Amazon wins first civil case in Italy over fake reviews

Amazon wins Italy's first civil case against fake reviews thanks to a ruling by the Court of Milan against malicious parties who attempted to facilitate the publication of 5-star ratings on Amazon.co.uk. This was announced by the eCommerce giant. The ruling led to the closure of the Realreviews.it site and prohibited its operator from carrying out similar activities in the future. The court ruled that the site owner had acted in violation of unfair competition laws, thereby causing harm to both Amazon and its customers.

The Milan court ruling revealed how the website Realreviews.it offered potential reviewers a full refund on products purchased if they published and provided proof of a 5-star review. The legal action is - the company explains - "part of Amazon's broader and ongoing efforts to combat fake reviews globally. Last year, Amazon took action against 44 wrongdoers in Europe, promoting nine new lawsuits in Spain, Germany and France'. "The Milan court ruling marks an important milestone in our fight to protect customers from fake reviews. Our goal is to ensure that every review on the Amazon store is trustworthy and reflects real consumer experiences," said Claire O'Donnell, Director of Selling Partner Trust & Store Identity at Amazon.

"We can only applaud Amazon's commitment and the first historic ruling issued by a civil court in Italy against a fake review site," commented Federico Cavallo, Head of External Relations at Altroconsumo. "We have been denouncing the phenomenon of abusive reviews for a long time, which deceives and primarily affects consumers in good faith. In 2015, Amazon brought the first lawsuit against fake review brokers and has since set up global teams of lawyers, expert investigators and analysts to pursue fake review brokers through legal means, thus stopping the phenomenon at source.

On the same facts for which the sentence of the Civil Court of Milan arrived, the Public Prosecutor's Office of the Lombard capital has also been investigating since October 2022, to which Amazon had turned to denounce the broker considered responsible for the creation of the network of fake reviewers. This investigation, which also has a side in Spain: the connecting link would be the more than 11 thousand websites and groups on social channels where the fake specialists would operate in exchange for goods (or special discounts). The conceivable offences, pending the conclusions of the investigation, are aggravated fraud (due to the minor defence of the users), disruption of trade and substitution of person. The full knowledge of committing an offence could also cost all 'reviewers' of the fake, given the high persuasive capacity of the 'experiential' judgements published on the network.

Amazon's initiative, which undoubtedly has a commercial purpose as it has to defend its online reputation and the quality of its services, is actually also grounded in the new European rules - Directive (EU) 2019/2161 - that Italy implemented exactly one year ago with Legislative Decree 26/2023. In particular, the service provider is also liable for 'misleading omissions', i.e. if it 'omits relevant information that the average consumer needs in order to make an informed transactional decision and thereby induces or is likely to induce the average consumer to take a transactional decision that he would not otherwise have taken'.