Competition law: new rules for online reviews – a receipt is required

The Competition Authority’s guidelines to tackle fake online reviews are on the way: a receipt or proof of order will be required. The new rules, set out in the annual law on small and medium-sized enterprises in the catering and tourism sectors, are open for public consultation until 15 July.

The guidelines issued by the Competition and Market Authority also provide general guidance, which applies to the economic sectors governed by the annual law on small and medium-sized enterprises, but also, in principle, to every other product sector. ‘Genuine, truthful and relevant reviews can usefully guide consumers’ economic choices, increasing their confidence in the proper functioning of the market whilst stimulating effective and undistorted competition between businesses,’ the text states.

The measures are proportionate to the nature of the business activity carried out, its size and its business model. “Large platforms with a high risk of fraudulent activity and greater resources could employ more sophisticated methods than smaller operators to combat the phenomenon of inauthentic reviews, including the use of artificial intelligence systems followed by human review of the content,” explains the AGCM.

The term ‘review’ is understood in a broad sense to mean ‘any opinion, assessment or evaluation expressed online, in any form, by consumers in relation to goods or services or to the quality and performance of the trader offering them’. The guidelines also distinguish between traders who provide tools for reviewing their own goods and services and those who provide services for publishing or managing reviews relating to third-party offerings; the latter are also required to handle complaints regarding published reviews in a timely and transparent manner and to remove any unlawful reviews.

Professionals who provide tools for reviewing goods and services are required to provide: tools to verify that the consumer has actually used or purchased the product or service being reviewed (such as tax or accounting documentation, or by sending the review link to the email address used for the purchase only once the order has been completed); tools to ensure the authors of reviews can be traced; and automated tools to detect fraudulent activity by identifying anomalous signals (such as a large number of reviews posted in a short space of time from the same IP address or repetitive linguistic patterns).