In March 2026, the Italian competition authority concluded a proceeding against one of the leading international review platforms with a 4 million euro sanction for unfair commercial practices in the handling of reviews. The platform announced an appeal to the regional administrative court. The ruling is therefore not yet final.
But the objections the authority raised have implications that reach well beyond the single platform. They concern any business that uses review platforms to build its commercial reputation.
Reviews must reflect real experience
This is the core of the ruling. The authority found that the platform's collection system allowed businesses on paid plans to influence which customers received the invitation to review. The result: a review profile that does not reflect the authentic experience of the customer base, but a steered selection.
The point is not whether individual reviews are "fake". The point is that the collection process produces a picture that is not representative of the service. The systematic divergence between the score of organic (spontaneous) reviews and that of invited reviews was used by the authority as evidence of this distortion.
For businesses, the question is direct: does your review profile reflect the real experience of your customers, or is it the result of a selection? If the answer is not certain, the risk exists.
Responsibility is shared
The ruling establishes a relevant principle: responsibility does not lie with the platform alone. Businesses that use and benefit from collection tools allowing them to influence the review profile share responsibility for the unfair commercial practice.
It is not enough to say "it is the platform's fault" or "we used the tools that were made available to us". The authority assesses the effect on the consumer, not the intention of the business.
A "Verified" label is not a guarantee
The authority found that the platform's verification procedure did not guarantee that reviews came from consumers who had actually used the product or service reviewed. Businesses that communicate trustworthiness to their customers by leaning on platform verification labels are building on a figure whose solidity the authority has called into question.
Transparency and dark patterns
The ruling also challenged the use of design techniques (visual prominence and information overload) that led the consumer to focus attention on the score and the "Verified" label, elements that paid plans can influence, while information on whether the business actually subscribed to such plans remained marginal and barely visible.
The legal framework: same conduct, two jurisdictions
In Italy, the authority classified the practice as an unfair commercial practice under Articles 20 to 23 of the Consumer Code, the national transposition of the EU Unfair Commercial Practices Directive. The 4 million euro sanction was calibrated to the gravity of the conduct, the pervasiveness of the medium, the economic scale of the group and the duration of the alleged infringement. The maximum penalty under the Consumer Code is 10 million euro per violation.
The same conduct would fall under equally explicit rules in the United Kingdom. The practices the authority challenged, steering which customers are invited to review, verification labels that do not guarantee a genuine transaction, the suppression of unfavourable feedback and design that foregrounds an influenceable score, are named banned practices under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, in force since 6 April 2025. Under the Act these are automatically unfair and unlawful, regardless of intent, and the Competition and Markets Authority can impose fines of up to 10% of global turnover. The Act also places a positive obligation on any business that publishes a third-party aggregate score, a Trustpilot rating being the explicit example, to maintain a public reviews policy and take reasonable steps to prevent fake or misleading reviews.
The two regimes converge. The CMA moved from a supportive stance to active enforcement in July 2025, after a review of more than one hundred business websites found that over half lacked a compliant policy. What an Italian authority sanctioned under its Consumer Code, a UK authority can now sanction under the DMCCA, with sharper direct-enforcement powers. The ruling is not a foreign curiosity. It is an early reading of a standard that applies on both sides of the Channel.
In Italy, the proceeding is part of a growing enforcement trend. The authority is consolidating a clear orientation: the handling of online reviews is an enforcement priority, the sectors involved are widening, and the level of sanctions indicates that it regards these practices as serious and pervasive.
What it means for your business
The ruling, although not yet final, marks a precedent in the authority's reasoning. Three questions every business should ask itself:
Does my company's review profile reflect the real experience of customers, or is it influenced by invitation-selection mechanisms?
Is there a significant divergence between organic and invited reviews in my profile?
Is the information I communicate to customers on the basis of reviews (score, labels, ranking) transparent as to how it is generated?
If the answer to any of these questions is not certain, the reputational and economic risk is concrete. Measuring the integrity of review collection is no longer an academic exercise. It is an operational necessity.
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