eBay shoppers are being tricked into buying counterfeit products including shoddy chargers and even smoke alarms due to a flaw in the website’s review system.
Consumer group Which? claims that sellers are able to easily exploit the shopping platform’s review system to attach glowing reviews to their inferior products.
When adding items for sale to eBay, a product ID pulls relevant information from a central database to make the listing process simpler, including reviews.
As a result, reviews from all listings claiming to be the same item can be shared, regardless of the seller or the condition of the product.
This means dodgy sellers can pinch positive reviews of popular products from Apple and Samsung and attach them to their own inferior knock-offs.
Sellers are easily able to exploit this gap in the system to mislead shoppers and boost their sub-standard, counterfeit and even dangerous products.
Apple’s Lightning to UBS cables cost £19.99 on the tech giant’s website. This similar-looking knock-off was able to share the same reviews
Which? uncovered a number of product listings that shared the same reviews, despite clearly looking different from each other in images posted by the sellers.
The watchdog is now calling on the government’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to make sites such as eBay introduce measures that clamp down on flawed online review systems.
‘Our investigation has uncovered yet another example of online reviews being manipulated to mislead people,’ said Natalie Hitchins, head of home products and services at Which?.
‘eBay’s product review system is confusing for consumers and could even direct them towards counterfeit or dangerous products sold by unscrupulous sellers.
This item, sold as a ‘genuine Apple cable’ for older iPhone models, was one that was found to share the same product reviews as the official Apple equivalent
‘Online reviews influence billions of pounds of consumer spending each year.
‘The CMA must now investigate how fake and misleading reviews are duping online shoppers, taking the strongest possible action against sites that fail to tackle the problem.’
Which? experts looked at hundreds of listings for several categories of products on eBay, including chargers, charging cables, headphones, smoke alarms and travel adaptors.
Among them were hundreds of listings for counterfeit Samsung chargers that had been subject to a Europe-wide recall alert.
But by adding the same product ID as potentially legitimate chargers, sellers were able to adopt four and five star reviews on listing pages.
This listing for a cable for Apple iPhones 5 to 8 was being sold for £2.99, with items being sent from the UK
Which? ordered 20 Apple and Samsung accessories, such as chargers and USB cables, which were supposed to be official and shared the same reviews.
They claim that all fell short of what a buyer would have expected based on the listing while some were entirely fake – and that more than 33,000 had been sold.
One potentially dangerous example was marketed as a ‘Samsung’ charger and arrived with a ‘shoddily put together’ cable that could be pulled out of the USB connectors.
Shoddy smoke alarms, meanwhile, could potentially be fatal if they’re not up to the standard of respected brands.
Which? also found other ‘concerning gaps’ in the product review system such as sellers being able to leave reviews for their own products – a practice banned by other online marketplaces including Amazon.
During the investigation, Which? identified several underlying problems suggesting the eBay product review system is flawed, including users able to leave reviews on their own items
eBay responded to the latest report saying it would investigate Which’s claims on these items, but disputed some aspects of the consumer group’s findings.
‘We have investigated the listings shared by Which? and will remove any that breach our policies,’ an eBay spokesman said.
‘The research does not fully consider that there are distinctions between product reviews – which provide buyers with a holistic review of the same product – and seller feedback – which can be used to see specific reviews of a seller’s performance and may reflect the item’s condition.
‘In addition, all listings have a “report” feature. Any user can use this to report a concern with a listing, its seller, or its reviews.
‘eBay enforces its product safety policy at a global level using block filter algorithms that prevent unsafe products being listed and our international security teams also work around the clock to help safeguard our marketplace.’
Earlier this year, Facebook and eBay signed up to agreements to better identify, investigate and respond to fake and misleading reviews after the CMA told them to address the issue.
The CMA estimates £23 billion a year of consumer transactions are influenced by online reviews.