An EU-wide website screening conducted by the European Commission and national consumer protection authorities revealed that almost two-thirds of online shops, booking websites, search engines and comparison tools did not have reliable reviews.
EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders said the screening exercise was triggered because “consumers very often rely on online reviews when shopping or booking online”. Reynders argued that when shopping online, consumers should be able to interact in a trustworthy environment, where online businesses provide consumers with clear and visible information on the reliability of such reviews.
In a project coordinated by the European Commission, 26 EU consumer protection authorities, including Malta, plus Iceland and Norway, checked 223 major websites for misleading consumer reviews. In 144 of the websites checked, the authorities were not confident that the traders managing the websites were doing enough to ensure that the reviews posted on them were genuine. In other words, it could not be confirmed that the reviews were actually posted by consumers who really used the product or service that they reviewed.
This screening exercise also revealed that 104 out of the 223 websites examined do not inform consumers how reviews are collected and processed. Furthermore, only 84 of the websites were found to make such information accessible to consumers on the review page itself. The rest of the websites only provide information on how reviews are collected in very small print in their legal terms and conditions.
Another important finding was that 118 websites did not contain information about how fake reviews are prevented. As a result of this, consumers are unable to verify whether reviews were actually written by consumers who used the products.
104 out of the 223 websites examined do not inform consumers how reviews are collected and processed.- Odette Vella
Last but not least, the screening exercise revealed that 176 of the websites do not mention that incentivised reviews are prohibited by their internal policies. Furthermore, where incentivised reviews are not prohibited, the website does not flag the reviews as incentivised.
From this exercise, consumer protection authorities concluded that at least 55 per cent of the checked websites potentially violate the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, which requires that truthful information is presented to consumers to allow them make an informed purchase choice.
In the wake of these results, the national authorities will contact the traders concerned to rectify their website and, if necessary, initiate enforcement actions according to their national procedures to ensure full compliance with EU law.
Such projects are coordinated by the European Commission and carried out simultaneously by national enforcement authorities within the Consumer Protection Cooperation Network.
The projects operate in a two-step action process. The first step is the screening of websites to identify breaches of consumer law in a given online market; the second step is the enforcement, in which national authorities ask traders to take corrective action.
Such projects have been carried out every year since 2007, and in the past five years have been conducted in the following areas: telecommunication and other digital services (2017); price transparency and drip pricing (2018); delivery and right of withdrawal (2019); consumer scams related to the COVID-19 pandemic (2020); misleading sustainability claims (2020); consumer credit (2021); and online consumer reviews (2021).
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