Fake e-comm reviews under govt scrutiny
The consumer affairs ministry has set up a committee to tackle fake customer reviews and inflated ratings on e-commerce platforms, a hard-to-crack global problem, and is also examining recent incidents of electric-vehicle battery explosions, while issuing notices to a bunch of EV makers, a senior official said on Tuesday.
Customer reviews and ratings of products and services greatly influence what people buy online. Sellers on e-commerce companies often manipulate ratings and commission paid reviews to boost sales.
Globally, platforms, such as Amazon, have long acknowledged the problem. Often sellers use other social-media platforms such as Facebook to post inflated reviews. Amazon has in the past said the company analyses 10 million reviews a week to stop the practice with a combination of human moderators and machine-learning tools.
Yet, research shows that the practice is rampant. According to a recent analysis by US-based consulting firm Pattern, an increase of just one star in a rating on Amazon “correlates” with a 26% increase in sales.
Currently there are no legal provisions in India to crackdown on the menace of inflated ratings and reviews.
In the Indian context, the consumer affairs ministry found that such fake reviews affect online customers in the “hotel, tours and travel segments as well as food and beverages the most and we are taking a serious view of this”, said Nidhi Khare, additional secretary, ministry of consumer affairs.
Khare said “people in India
Customer reviews influence what people buy online HT
are dependent” on reviews more in these sectors and that the committee working on the issue are consulting experts and stakeholders. The committee has had two sittings so far. The ministry intends to bring out guidelines on fake and paid reviews soon, the senior official said. The official also said the consumer affairs ministry was currently examining a series of recent incidents involving fires in electric vehicles, such as scooters. “About four to five companies have been issued notices and have been told to explain why the fires happened,” Khare said, declining to name the companies because the first hearings are to be held shortly. While recent cases of explosions and batteries catching fire in electric vehicles are being already probed by multiple ministries and agencies, the consumer affairs ministry in the process of looking violation of consumer rights and possible use of sub-standard components that resulted in loss of lives, according to the official quoted above. Unsafe batteries and faulty design may have triggered a series of fires in electric two-wheelers this year, according to DRDO that was tasked with investigating EV fire incidents by the Union road transport ministry.
“We have called for the DRDO report to take a full view,” Khare said.