews is 4.75.
I input all the reviews into an on-line word analyzer. Below is a list of popular words and their frequency:
Out of the 204 total reviews,
- “cute” appeared in 91 times
- “soft” appeared in 71 times
- “design” or “designs” appeared 65 times
- “absorbent” appeared 38 times
- “comfortable” appeared 37 times
- “no leaks” appeared 26 times; 60 others also discussed this but just used different terms (i.e. “didn’t leak” instead of “no leaks”).
Fake Reviews?
In reading through all the reviews, I did find some to be repetitive, as well as a bit “scripted” (for lack of a better term). In addition, I found some of the popular keywords to be bizarre. For instance, I was surprised to see the word “comfortable” come up so often. I’ve spent a lot of time researching and talking to other moms about diapers, and “comfortable” is just not a diaper feature that comes up. Similar thing for the word “soft”.
But sure enough, the words “soft” and “comfy” are heavily used on Hello Bello’s website to describe and promote the diapers. Here’s a screenshot of an example:
Despite all this, I won’t go as far to say that Hello Bello put fake reviews on their website. But, I’m also not ruling it out.
What most likely occurred is that the company guided the reviewers in some keywords to include. All the more reason to be skeptical of these reviews, if you ask me.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE: Hello Bello- Are The Ingredients As Safe As You Think?
Critical Reviews
If you’re curious what the person who gave the 2-star review had to say, here it is, entitled “not so great choice of diapers for us!”:
” Ive been using these the last few days and I had to discontinue because they gave my daughter a rash. She doesnt have sensitive skin and any type of brand works for her but these. Every time I switched back to her other brand of diaper the rash would go away thats with using two different brands so Id use the hello hello diapers again to give it a chance again after it went away and it would just come back again. So I knew it was these diapers I wish I would of gotten a list of the ingredients to know what was in them all I know is that theyre premium plant based. Cute design though!”
(Side note: I too wish there was a full ingredients list. You will notice there is not one on the website. If you reach out to the company, they say they don’t have a full ingredients list yet from their supplier.)
Other negative comments of the Hello Bello diapers:
“I received the product, and liked the design. The diapers states that they work for overnight, however, the elastic fasteners dont stick once the diaper is wet. There were multiple times during the day where my sons diaper would fall down his pant leg because the elastic fastener didnt work properly” (Gave 4 stars). This issue of the tabs not sticking/detaching was mentioned a couple times.
Absorbent but squirts: At first I loved these, they fit well and I like the clean-aspect of them. They work well for general day to day activities and are very absorbent, which is great. Our problem came if we’re holding our toddler or if she’s in a seat for a while. It seems like if you apply pressure to the diaper it’s like you’re wringing it out. We wound up with a lot of wet pants on days we were out running errand or at older sibling activities. We’ve had no problems with what I would consider actual leaks (up the back or through the legs) so they fit really well. And when she’s just up playing throughout the day they’re great. Just don’t press on a wet diaper if you want to stay dry. (Gave 3 stars).
Another critique that was mentioned a few times was the fact the diapers did not have a wetness indicator. On the Hello Bello website it states that there is a wetness indicator, but only for size N through size 2.
All in all though, the comments were overwhelmingly positive.
Some Final Thoughts
- I am curious to hear unbiased reviews and see how they compare.
- I truly hope the (unbiased) reviews turn out to be just as positive, as I really like the vision behind this brand.
- I am curious to see the list of full ingredients once they are released. Dependent on this, I would love to try them out to see how they work for my baby.
- However, the deceptive practices of Hello Bello (as it relates to the reviews), makes me question the trustworthiness of the brand as a whole. Are the products truly as sustainable and safe as they claim?
More Baby Product Articles:
The Best Non-Toxic Diapers | Andy Pandy | What You Need to Know