Online reviews influence billions of pounds of UK consumer spending each year, with research suggesting that 89% of adults rely on them when researching a product or service. It should come as no surprise, then, that the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has announced five new consumer law investigations, targeting businesses across a range of sectors including car sales, food delivery, and funeral services.

The five businesses under investigation are Autotrader, Feefo, Dignity, Just Eat, and Pasta Evangelists. Each case focuses on a different aspect of how online reviews can be manipulated or misrepresented.

Autotrader and Feefo are being investigated in connection with the treatment of negative reviews. The CMA is examining whether a number of one-star reviews moderated by Feefo were suppressed on Autotrader’s platform and excluded from star rating calculations, potentially denying consumers a balanced picture of customer experience.

Dignity, the funeral services provider, faces questions over whether it asked staff to write positive reviews about its crematoria services, which could have given the public a misleading impression of genuine customer feedback.

Just Eat is under scrutiny over its star ratings system. The CMA is looking at whether the platform’s methodology has inflated certain restaurants’ and grocers’ ratings, giving consumers a potentially misleading picture of quality.

Pasta Evangelists is being investigated over whether it offered customers discounts on future orders in exchange for five-star reviews on delivery apps, without disclosing the incentive — meaning consumers may not have realised how reliable or representative those ratings were.

It is important to note that the CMA has not yet reached any conclusions about whether consumer law has been broken in any of these cases.

These investigations are part of a broader programme of enforcement that builds on the CMA’s earlier work securing undertakings from Amazon and Google to strengthen their systems for identifying and removing fake reviews. The new cases bring the total number of businesses being investigated under the CMA’s enhanced consumer powers to 14 (see our analysis of the CMA’s first wave of enforcement cases here).

Those powers, introduced under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCCA) (see our DMCCA Tracker page here), are significant. Since April 2025, several practices relating to online reviews — including obtaining or posting fake reviews, and publishing paid-for reviews without clearly marking them as incentivised — are now automatically deemed unfair and illegal as “banned practices” under the DMCCA. The same applies to hiding negative reviews or presenting star ratings that give an inaccurate picture.

Crucially, the CMA can now decide whether consumer law has been broken without going through the courts. If an infringement is found, businesses can be required to change their practices and face fines of up to 10% of annual global turnover.

The CMA’s message is clear: it has given businesses time to get their house in order, and it is now prepared to act. As CMA Chief Executive Sarah Cardell put it, “Fake reviews strike at the heart of consumer trust,” and with household budgets under pressure, consumers “need to know they’re getting genuine information — not reviews or star-ratings that have been manipulated to push them towards the wrong choice”.

The CMA previously issued detailed guidance on businesses’ obligations regarding online reviews, alongside a shorter practical guide designed to help firms understand what compliance looks like. It also carried out a sweep of over 100 review publishers and issued advisory letters to 54 firms — 90% of which made changes in response.

The practical takeaways for any business that publishes, collects, or relies on consumer reviews are straightforward but essential:

• First, review moderation processes should be transparent and even-handed — suppressing or filtering out negative reviews is squarely in the CMA’s sights.
• Second, any incentivised reviews must be clearly disclosed as such.
• Third, star rating methodologies should accurately reflect the underlying review data.
• And finally, businesses should never solicit or facilitate fake reviews, whether from staff, paid contributors, or anyone else.

The CMA expects to provide an update on these investigations in September 2026. Depending on the evidence, outcomes could range from findings of unlawful conduct and the imposition of remedies, to case closures.

For businesses operating in the online reviews space, or even just posting reviews on their platforms, this is a clear signal that regulatory scrutiny is intensifying. Now is the time to review internal practices, ensure compliance with the CMA’s published guidance, and take proactive steps to maintain the integrity of customer reviews.

If you would like to discuss any of the above issues with our experienced consumer team, please contact Claire Livingstone.

More information about the DMCCA can be found on our tracker page here.