(Bloomberg) -- Two key Democratic lawmakers are calling on Amazon.com Inc. to take stronger action to prevent fake reviews of products sold online from spreading on its platform.
Representatives Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey and Janice Schakowsky of Illinois sent a letter dated Tuesday to Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos asking how the e-commerce giant identifies and responds to fraudulent reviews.
“Online reviews significantly affect consumers’ shopping decisions, and it is important that Amazon proactively protect consumers from such misleading and harmful behavior,” the lawmakers wrote. “To that end, we would like to better understand the steps Amazon takes to deter and remove fraudulent and deceptive product ratings and reviews, and whether Amazon financially benefits from the sale of products promoted in this manner.”
Pallone is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, while Schakowsky leads its Consumer Protection and Commerce subcommittee.
The company said in a statement it uses a combination of investigators and automated technology to prevent and detect inauthentic reviews.
“Amazon invests significant resources to protect the integrity of reviews in our store because we know customers the insights and experiences shared by fellow shoppers. Even one inauthentic review is one too many,” the company said.
A report released Monday by Fakespot, a company that monitors online reviews, found that almost 35% of products on Amazon in June had fake reviews compared with 16% of products in the same month last year and almost 21% in June 2017.
Sellers often pay outside companies that use automated technology or humans to generate favorable fake reviews for their products, especially around days when more people are likely to be shopping, Fakespot Chief Executive Officer Saoud Khalifah said.
“I think the problem for Amazon is they have become so huge,” Khalifah said. “They have invited so many sellers from across the globe. That makes it very difficult to monitor what’s happening on their platform.”
Merchants use fake reviews to game Amazon’s algorithms that determine which products are most visible on the site. It’s worth paying for fake reviews to increase consumer faith in the products and to increase their visibility on the cluttered online marketplace where millions of merchants compete for attention.
The lawmakers’ letter follows a BuzzFeed News report in April about how companies have charged some sellers on Amazon as much as $10,000 a month to help their products appear more favorably in the platform’s search results.
In February, the Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement agreement with a company accused of making “unsubstantiated claims” about a weight-loss supplement and paying a third-party website to write and post fake reviews on Amazon.com.
In recent years, Amazon has tried to address the proliferation of fake reviews with actions that include prohibiting shoppers from getting free products directly from merchants in exchange for writing reviews.
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