As consumers rely increasingly on online
forums and message boards for impartial advice from other consumers
on products and services, business people have started posting fake
reviews praising their own goods.
From Amazon book reviews to travel site hotel
write-ups, several business people have been caught pretending to
be consumers and giving their businesses rave reviews. The new
European laws will outlaw the practice.
The EU Directive on Unfair Commercial
Practices creates new protection for consumers against the
practices of businesses and introduces a "general duty to trade
fairly" for the first time in the UK.
The Directive empowers business rivals to sue
those who engage in unfair commercial practices. Organisations with
an interest in combating unfair commercial practices, such as the
Office of Fair Trading in the UK, can also take legal action.
The Directive orders member states to set
their own penalties for breaching the new rules, demanding only
that they are "effective, proportionate and dissuasive".
"The new legislation outlines 'sharp
practices' which will be prohibited throughout the EU, such as
pressure selling, misleading marketing and unfair advertising,"
said an explanation from the European Commission's Consumer Affairs
department.
"A commercial practice is misleading if it in
any way, including overall presentation, deceives or is likely to
deceive the average consumer, even if the information is correct
and causes or is likely to cause him to take a transactional
decision that he would have otherwise not taken," says the
Directive.
Though UK consumers have consumer protections,
they tend to be sector specific and contained in a number of laws.
The act of transposing the Directive into UK law will put consumer
protection law in one place for the first time. That must take
place by 12th December this year.
The new laws are designed to protect
consumers, and include demands that businesses not mislead
customers, that they do not engage in aggressive marketing such as
door step selling, fake 'closing down' sales and the use of pester
power, where products are marketed to children who are expected to
annoy parents into buying them.
The Sunday Times recently carried out a survey
of travel recommendation sites and found a number carried 'reviews'
by restaurant and guest house proprietors. Owner David Bremner
admitted writing a glowing review of his hotel, the Drumnadrochit
hotel near Loch Ness, without mentioning that he was the
proprietor.
It found that establishments with poor ratings
could transform them in just a few hours by posting positive
reviews whether or not the reviewers had been there or were
connected with their owners.
