20 hours ago
11
Amazon has promised to do a better job policing fake reviews and to crack down on sellers using them to boost product ratings after an investigation by the UK competition watchdog.
Ending the scourge of fake reviews is a priority for the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) due to the influence they have over consumers.
About 90% of UK shoppers rely on reviews, with an estimated £23bn a year of spending influenced by crowd-sourced information. Since April, fake reviews have been explicitly banned.
Sarah Cardell, the CMA’s chief executive, said the undertakings secured from Amazon meant shoppers could now “make decisions with greater confidence”. The commitments mattered because “so many people use Amazon and what is clear is that star ratings and reviews have a huge impact on their choices”, she said.
Amazon has committed to strengthening existing systems that detect fake reviews and to stamp out “catalogue abuse”. This is where sellers take the reviews of well-performing products and add them to an entirely separate and different product, falsely boosting its star rating.
Businesses selling on Amazon face having sanctions imposed for catalogue abuse or for using fake reviews to boost product ratings – and could be banned from selling on the site altogether.
Users who post fake reviews, positive or negative, also risk being banned and having all their previous reviews deleted. The retailer will also make it easier for shoppers to alert it to fake posts.
The undertakings come after the CMA launched an investigation into Amazon and Google in 2021 due to concerns that not enough was being done to remove fake reviews or to impose sanctions on the individuals or companies involved. Earlier this year Google made similar pledges, including resolving to take action against repeat offenders.
The CMA said it would now move on to scrutinising whether specialist review platforms, the businesses who list products on them and reviewers were complying with the tougher new laws.
Under a new regulatory regime brought in under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, 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, and making them pay redress to affected consumers.
Amazon said it already devoted significant resources to eliminating fake reviews and its efforts involved expert human investigators and machine learning models capable of analysing thousands of data points. In 2024 it blocked 275m fake reviews and said “more than 99% of all products in our store contain only authentic reviews”.
A spokesperson added: “We also suspend, ban and take legal action against those who violate our policies and have teams dedicated to taking action against bad actors that attempt to solicit fake reviews for products.”
