In order to protect the interest of customers, the government intends to impose mandatory anti-fake review guidelines for ecommerce businesses. Following the failure of a voluntary campaign to effectively reduce bogus reviews, the Consumer Affairs Department is considering notifying the Quality Control Order (QCO) for online consumer reviews.
A year prior, the government had published quality standards for online retailers, which forbade them from disseminating purchased evaluations and required them to disclose any promotional materials of this kind.
"Some entities claim that they are complying with it. But fake reviews are still getting published. We are consulting with the stakeholders this week. We want to make these standards mandatory to protect consumer interest," said Consumer Affairs Secretary, Nidhi Khare.
Draft guidelines for ‘online consumer reviews’ have been developed by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) and distributed to relevant parties. According to the draft QCO, all organisations—referred to as review administrators—that manage and disseminate online customer evaluations must abide by the standards. Only ‘genuine’ customer reviews will be posted online, and they promise not to post any ‘fake or false’ evaluations.
As per draft norms, entities shall not publish reviews that have been purchased and/or written by individuals employed for that purpose or the supplier or by a third party. They can't reward or incentivise consumers based on the content of the review submitted. "The organisation shall not edit reviews to alter their message. The organisation shall not prevent or discourage people from submitting negative reviews," it added.
