Fakers to be Named and Shamed Says EU
February 12th, 2007 by pamela
The moves could see businesses who post fake reviews of their products or services, fake blogs and use false identities be charged with “falsely representing oneself as a consumer”.
The changes, which come into place on December 31st, will see businesses named and shamed and/or taken to court by trading standards.
Even praising your own book on Amazon will become illegal according to The Times.
The changes in law could upset many companies at a time when customer reviews are becomein increasingly more important in the online sales process. According to research from The Henley Centre and AOL 77% of online consumers agree that if they ‘saw a negative review on the internet about a product or brand I would think twice about buying it’
The legislation change comes as part of a Europe-wide overhaul of the consumer laws obliging businesses not to mislead consumers.
Posted in News |
February 12th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
One industry that will doubtlessly be affected by this law is the travel sector. The use of reviews as a way to generate unique content will have to be monitored. The last thing any travel site would want is anyone querying the validity of their reviews.
For a consumer point of view though, this is great. Fake reviews are just no use to anyone.
February 15th, 2007 at 9:16 am
I’m delighted to see that Brussels is picking up on this issue. Fake blogs and customer reviews are increasingly common.
Travel is definitely an interesting sector. In a previous life I set up the customer review programme for a hotel reservation website, Active Hotels. All the reviews have come from people who booked through the website. Unlike Trip Advisor where anybody (including a hotelier) can do so.
Reevoo is based on the same model. Only people who have bought a product through one of our partners can submit reviews.
Reviews don’t only represent unique content for search engines however, they also increase conversion rates by helping people to choose what to buy. So, the incentives are certainly there for travel sites and retailers to post reviews.
Good on Brussels. However, I’m not sure that legislation is the way to address it. How will it be policed? We believe that a new crop of review aggregators, like ourselves, who stake their reputations on the provenance of the reviews they publish will change the market here. We’re proud to be leading the charge on this one.
http://www.reevoo.com/blogs/reevooblog/2007/02/12/are-you-reading-real-reviews/
February 15th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
I’m from the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, and I thought your readers might be interested in reading our take on this subject. This law was passed in 2005 and doesn’t actually ban legitimate viral and buzz marketing tactics, as some reports have suggested, but rather the practice of lying to consumers. Read our response if you’re interested at http://www.womma.org/news/008993.php.
February 15th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
Surely users don’t actually get taken in with the flower superlative language used in the kind of reviews this is trying to target though?
Im not sure the Travel industry would be hit too hard by this “falsely representing oneself as a consumer” suggests dis-honesty, as long as the Travel companies are upfront about the fact they wronte the reviews themselves then I think they should be ok…For now..
It will be interesting to the enforcement efforts (if any) behind the new legislation