The new law against unfair competition and fake reviews has been passed.

  • Companies must indicate whether the reviews used in the promotion of their goods and services are real people, who have actually used or bought them.
  • They will also have to offer clear and detailed information about the way in which those reviews are processed.
  • Not respecting these rules will be considered an unfair and deceptive practice, and will be sanctioned with fines that can reach one million euros.

And not only that. The user must be able to verify that the opinions are real. Online businesses must provide consumers with clear and visible information about the reliability of such reviews.

Sanctions are important and administrations with powers in consumption are increasingly conducting more research on these uses. In addition, considering that it is unfair competition, it will be frequent for companies to intervene to denounce competitors who use reviews as a claim to the detriment of users who access freely.

From now on, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs will have the power to sanction companies for massive fraud and covert advertising through social networks.

Behaviors that will be punished:

The publication of false reviews and ratings or paid by the manufacturer in the products for sale on the internet. It will be considered unfair practice to include reviews from consumers without verifying that they have actually purchased the good.

The consumer can claim against all misleading advertising including uncredited reviews.

covert advertising

Another aspect that is included in the new law is covert advertising on social networks: It refers to the identification of advertising on social networks: every time there is an exchange between a brand and an influencer, it will have to be labeled as collaboration, advertising, gift or any other formula that allows to distinguish the own content from the sponsored one. Both brand and influencer will be responsible for doing so.

The marketing of the easy is over. Marketing yes, but of quality…and you have to know how to do that.

Article 7. Misleading omissions.

1. The omission or concealment of the information necessary for the recipient to adopt or be able to adopt a decision regarding their economic behavior with due knowledge of the facts is considered unfair. It is also unfair if the information offered is unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous, not offered at the right time, or the commercial purpose of that practice is not disclosed, when it is not evident from the context.