Consumers Call for Tougher Rules over User Reviews

Tuesday, March 17, 2020 - 09:08 by Graham Miller

Almost three-quarters of consumers who regularly carry out safe shopping online believe that e-commerce companies should do more to ensure that customers who leave reviews are not giving misleading feedback, according to a new survey from Bazaarvoice.

43 per cent of those questioned said that they thought it would be better to ban all reviews on sites except for those which are submitted by users who have been verified as legitimate in an attempt to fight back against the plague of fake reviews that are still a problem for many online outlets.

38 per cent said that they would even go so far as to insist that reviewers had actively tested out the product in question, while a third said that retailers should carry out checks every 24 hours to make sure that their latest reviews were up to the high standards most expect.

Brits were especially stringent in their views on e-commerce reviews when compared with the rest of the international selection of respondents to the report, with consumers from the UK arguing that outlets that fail to meet the standards with regards to user reviews should face steep fines.

48 per cent of British shoppers said that they would duck out of purchasing a particular item from a website if they had a suspicion about some of the user reviews being phoney, even if the product itself was legitimate and produced by a reputable brand.

43 per cent said that if a retail brand they used regularly seemed to be guilty of neglecting its responsibilities in terms of upholding review standards, they would be less likely to trust it. Almost four out of five said that they would stop shopping with any brand that lost their trust in this way.