Leading e-commerce companies such as Amazon, Flipkart, Google and Meta are supporting the government’s plan to make mandatory compliance with quality norms for customer reviews, according to the consumer affairs department.

Representatives of the e-commerce companies endorsed the Government’s proposal at the meeting on Wednesday (May 15) called by the Department of Consumer Affairs in New Delhi to discuss protecting consumers’ interests from fake online reviews.

The Government has proposed to implement the IS 19000:2022 standard on online consumer reviews. This aims to ensure honest and trustworthy reviews of products on e-commerce sites, according to the consumer affairs department.

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In a statement, the Department said, “The discussion on moving towards a Quality Control Order for IS 19000:2022 was welcomed by stakeholders and there was a general consensus among all stakeholders that the issue of fake reviews is important to protect consumer interest while shopping online, and requires to be closely monitored.”

What’s IS 19000:2022 standard?

The proposed Quality Control Order will enforce the current IS 19000:2022 standard, which specifies criteria for reviewers and platforms. This standard is intended to ensure transparency and avoid manipulation by requiring:

Verification of Reviewers: Review authors must be identified.

Original Reviews: Reviews cannot be edited to change their message.

Promoting all Reviews: Negative reviews cannot be discouraged or blocked.

The new standard outlines responsibilities for review authors and administrators, requesting authors to be identified, banning edits that alter the review’s message, and restricting the discouragement of negative reviews.

The meeting was led by Consumer Affairs Secretary Nidhi Khare, who highlighted the importance of the standard because online shoppers depend heavily on reviews for products that they cannot inspect in person. 

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“The presence of fake reviews online jeopardises the trustworthiness of platforms and can lead to wrong purchase decisions,” said Nidhi Khare in a statement.

This modification comes after the failure of voluntary measures to reduce fake reviews. Consumer complaints related to e-commerce increased from 95,270 in 2018 to 4,44,034 in 2023, making up over 43% of total complaints.

A year ago, the government imposed quality standards for e-tailers, restricting them from publishing paid reviews and demanding transparency of such advertising content. However, the norms were voluntary in nature.

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