Product and service reviews under the magnifying glass of UOKiK. What do entrepreneurs need to know?
- Admin
- Jan 9, 2023
- 5 min read
‘Super product! Great customer service. Exemplary seller!’. How often, when considering the choice of a new phone or toaster, do we look at the reviews left by those who have already tasted the wonderful cheese toast and were willing to share their impressions on the online shop. I think very much, if not always. However, when reading flattery about an interesting product or service, the consumer is deprived of any tools to verify the authenticity of an opinion. Indeed, it has become a common practice to buy opinions produced by bots (like some influencers, followers on Instagram). The Omnibus Directive and the amendments to the Act of 23 August 2007 on counteracting unfair market practices introduced thanks to it put an end to this.
UOKiK will look into e-commerce reviews
From the new year, traders will be obliged to inform consumers whether and how they ensure that published opinions come from people who have actually purchased and used the product in question. Of course, this only applies to those of the traders who choose to publish reviews of the products they offer, issued by buyers.
It will be considered an unfair commercial practice if reasonable and proportionate steps have not been taken to ensure that the reviews actually come from the people who bought the goods in question. The authorised inspection body will be able to treat this omission as misleading the consumer and as an act detrimental to the collective interests of consumers.
Verification, verification, verification.
In accordance with recital 47 of the Omnibus Directive, traders should inform consumers whether processes and procedures have been established on their shop's website to ensure that published opinions actually come from actual purchasers or users of the product and are not the product of, for example, an algorithm. Under the new regulations, traders should provide consumers with clear information on how they carry out checks on posted reviews and indicate how reviews are processed. Among other things, the information will have to include whether the trader posts all opinions, both positive and negative, whether the opinions are sponsored or whether the content is not influenced by a contractual relationship between the trader and a third party.
The Commission hints at how to ensure the authenticity of the opinions
Recital 47 of the Omnibus Directive explains that reasonable and proportionate steps may include ‘asking the person posting the opinions for information that confirms that the consumer has actually used or bought the product’. The European Commission, in its Guidelines on the interpretation and application of Directive 2005/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning unfair business-to-consumer commercial practices in the internal market, has proposed the following measures that traders can implement:
- requiring those posting reviews to register an account with the online shop;
- applying technical measures to verify that the person publishing a review is in fact a consumer, through IP address control, e-mail verification (for example the trader would limit the possibility to publish a review only to those to whom he sends the relevant link enabling them to submit a review to the e-mail address provided when purchasing the product);
- setting clear rules for those publishing reviews, prohibiting the publication of fraudulent and sponsored reviews without disclosure;
- using tools that automatically detect fraudulent behaviour;
- having adequate resources and means to respond to complaints about suspicious reviews, including where the trader concerned provides evidence that the reviews have not been posted by consumers who have actually used or bought the product in question.
In order to comply with the indicated guidelines, traders can use the ISO standard certification ‘Online consumer reviews: Principles and requirements for their collection, moderation and publication’ (ISO 20488:2018).
At the same time, according to recital 49 of the Omnibus Directive, manipulation of opinions is also prohibited. We are mainly talking about actions involving their selective publication, eliminating negative opinions and leaving only positive ones.
It will also be prohibited to use (copy) recommendations posted by shoppers in another shop about the offered product. Thus, the opinion expressed by a buyer about product X expressed in online shop Y will not be able to be transferred and used in opinions about product X, but offered in shop Z. This is because such an action creates the impression that the buyer has also taken a positive stance towards shop Z, even though he has not bought anything there.
Polish regulations go further
The provisions of the Act on counteracting unfair market practices, amended under the influence of the Omnibus implementation, have a broader scope of application than the Community legislator envisaged. Indeed, they apply not only to the commercial practices of online platforms and other entrepreneurs who enable ratings or make such ratings available to consumers, but also to any entrepreneur who provides ratings to other entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs will be subject to the new provisions of the Act on Counteracting Unfair Market Practices regardless of whether the described practices promote their own products or are a way of promoting the products of other entities, in the sale of which the entrepreneur in question only intermediates. Therefore, the above regulations will also cover portals such as Ceneo or Allegro.
What do these changes mean in practice?
In view of the introduced regulations, entrepreneurs have two choices. The first is not to publish opinions. However, this is not to give up a marketing tool, which provides an opportunity to express one's opinion on, for example, the potential of a wireless speaker from company X, while going on a camping trip. After all, many buyers, before deciding on the purchase of this particular speaker, first prefer to make sure that it can definitely withstand an all-night campfire feast.
The alternative, which naturally raises many concerns, will be the use of measures that lead to the supervision of the authenticity of the reviews of the goods and the provision of information about them to the potential buyer. This does not mean that the entire shop rules have to be recast or that new rules for the display of reviews have to be drawn up. Indeed, a short information given next to a published review of a given good is sufficient to effectively inform a potential buyer as to how the posted reviews are checked and to indicate how the reviews are processed. In this way, Amazon has dealt with Omnibus:
Other online shops choose to introduce short terms and conditions regarding their review policy: These can be found at the links below.
Judging the changes introduced from the perspective of the consumer, which each of us is when, for example, buying a new games console, the possibility of reading verified and authentic reviews cannot be overestimated. After all, there are times when we compensate for the lack of credibility of a review on a shop's website by, for example, watching video reviews available on YouTube. However, very often we are not aware that the creator in question is not actually reviewing the product in question, but advertising it.
On the other hand, the authenticity of reviews can have a positive impact on the shops themselves offering the products in question and their manufacturers. After all, nothing is a better litmus test for the actual value and usefulness of a product than the opinion of someone who has actually bought it and deals with it on a daily basis.
