Protecting Consumers from Misleading Reviews: 55% of Screened Websites Violate EU Law

The European Commission (“the Commission”) and national Consumer Protection Authorities released the results of an EU-wide website screening (“sweep”) on online consumer reviews on 20 January 2022.

Under the coordination of the Commission, authorities of 26 Member States, Iceland and Norway checked 223 major websites for misleading consumer reviews. Almost two thirds of the online shops, marketplaces, booking websites, search engines and comparison service sites analysed, triggered doubts about the reliability of the reviews: In 144 out of the 223 websites checked, authorities could not confirm that these traders were doing enough to ensure that reviews are authentic, i. e. that they were posted by consumers that actually used the product or service that they reviewed.

Other findings of the screening of websites on online reviews:

  • 104 out of the 223 of the websites examined do not inform consumers how reviews are collected and processed. 
  • 118 websites do not contain information about how fake reviews are prevented. In these cases consumers have no possibility to verify whether reviews were written by consumers that actually used the product or service.
  • 176 of the websites do not mention that incentivised reviews are prohibited by their internal policies or if not how they ensure they are flagged as incentivised.

Consumer Protection Authorities concluded that at least 55% of the checked websites potentially violate the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive [1]which requires that truthful information is presented to consumers to allow an informed choice.

You can reach the further information here.

Kind regards,

Zumbul Attorneys at Law

info@zumbul.av.tr

 


[1] Directive 2005/29/ec of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 May 2005 concerning unfair business-to-consumer commercial practices in the internal market and amending Council Directive 84/450/EEC, Directives 97/7/EC, 98/27/EC and 2002/65/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council and Regulation (EC) No 2006/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council (‘Unfair Commercial Practices Directive’) < https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A32005L0029 >