PHOENIX, AZ — Fake and misleading online reviews are causing headaches for customers and small businesses.
The Federal Trade Commission is cracking down on fraudulent reviews, buying positive or negative reviews, insider testimonials and review suppression.
The maximum penalty for false or misleading reviews is $51,744 per violation.
Teresa Murray, Consumer Watchdog Director for the US Public Interest Research Group, said the TFC’s effort sends a strong message to companies that use deceptive tactics to get customers.
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“Fake reviews have been a problem for a number of years but it really kind of escalated in recent years,” Murray said. “They're holding the stores, the online marketplaces, accountable.”
Not only impacting shoppers, local business owner Coty Youtsey says he’s noticed thousands of fake reviews online for competing companies, pulling business away and confusing customers.
He says they try to find and report fake reviews online, but it’s hard to catch up.
“It’s an uphill battle, like I said. And we’ve gotten pretty good at it but it could be going on much more than we realize and sometimes we don’t realize it until it’s too late in some cases,” Youtsey said. “There's many, many others. When you're talking Google reviews and social media reviews, it can be going on more than we realize, and we don't realize it until it's too late.”
Murray said buyers should slow down when shopping online, looking in depth at reviews to see if any are repetitive, if there are only four and five star reviews, or if the reviews don’t even match up with the product being sold.
