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Amazon (AMZN-2.87%) has admitted it is awash in fake reviews and has promised to crack down, having agreed with a U.K. regulatory agency to sanction users and businesses that engage in the practice. The punishments Amazon will dole out include outright bans and deleting past reviews.
Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) bans misleading or false reviews that undermine consumer confidence. In 2021, it opened an investigation over charges that Amazon was “not doing enough to detect and remove fake reviews, act on suspicious patterns of behaviour, or properly sanction [those] taking part in fake review activity.”
Amazon wasn’t the only target of the investigation: Google (GOOGL-1.57%) was also named, and the CMA reached a similar agreement with the search giant in January 2025.
The CMA said more than 90% of online consumers consult on-site reviews. The agency was concerned not just about reviews that boost certain products, but ones that belittle competitors, or engage in what’s called “catalogue abuse”: copying reviews from bestselling name-brand companies and pasting them underneath knockoffs—or even entirely separate products. “This could mean a consumer thinks they have found a pair of five-star headphones,” it wrote, “but on closer inspection, the majority of reviews are about a mobile phone charger.”
Along with increased sanctions, Amazon agreed to make it easier for both consumers and businesses to report fake reviews and abuse.
Amazon has not, however, promised to crack down on quickie knockoffs of popular products, like e-books rushed to market to capitalize on a current bestseller—like, say, Patrick McGee’s Apple (AAPL-0.39%) in China.