• When you see the label “Verified purchase / Product used by customer”, can you really trust it?
• Samsung Electronics Polska may be misleading consumers and failing to properly verify product reviews and ratings.
• The President of UOKiK has brought charges against the company, which faces a potential fine of up to 10 per cent of its turnover.

According to social research conducted on behalf of UOKiK, as many as 93 per cent of respondents base their online purchasing decisions on product reviews published on the internet. That is why their reliability is so important. Businesses are required to inform consumers whether and how reviews published on their websites are verified. This allows customers to assess whether such reviews are trustworthy. However, the rules applied by Samsung Electronics Polska when publishing and presenting reviews may mislead consumers. For this reason, the President of UOKiK has brought charges against the company.

– Knowing whether reviews are verified or not allows consumers to exercise appropriate caution when reading them and making purchasing decisions. For many of us, only comments from people who have actually used a product are of real value. A business that endorses such opinions must therefore make a genuine effort to verify them – says Tomasz Chróstny, the President of UOKiK.

Take their word for it

Some product reviews on the Samsung website are marked with the distinctive label ‘Verified purchase / Product used by customer’. This gives the impression that the comment comes from a person who knows the product – who has bought it and uses it. UOKiK examined how the company verifies such reviews. It turned out that anyone who ticks the checkbox stating ‘I declare that my review is based on my use or purchase of the reviewed product’ can publish a review bearing this label. The company does not require an order number, a receipt, or any other proof to confirm this declaration.

Consumers may be further reassured by the ‘Authentic review^TM Bazaarvoice’ label displayed on the website. Although the criteria for this classification are not specified, the message reinforces the credibility of the published comments. Meanwhile, as determined by UOKiK, reviews may be rejected, but they are not verified to establish whether they originate from consumers who have actually purchased or used the product.

In the opinion of the President of UOKiK, the methods used by Samsung to verify reviews – namely checkbox declarations and a review rejection mechanism – may not constitute reasonable and proportionate measures to verify the true origin of the reviews.

There are stars, but no clarity

Some reviews contain no indication as to whether their origin has been verified. Nevertheless, Samsung includes them in the overall numerical product rating and in the breakdown of star ratings awarded by consumers in specific categories, such as features or performance. However, it is the overall numerical rating and the number of stars that buyers see first, before reading the individual reviews. For this reason, consumers should be clearly and immediately informed whether the trader verifies the origin of the reviews included in the statistics and how the displayed data are calculated. On the Samsung website, this information is not provided at any stage of the product presentation. As a result, consumers viewing the ratings and reading the reviews may be relying on information that is misleading.

If the allegations of the President of UOKiK are confirmed, Samsung Electronics Polska may face a fine of up to 10 per cent of its turnover.