Clifford Chance

The ACCC continues to focus on online customer reviews

31 October 2016

The online marketplace, and in particular the accuracy of online customer reviews, was a key priority of the ACCC's in 2015 and we continue to see the ACCC focus on this area. In fact, on 22 September 2016, the ACCC announced it will be specifically assessing the review policies of sharing economy platforms, such as Uber and Airbnb, as part of an international initiative targeting online reviews and endorsements.

In light of this announcement, businesses should update and ensure compliance with their social media policies (if they have not already done so), to prevent ACCC accusations of customer reviews posted about the business being false or misleading due to the way the business has edited, filtered (or not filtered) or incentivised the reviews.

This briefing provides high level guidance on how to address this risk with reference to the ACCC's previous investigations and guidance in this area.

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