Online reviews can have a significant impact on people's spending. According to the CMA, around 90% of consumers use reviews when making purchasing decisions, and the CMA has estimated that as much as £23 billion of UK consumer spending is potentially influenced by online reviews annually.
Fake reviews are specifically outlawed under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 and the CMA issued guidance on fake reviews in April 2025.
The CMA launched an investigation into Amazon several years ago over concerns that it wasn't doing enough to protect people from fake reviews, including to detect and remove fake reviews, act on suspicious patterns of behaviour, or properly sanction reviewers and businesses taking part in fake review activity. The latest investigation will have started before the new DMCC Act came into effect but will show businesses that the CMA has it front-of-mind.
To address the CMA's concerns, Amazon has now committed to:
- Rigorous processes to tackle fake reviews and catalogue abuse: Amazon has committed to having in place robust processes to quickly detect and remove fake reviews and catalogue abuse – meaning it can better identify those businesses and reviewers that are breaking the law, and take the necessary action.
- Sanctions for businesses and reviewers: Businesses selling on Amazon face being sanctioned for catalogue abuse (this is where sellers hijack the reviews of well-performing products and add them to an entirely separate and different product, to falsely boost the star rating) or using fake reviews to falsely boost their star ratings – and can be banned from selling on the site altogether. Users who post fake reviews, positive or negative, risk being banned from writing further reviews, and all their previous reviews being deleted.
- Easier reporting functions: The undertakings commit Amazon to ensure they have clear and robust mechanisms that allow consumers – and businesses – to report fake reviews and catalogue abuse quickly and easily.
The CMA is currently conducting an initial sweep of review platforms which seeks to identify review platforms that may need to do more to ensure they are complying with consumer law (as is outlined in the guidance).
This action will form part of a new phase of the CMA's work looking into the conduct of players across the sector, including businesses whose products and services are listed on review sites. It will determine whether further CMA action is needed under the new consumer regime. So we can expect more announcements in due course.
The CMA has emphasised that under the DMCC Act 2024, the CMA can now decide independently whether consumer law has been infringed, rather than going through the courts. It can also tackle consumer law breaches directly, including issuing fines, ordering businesses to improve their practices to make sure they are in line with the law, and making them pay redress to affected consumers. However, this action was launched under the old regime.
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