Amazon vows to clamp down on fake reviews dubbed ‘catalogue abuse’

Amazon has pledged to intensify its efforts against fake reviews on its platform following scrutiny from the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

The retail giant has committed to implementing "robust processes" designed to swiftly identify and eliminate fraudulent reviews. These measures will also include penalties for sellers and businesses engaging in deceptive practices.

In addition, Amazon has promised to address concerns related to "catalogue abuse," a tactic where sellers improperly transfer positive reviews from popular products to unrelated items, artificially inflating the latter's ratings.

This manipulation can mislead consumers into believing they are purchasing a highly-rated item, such as headphones, when the reviews actually pertain to a different product altogether.

As part of its commitment, Amazon will impose sanctions on businesses that attempt to boost their ratings through fake reviews or catalogue abuse, including potential bans from selling on the site.

Users who post fake reviews will also face consequences, such as being prohibited from posting further reviews.

The site has also promised to provide clear and robust mechanisms to allow consumers and businesses to report fake reviews and catalogue abuse quickly and easily.

The undertakings relate to the reviews, review counts and star ratings for products visible to consumers when searching Amazon’s UK online store.

They follow an investigation by the CMA into Amazon 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.

The CMA estimates that around 90 per cent of consumers use reviews when making purchasing decisions, and that as much as £23 billion of UK consumer spending is potentially influenced by online reviews annually.

Fake reviews are now explicitly banned under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCCA).

Amazon’s undertakings follow Google changing its processes for tackling fake reviews, including sanctions for repeat offenders, in January.

CMA chief executive Sarah Cardell said: “So many people use Amazon, from buying a new bike lock to finding the best coffee machine – and what’s clear is that star ratings and reviews have a huge impact on their choices.

“That’s why these new commitments matter and help set the standard. They mean people can make decisions with greater confidence – knowing that those who seek to pull the wool over their eyes will be swiftly dealt with.”

The CMA will now scrutinise whether review platforms, businesses who list products on them, and reviewers themselves, are complying with the strengthened laws around fake reviews.

An Amazon spokesman said: “We invest significant resources to pro-actively stop fake reviews ever appearing on our store, including on expert human investigators and machine learning models that analyse thousands of data points to detect risk.

“Last year we pro-actively blocked more than 275 million fake reviews, with more than 99 per cent of all products in our store containing only authentic reviews.

“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.”