Under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, fake reviews are a blacklisted commercial practice which is always unfair. The CMA issued guidance on fake reviews in April. Under the DMCC Act, the CMA can now decide independently whether consumer law has been infringed, rather than going through the courts. It can also tackle consumer law breaches directly, including issuing fines, ordering businesses to improve their practices to make sure they are in line with the law, and making them pay redress to affected consumers.
The CMA launched an investigation into Amazon under the previous consumer law regime over concerns that the company was breaching consumer law by failing to take adequate action to protect people from fake reviews – including not doing enough to detect and remove fake reviews, act on suspicious patterns of behaviour, or properly sanction reviewers and businesses taking part in fake review activity.
To address the CMA’s concerns, Amazon has committed to:
- Rigorous processes to tackle fake reviews and catalogue abuse: Amazon has committed to have in place robust processes to quickly detect and remove fake reviews and catalogue abuse, meaning it can better identify those businesses and reviewers that are breaking the law, and take the necessary action.
- Sanctions for businesses and reviewers: Businesses selling on Amazon face being sanctioned for catalogue abuse (where sellers hijack the reviews of well-performing products and add them to an entirely separate and different product, to falsely boost its star rating) or using fake reviews to falsely boost their star ratings – and can be banned from selling on the site altogether. Users who post fake reviews, positive or negative, risk being banned from writing further reviews, and all their previous reviews being deleted.
- Easier reporting functions: The undertakings commit Amazon to ensure that it has clear and robust mechanisms that allow consumers – and businesses – to report fake reviews and catalogue abuse quickly and easily.
The CMA is currently conducting an initial sweep of review platforms following the publication of its guidance. This seeks to identify review platforms that may need to do more to ensure they are complying with consumer law (as is outlined in the guidance). This action will form part of a new phase of the CMA’s work looking into conduct across the sector, including businesses whose products and services are listed on review sites. It will determine whether further CMA action is needed under the new consumer regime.
