Online business reviews platform Trustpilot, which is used by thousands of estate agents to garner feedback about their service, has promised to take ‘enforcement action’ against firms on its site who break its rules by soliciting fake or misleading reviews.

The move by the global platform, which has over 529,000 websites listed on its service, comes four years after Purplebricks was criticised for its aggressive attempts to get negative Trustpilot reviews of its service removed because, it claimed, they were unverified or not genuine.

In 2018 Trustpilot was the subject of a BBC Radio 5 Live investigation which alleged rampant use of both fake positive reviews and ‘gaming’ of the system by some businesses looking to bury negative reviews. In 2019 it faced a similar investigation, this time by the BBC’s Watchdog programme.

Bad actor

Trustpilot, which now appears to consider the problem big enough to tackle, has announced that its new initiative will see litigation filed against a number of ‘bad actor’ businesses abusing online reviews in an effort to mislead consumers.

The platform says it will issue legal proceedings against repeat offenders, seeking orders to block them from soliciting fake reviews and for recovery of damages.

Trustpilot also says it will donate proceeds from litigation to organisations that work to protect consumers from misinformation online.

Carolyn Jameson (pictured), Chief Trust Officer at Trustpilot said: “Whilst the vast majority of businesses use reviews constructively to help get them closer to their customers, we’re prepared to do everything within our power to clamp down on the small minority who do not behave as they should, and instead use fake and misleading reviews to take advantage of consumers – often those consumers who are particularly vulnerable.”

Read more about TrustPilot and agent reviews.