CMA launches probe into Just Eat, others over fake reviews

Britain's competition watchdog has launched investigations into five companies, including Just Eat and Autotrader as part of a probe into fake and misleading online reviews.

The others under investigation by the Competition and Market's Authority are review company Feefo, funeral director Dignity and the Pasta Evangelists restaurant chain.

In the case of Autotrader and Feefo, the CMA said it was looking at whether a number of one-star reviews, moderated by Feefo, were excluded from being published on the car-selling platform, meaning consumers did not get a full picture of other customers’ experiences.

The Dignity investigation focuses on whether staff were asked to write positive reviews about the company’s cremation services, while food delivery platform Just Eat faces questions over whether its system “inflated certain restaurants’ and grocers’ star ratings”.

Pasta Evangelists is facing an investigation over whether customers were offered discounts on future orders in exchange for leaving five-star reviews on delivery apps "without this being disclosed – meaning people may not have known how reliable or representative those ratings were".

“Fake reviews strike at the heart of consumer trust, with many of us worrying about misleading content when looking at reviews online,” said CMA chief executive Sarah Cardell.

“With household budgets under pressure, people need to know they’re getting genuine information – not reviews or star ratings that have been manipulated to push them towards the wrong choice.”

The CMA said it had not yet reached any conclusions about whether any of the companies had broken UK consumer law, but the latest crackdown brought the number of businesses under review to 14.

Reporting by Frank Prenesti for Sharecast.com