Amazon has pledged to enhance its efforts to combat fraudulent reviews on its platform following an investigation by the competition authority.
The retail powerhouse has vowed to implement “strong procedures” for swiftly identifying and eliminating fake reviews, as well as instituting penalties for dishonest sellers and businesses, as part of the Competition and Markets Authority's (CMA) initiative to reduce this consumer risk.
Moreover, Amazon intends to address issues connected to “catalogue abuse,” where sellers exploit the reviews of top-performing products and attach them to completely different items to falsely inflate the rating.
This practice could mislead a consumer into believing they have found a set of five-star headphones while the majority of reviews pertain to an unrelated product.
Amazon has agreed to impose penalties on businesses that artificially enhance their ratings through fraudulent reviews or catalogue abuse, which could include prohibiting them from selling on the platform.
Users who submit fake reviews will also face sanctions, with the possibility of being banned from writing reviews altogether.
These commitments pertain to the reviews, review totals, and star ratings for products displayed to consumers while searching Amazon’s UK online marketplace.
They come after an investigation by the CMA into Amazon due to concerns that the company was in violation of consumer laws by not taking sufficient action to shield individuals from false reviews – such as failing to adequately identify and remove fake reviews, address suspicious behavioral patterns, or effectively penalize reviewers and businesses involved in deceptive review activity.
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The CMA estimates that approximately 90 percent of consumers rely on reviews when making purchasing decisions, with around £23 billion of UK consumer expenditure being potentially influenced by online reviews each year.