The new Digital Markets Competition and Consumers Act came into force on 1 January 2025, bringing in a raft of changes to competition law for organisations in the UK. In this series we’ll be looking at key sections of the Act, and what this means in practice for businesses and charities.  

With more and more consumers turning to online market platforms to purchase goods and services, the government is cracking down on unfair commercial practices. If you operate your business with an organic growth approach with a focus on providing a great product or offering a fantastic service and have felt frustrated by similar businesses operating with a reviews for purchase model, or you have been impacted by trolling, you will be pleased to see new legislation that aims to reform consumer law, improve online transparency and level the playing field.

The new regime under the Digital Markets Competition and Consumers Act (DMCCA) came into force on 1 January 2025 and will prohibit certain unfair commercial practices. With new consumer protection rules expected to apply from April 2025, the DMCCA will specifically ban fake consumer reviews, hidden fees and ‘drip pricing’.

Many rules under the DMCCA are similar to those under the current Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (CPUT). Whilst CPUT places a more general ban on unfair commercial practices throughout a transaction and does address businesses providing consumers with false or deceptive information, the DMCCA rules specifically draw out elements in relation to reviews and pricing.

It is important that all businesses are aware of the new regulations and how they will affect marketing models and pricing strategies.

Fake reviews

The DMCCA aims to regulate ‘unfair’ commercial practices. If doing or saying something misleading or false causes a consumer to make a decision that they otherwise wouldn’t have, this is considered an unfair commercial practice.

The DMCCA specifically addresses fake consumer reviews, i.e. a review that purports to be, but is not, based on a person’s genuine experience of a product or service.

The CMA reports that as much as £23 billion of annual spending by UK consumers could be influenced by online reviews.

The DMCCA regulates a number of practices as they relate to reviews, including:

  1. Submitting or writing fake reviews

This covers anyone who ‘creates’ a review with a view to publication, so might include reviews submitted via text, photo, video or voice note.

2. Commissioning another person to submit or write a fake review

This includes incentivising by any means (not just payment). For example, offering someone a free night of accommodation or discount on future purchases if they leave a positive review (even if the consumer did not in fact have a positive experience).

3. Submitting, or commissioning, a review that conceals the fact it has been incentivised

This will cover all reviews that do not flag that the reviewer was incentivised or rewarded for posting the review. This is similar to regulations from the Advertising Standards Agency that require social media influencers to make it clear in their content that they have been paid to promote a product or service. We often now see hashtags on social media content advertising products or services such as #AD #Advert or #PaidPromotion. Under the DMCCA, this applies to reviews as well as promotions.

4. Publishing consumer reviews in a misleading way

This is a fairly wide provision and open to interpretation. Broadly, it might include:

  • Publishing positive reviews whilst not publishing or removing negative reviews.
  • Giving positive reviews greater priority or prominence over negative ones, for example putting them at the top of the review lists and hiding the negative reviews.
  • Not including information that is relevant to the circumstances in which a review has been written. For example, a review for a camera that does not disclose that the enclosed photos were enhanced or edited post-production.

5. Offering services to firms to do or facilitate anything covered above.

Even if you do not yourself submit, commission or publish fake reviews, if an individual or company does this on your behalf, you will still be caught by the DMCCA rules.

6. Not taking reasonable steps to prevent the publication of fake or misleading reviews and removing any such reviews

What is reasonable is not defined in the DMCCA but might depend on the number and nature of reviews, and the stringency of the policies in place to counter fake or misleading reviews. The main takeaway here, is that you should have processes in place to actively monitor reviews in order to comply with DMCCA.

The Department for Business and Trade estimates that 11 – 15% of reviews for common product categories are fake.

Enforcement powers

The Competition and Markets Authority will have greater powers to tackle illegal online behaviours. If a consumer purchases a product or service and the business has undertaken an ‘unfair commercial practice’ which has significantly impacted the consumer’s decision making, the business will be deemed to have committed an offence, and the consumer has a right to redress. Rights of redress will be provided for in future secondary legislation, but might include unwinding the contract, a product discount or consumer damages.

What does this mean for businesses?

Businesses will need to undertake an active review of policies and processes that relate to the posting, filtering, and prioritisation of online reviews. Measures might include:

  • Ensure that policies do not endorse or enable fake reviews to be written or procured.
  • ‘Tag and flag’ incentivised reviews.
  • Ensure reviews are matched to the products to which they refer.
  • Review social media endorsement and influencer policies in line with the new legislation.
  • Sweep and spot check reviews to find and remove false information.
  • Liaise with third parties who provide notification systems to report potentially false information and fake reviews.
  • Give customers a tool to flag reviews that they believe to be fake.

How can we help you?

If the new rules on managing reviews will impact your organisation, or if you are not sure whether you will be in scope, do get in touch. We can help you with the practical steps forward. We are advising both commercial and non-commercial entities (including charities, not-for-profit, and membership organisations) on the DMCCA.

Read the first article in this series – The new subscription regime: are you ready to renew?