Judge: ‘Amazon credibility compromised by fake reviews’

(ANSA) – MILAN, MARCH 19 – The site that sold alleged false 5-star reviews on items marketed on Amazon was able to “distort” not only the market due to “serious interference” in terms of “fair competition” “but also the market for the service of offering online reviews”: it was influenced both on the “side of consumers, whose informed choices” would have been “compromised by false information”, and on the “side of the service provider as it is, in this case, the same store as the Seattle company. Milan judge Alessandra Dal Moro wrote this in the provision with which she ordered the closure of the Realreviews.it site as a precautionary measure and prohibited its manager from carrying out similar activities in the future. An activity that was deemed “certainly illicit (…) since it was in full conflict with the regulations (…) and with the principles of professional correctness, and suitable to produce, for” the e-commerce portal “the unfair damage due to the unreliability of the review service offered, and, more generally, to the image of the online store and its commercial reputation” which would result in a “loss of reliability in the eyes of both potential sellers and consumers”. Therefore, the owner of Realreviews.it was ordered “to delete all pages relating to this service in connection with Amazon from any website that he owns or controls” (ANSA).