Fake positive reviews

Pat38493

Is it illegal for a company to post fake positive reviews of their service or products on review websites purporting to be from real customers?

Likewise, is it illegal to only publish the positive reviews and hide the negative reviews on the companies own website ,or one in which it officially participates? As an example, on the feefo website, if a company was deliberately only offering customers that they know will give a positive review the chance to comment, but not offering those who had a complaint, and creating a false impression of the level of customer satisfaction.
cheers
p

Pat38493

I guess a third part of this question is whether it's illegal to take parts of a review out of context in order to completely flip the meaning around.

halibut2209

1) Yes
2) No
3) No (See Movie poster review comments)

Wayne3765

Q. 2 I asked Citizens advice the same thing about 7 months ago , I'd bought a Silverline angle grinder that lasted all of 5 minutes before it went up in smoke , I left a low rated review on their website but they never published it.

Here's the relevant part of the reply I had from C.A.

We understand from your email that you want to know if a trader can prevent negative reviews from appearing online. It appears that you aren’t seeking civil advice. Based on the information you have provided the key points in response to your enquiry are as follows:

There is nothing in law which specifically provides guidance for traders displaying online reviews. However, the act of filtering out negative reviews may be seen as misleading and not providing an accurate picture of products. Therefore it is possible that the trader is committing a criminal offence. As such I have reported this matter to Trading Standards.

Trading Standards came to see me and took some info off me and said they'd look into it but it might take a while

pinkshoes

Unfortunately these "rating" sites can do what they like, which usually means not publishing negative reviews.

If I can't see any form of negative reviews, then I wouldn't trust the site!

A friend of mine left a factual review of a tradesman on "Trust a Trader" (just at stating that the finish was rather scruffy and disappointing ) which wasn't published.