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UK Competition Authority Wins Promises from Amazon to Tackle Fake Online Reviews

By  |  June 8, 2025

Amazon has pledged to intensify its efforts to combat fake product reviews, the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced Friday. This development follows a thorough investigation into whether major online platforms are effectively curbing deceptive ratings that mislead consumers.

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    According to ABC News, the CMA secured formal “undertakings” from Amazon to improve its systems for detecting and removing fraudulent reviews. Earlier this year, the watchdog obtained a similar commitment from Google to address the widespread problem of bogus online feedback.

    Amazon’s new measures will also target catalog abuse, a tactic where sellers artificially inflate a product’s star ratings by transferring positive reviews from unrelated items. For instance, a buyer might see a highly rated pair of headphones, but most of the glowing reviews actually pertain to a completely different product, such as a phone charger, the CMA explained.

    Per a statement from the regulator, Amazon has agreed to impose penalties on sellers and users involved in such practices. This could include banning offending businesses from its platform and preventing individuals from posting further reviews.

    Read more: New York Times Partners with Amazon to Power AI with Editorial Content

    Sarah Cardell, CEO of the CMA, emphasized the importance of trustworthy ratings on Amazon, noting that “star ratings and reviews have a huge impact on [consumers’] choices.” She added that Amazon’s commitments will help shoppers make decisions “with greater confidence – knowing that those who seek to pull the wool over their eyes will be swiftly dealt with.”

    The CMA clarified that these pledges specifically apply to Amazon’s U.K. website. In response, Amazon stated it has “zero tolerance for fake reviews” and that these new actions enhance existing efforts. “We invest significant resources to proactively 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,” the company said in a statement.

    The CMA’s investigation into Amazon and Google began in 2021 amid a surge in online shopping during the COVID-19 pandemic. The watchdog aimed to determine if either company violated U.K. consumer law by inadequately protecting buyers from fraudulent reviews on their platforms.

    Source: ABC News