The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has confirmed it has launched an investigation into five major companies in the UK as part of a clampdown into fake online reviews.
Just Eat, Dignity, Pasta Evangelists, Feefo, and Autotrader will be probs by the business regulator in the months ahead.
According to the CMA, the body is looking into whether delivery platform Just Eat’s rating system was tweaked for certain restaurants’ and grocers’ star ratings.
As well as this, Autotrader and Feebo will be reviewed over whether the former company’s platform did not publish a series of one-star reviews
Just Eat is among the companies under investigation
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These reviews were moderated by customer review website Feefo and are believed not to have been counted towards star ratings.
Italian food chain Pasta Evangelists is being scrutinised over whether consumers were offered discounts on future orders in exchange for leaving five-star reviews on delivery apps.
Funeral company Dignity is being probed by the CMA to see whether the firm told its members of staff to leave positive reviews about its crematoria services.
It should be noted that the regulator has not came to any conclusions about whether consumer law has been broken by any of the firms under investigation.
Sarah Cardell, Chief Executive of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), pictured speaking during a panel discussion at the Annual CBI Conference | GETTY IMAGES
The CMA has previously launched an investigation into Ticketmaster
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PASarah Cardell, chief executive of the CMA, said: “Fake reviews strike at the heart of consumer trust, with many of us worrying about misleading content when looking at reviews online.
“With household budgets under pressure, people need to know they’re getting genuine information – not reviews or star ratings that have been manipulated to push them towards the wrong choice.
“We’ve given businesses the time to get things right. Now we’re deploying our new powers to tackle some of the most harmful practices head on.”
Under recently introduced legislation, companies have been banned from certain tactics around online reviews under law as of April last year.
Just Eat is under fire
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WaitroseThese include fake posts, paid-for reviews that are not clearly marked as incentivised, and hiding negative feedback.
As the CMA announced its investigation, figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) confirmed that UK retail sales decreased in February as supermarket sales slipped and demand for household goods was impacted by wet weather.
The statistics body revealed total volume of retail sales, which measures the quantity bought, fell by 0.4 per cent last month. This is compared with a two per cent rise in January, which was revised up from a previous estimate of 1.8 per cent.
In the three months to February, sales volumes rose by 0.7 per cent, largely driven by strong sales from online retailers.