The number of complaints surged by 366%, and Amazon and other platforms took action again to crack down on fake reviews!

Over the past year, the potential of India’s e-commerce market has continued to explode and is currently in a stage of rapid development. It is expected that by 2030, its value will soar to US$325 billion, ranking third in the global online retail industry.

However, as the scale of the e-commerce market grows , the Indian e-commerce market is paying more and more attention to issues related to "legality" .

According to foreign media reports, the Indian Ministry of Consumer Affairs organized a meeting of stakeholders on "protecting consumers from fake online reviews."

Data shows that between 2018 and 2023, the number of e-commerce-related complaints registered on India's National Consumer Helpline soared 366% in five years. It is understood that the number of complaints in 2018 was only 95,300, and by 2023 this number soared to more than 444,000, accounting for 43% of the total registered complaints.

It is clear that the interest issues faced by Indian online consumers have become increasingly serious in recent years.

Nidhi Khare, Minister of Consumer Affairs of India , pointed out that the main reason for the surge in complaints is the proliferation of fake online reviews . That is, online shoppers will look through reviews to decide whether to buy a product, and the existence of fake reviews often misleads them. When they find that the product is not what they said, they will inevitably complain to the relevant authorities, which further damages the credibility of the platform.

In order to curb the proliferation of false reviews and safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of consumers, the Indian Ministry of Consumer Affairs has put forward a proposal calling on e-commerce platforms to comply with the relevant provisions of the "Guidelines and Requirements for the Collection, Review and Publication of Online Consumer Reviews", including: the platform must disclose consumers' true evaluations of products and prohibit false positives to mislead consumers; e-commerce platforms need to set up specialists to screen false reviews; for users who post false reviews, the platform should conduct identity verification and follow-up, etc.

It is worth mentioning that representatives of platforms such as Amazon, Google, Flipkart and Meta have all endorsed the proposal. They also said that they will punish sellers involved in fake orders, hold them accountable through legal means, and vigorously crack down on fake reviews, so as to improve the platform's reputation and user experience.

In fact, the Indian government has already taken action to regulate market compliance. For example , in December last year , the Indian Ministry of Consumer Affairs required e-commerce platforms to disable "dark mode" ; earlier this year , many platforms were required to verify the authenticity of delivery time.

Recently, there was news that the Indian government plans to launch an application in the next two months that can detect the use of "dark mode" on all leading e-commerce platforms in order to further strengthen supervision.

In the future, the management policies of the Indian e-commerce market will be gradually improved. In addition, as platforms such as Amazon crack down on false reviews, cross-border sellers who want to gain a foothold in this market must be more cautious in their words and actions to avoid misleading and illegal behavior.