6 ms·

UK bans fake reviews and sneaky fees

88 points by charlieirish 2y ago

riffraff 2y ago
well done UK! Airlines and car rental companies are crazily misleading with their sneaky fees. I hope the EU outlaws this too (which I thought it did at some point, but Ryanair and Wizzair keep doing it anyway so I may have been mistaken).
- stirlo 2y ago
  Ryanair doesn’t have sneaky feees. It’s entirely possible to book a flight with them for the price advertised and first quoted when you search. They do prompt you to pay for heaps of extras but there are none that are unavoidable. The real offenders are ticketing companies that charge mandatory service fees or convenience fees without providing a way to purchase the item at the advertised cost.
  - mattlondon 2y ago
    Yes it's all the mandatory fees that you must pay to then make a purchase that I think are being banned. The mandatory booking fee, the mandatory service fee, mandatory transaction fee, mandatory technology fee etc just so you can checkout. Optional upsells are something else.
  - WithinReason 2y ago
    I guess the next step for Ryanair is: flight ticket: $10 extra for sitting: $100 extra for oxygen provided by Ryanair: $100
    - rightbyte 2y ago
      I think they had some pilot project on a concept level for planes with standing passangers. Maybe it was joke though I don't remember. Edit: Nope, real idea pitched by CEO in 2012.
  - leni536 2y ago
    While mostly agree, they do have some questionable practices. Like pretty much guaranteeing a middle seat if you don't reserve one, except if you purchase "avoid middle seat" from the popup right before checkout. Or deliberately breaking up random seat allocation for group booking, even if the seats are for an adult and a small child. They do offer free reserved seating options though for certain group bookings, so I'm not complaining much. I could even arrange things through customer service chat with them.
  - riffraff 2y ago
    it's been a while, but doesn't ryanair force you to pick seats (and pay for the privilege) when traveling with small kids, even tho _they_ are required to seat you together?
- switch007 2y ago
  Car rental companies are the worst because they actually act like the mafia. "It would be a nightmare if something happened to the vehicle...we are forced to charge £1500 for each and every separate piece of damage". Actual quote from an employee of Enterprise while trying to upsell me extra insurance
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    Sure but I don't think he even implied the rental company would smash it?
    - switch007 2y ago
      They implied they would screw me up to the maximum amount possible, beyond any cost of the actual repair Car rental companies, not this one to be fair, are well known for finding hidden and unrecorded damage when you return too But the company isn't called "Mafia" so I guess my comparison doesn't hold any water right?
      - rightbyte 2y ago
        Ye I was mainly pointing out that the mafia also cause the damage when you don't pay the "fee" in the classical use of the saying.
  - xrortrad 2y ago
    This is a ridiculous way to view things. Of course, it is their job to try to upsell you insurance. In the US though, the insurance is completely reasonable if you want to have no risk. Drop the car off with no risk of a ding or scratch for a few bucks. Framing it like the mafia loan sharking is completely absurd.
londons_explore 2y ago
How exactly will they enforce a ban on fake reviews? Will reviewers be needing to upload a copy of their photo id for verification?
- owisd 2y ago
  It's just a ban on buying and selling fake reviews, so the same way they regulate buying and selling anything.
  - ludston 2y ago
    It's like how when you buy something now you need to take a photo and email it to your local police station to prove you weren't buying drugs or something.
    - johnisgood 2y ago
      I know, imagine what would have happened to society if people unwinded after a long day of work in their own home with weed, or if they drank coffee every morning. /s
  - geor9e 2y ago
    It's not though. There's no govenment enforcement on either of those parties. The ban is worded below from a government page, and puts the entire burden on the website host to enforce it all. > Website hosts are accountable for the reviews on their page. Businesses and online platforms will be legally required to take steps to prevent and remove the publication of fake reviews that are published on their websites. This could include, for example, having adequate detection and removal procedures in place to prevent fake reviews being published. By the government's own wording, it sounds like any competent Amazon seller and competent Amazon reviewer can continue buying and selling fake reviews with each other over Facebook, Gmail, and PayPal, just like they have for years, with no consequences, even if they publically admit to it to a government prosecuter. They just have to stay under the radar of Amazon. Don't do too many under one account; make sure to sprinkle a lot of legitimate reviews in with the fakes. Amazon just needs to say in court that they did their best to look for these people. All Amazon can do is look at the data they have—which is pretty much just the actual reviews written by actual people on actual products—and do some data science, astrology, and tea leaf reading to call some of them fake reviewers. When really, there's no possible way they can detect a skilled one. They don't have subpoena power to check their Facebook messages or PayPal transactions. There are people who have been getting hundreds of $100-plus dollar products from Amazon free for 5+ years by just writing a quick fake review for it. There is a huge ecosystem of factories in China with Amazon seller accounts and fake review agents in Lahore, Pakistan, and places like that, who intermediate this, and then spreadsheets of thousands of products you can choose from, from hundreds of different sellers. So will Amazon go to the trouble of infiltrating these networks to find the exact product pages that are being offered in exchange for fake reviews? As far as I can tell, Amazon wants fake reviews to happen. It's how a new product gets it's initial reviews. Nobody's going to buy a product with no reviews. I don't think the government is going to be able to burden Amazon with hiring Pinkerton detectives to infiltrate these networks; that type of enforement work doesn't seem like something that a court could require a private business to do. And the government hasn't said these networks are against the law; just that the website hosts can't host their reviews. So, I doubt this will have much effect on Amazon. It will probably only be enforced on more flagrant websites, where all the reviews are just AI-generated slop.
mattlondon 2y ago
Glad to see this. Booking fee, service fee, transaction fee, technology fee, banking fee, payment handling fee, convenience fee, venue fee, ticket handling fee, verification fee, administration fee etc etc etc. So underhanded - they're just making fees up at this stage.
- MaxikCZ 2y ago
  Mutha?ucka charge a two buck transaction fee Makes my payment short, my rent comes back to me Minus a twenty-five dollar penalty So, you'll feed me 'cause of your mutha?uckin? fee
switch007 2y ago
Looks somewhat promising. They've given the regulators a bit more power. Time will tell if companies are actually scared of the regulators. And if larger companies just take it as the cost of doing business and smaller companies give up, with the added burden of even more red tape (unfortunate timing with the trade war perhaps.) The fake reviews part is just political theatre. It would take a multi year investigation by the regulators and probably will lead nowhere. And smaller companies may decide not to advertise their reviews for fear of investigation, so bigger companies will get away with it. Bigger companies are probably excited about this new law
entuno 2y ago
From the actual government announcement (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/fake-reviews-and-sneaky-hidden-fees-banned-once-and-for-all https://www.gov.uk/government/news/fake-reviews-and-sneaky-h...): > Website hosts are accountable for the reviews on their page. Businesses and online platforms will be legally required to take steps to prevent and remove the publication of fake reviews that are published on their websites. This could include, for example, having adequate detection and removal procedures in place to prevent fake reviews being published. I guess the big question is what that ends up meaning, and how well it's enforced. If companies start getting significant fines for hosting fake reviews (especially the likes of Google and Amazon) then that might encourage them to do something about them - but that requires an enforcement agency with teeth, and for them to prove that the reviews are fake, which often isn't easy.
- like_any_other 2y ago
  Hosting a website in the UK carries a lot of liability for the actions of your users. What would this mean for e.g. a consumer reviews forum someone is hosting as a hobby? Or a forum about any hobby, that includes discussions and reviews about the products used by that hobby, e.g. bicycle reviews on a cycling forum?
  - cjs_ac 2y ago
    The web is becoming professionalised: if you want to publish user-generated content on the web, you will need to moderate all of that content. The Internet is going the same way as radio: for most people, you'll be tuning in to regulated, commercial services. For enthusiasts, there will be a separate space where you can do whatever you want, but you can't offer laissez-faire services on behalf of the great unwashed. It's a great loss of theoretical freedom, but it'll have no impact on anyone's real life.
    - like_any_other 2y ago
      Given that the internet has almost completely supplanted the public square, I wouldn't say that putting it all under corporate control ("regulated, commercial services") would have no impact on real life.
racedude 2y ago
good well done EU
- gostsamo 2y ago
  This is not an EU thing, but I'd like it if it is proposed here as well.
- graemep 2y ago
  I am not quite sure whether you misread the content, or misread the date, or maybe even got confused by the common bad habit of people calling the EU Europe (which is rather like calling the USA "North America" - but worse). To be clear, it is a UK law that goes into effect today, many years post Brexit.
verisimi 2y ago
How is it that sneaky fees were ever legal? Surely the legal principle is very well established that the price shown is 'the price'? And that sneaky fees were already illegal? I can't help but wonder whether a blind eye was turned, in order to then require new legislation that includes onerous clauses. Such as requiring photo id/verification etc, as others say. Ie that whatever this legislation is, it may be an open ended expansion of legal powers.
- switch007 2y ago
  It's a common question about new legislation that appears to overlap with existing. AIUI it helps regulators/police etc with charging, as the new legislation can require less burden of proof etc. Happy to be corrected But there is of course plenty of other political motivation for legislation and I can see what you're saying.
- vladms 2y ago
  Legislation usually tries to catch up with technology. In the times when people paid cash at a ticket office and they would not have had hundreds of options many of the things mentioned would not have happened - life was slower, there were fewer options, reputation was more important. Would it have been possible for legislation to change faster? Probably, but that's politics, deciding together what is the next things to solve while having different opinions and many things to solve. It is not bad they try to fix it, am I personally sure this was the most important? Not sure. There are many horrible things out there when some group takes advantage of another one...
- mytailorisrich 2y ago
  They are not hidden fees buried into a contract that you've signed. The term in the article is "dripped fees": the full price is disclosed step by step. Ultimately the full price is shown before you enter into a contract and before you pay. You have no obligation to buy. They are more of a misleading advertising practice to get your attention and further along the sale funnel.
- bubblethink 2y ago
  >How is it that sneaky fees were ever legal? The fees are still visible to you before you purchase; they are only visible at the last step. So you are giving consent. Nothing obviously illegal per se, just a poor experience. At least in the US, Biden was unable to anything about it. Whether it was lack of will or incompetence, he didn't achieve anything. At the local level, CA tried to pass some laws to similar effect, but they also didn't go anywhere and were ultimately watered down to create carve outs for the most profitable junk fees.
physicsguy 2y ago
It sounds great but how do you prevent it? The sellers are all based abroad. If I look at any product on Amazon now, say a USB C cable, it’s full of fake reviews. Take this one as an example which came up as a sponsored link - 4.3/5 rated - https://amzn.eu/d/bHCXNQG https://amzn.eu/d/bHCXNQG - 7% of reviews are 1* and variously say that the description is misleading in capabilities of the cable, the cable broke, etc. If you look at the 5* reviews and click through to any profile writing them, they’re giving out all 5* reviews on a totally random array of cheap Chinese products. On top of that they’re always on products that no real person would buy since they’re always a mixture of things aimed at young/old and male/female, and yet the reviews are all written in the first person. If you’re not at least skeptical you will end up wasting money on rubbish. You have to now look at the distribution of reviews rather than the overall average since fake ones at 4 and 5 star swamp all else. Here in the U.K. I prefer Argos for small purchases I used to make from Amazon, but it’s not got the full range of items you might want to buy online unfortunately.
- jcjmcclean 2y ago
  Completely agree with you on Argos. Even better, you can go there when it's open and often you can collect straight away.
  - thinkingemote 2y ago
    +1 on Argos. They will do same day delivery too.
  - test1235 2y ago
    I'm hearing this sentiment a lot, and I agree. I hope Argos are forward thinking and aware enough to capitalise on this opportunity to improve their services further.
- Springtime 2y ago
  > You have to now look at the distribution of reviews rather than the overall average since fake ones at 4 and 5 star swamp all else. An unfortunate recent change for anyone using Amazon as a general review resource is they login-gated links to everything except the summary page. So without an account or logging in one can't view lower starred reviews.
marliechiller 2y ago
Does this extend to restraunts that now sneakily adding service charge onto a bill by default in order to prey on customers feelings of awkwardness? I always find that one stings and really irks me
- switch007 2y ago
  They've been doing that for a good 20 years at least. Might be more common but it's nothing new. I only say that not to correct you but just to say it's pretty common knowledge. It also has to be written on the menu. They do seem to be getting more reluctant and even sometimes angry when removing it though.
  - iamacyborg 2y ago
    In London it’s gotten significantly worse in recent years (post-Covid). Service charge used to be an exception only added to bills for large groups of diners, now they’re the rule.
    - pasc1878 2y ago
      But unlike in other countries that replaces a tip. My view was that previously large groups might not tip especially if splitting the bill but ones and twos would tip.
- rusk 2y ago
  Pretty standard in jurisdictions where tipping isn’t common, esp for larger groups. Usually noted on the menu but you can always decline if the hardworking minimum wage staff did not meet your satisfaction or if you can’t afford it.
rwmj 2y ago
So far ... It's alleged one of the demands in the current US/UK trade negotiations is removal on all these "restrictions" on US internet companies. Edit: Source - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/03/uk-trade-deal-us-concessions-food-safety-digital-services-vat https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/03/uk-trade-dea... and another one from a campaigning group: https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Trump-Big-Tech-trade-deal-briefing-April-2025.pdf https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/...
blackhaj7 2y ago
The UK has great consumer protection laws. I didn’t realise this until I lived abroad (Colombia, USA). It’s something we should be proud of and I wish other countries would emulate

88 points by charlieirish 2y ago

well done UK! Airlines and car rental companies are crazily misleading with their sneaky fees. I hope the EU outlaws this too (which I thought it did at some point, but Ryanair and Wizzair keep doing it anyway so I may have been mistaken).

stirlo 2y ago
Ryanair doesn’t have sneaky feees. It’s entirely possible to book a flight with them for the price advertised and first quoted when you search. They do prompt you to pay for heaps of extras but there are none that are unavoidable. The real offenders are ticketing companies that charge mandatory service fees or convenience fees without providing a way to purchase the item at the advertised cost.
- mattlondon 2y ago
  Yes it's all the mandatory fees that you must pay to then make a purchase that I think are being banned. The mandatory booking fee, the mandatory service fee, mandatory transaction fee, mandatory technology fee etc just so you can checkout. Optional upsells are something else.
- WithinReason 2y ago
  I guess the next step for Ryanair is: flight ticket: $10 extra for sitting: $100 extra for oxygen provided by Ryanair: $100
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    I think they had some pilot project on a concept level for planes with standing passangers. Maybe it was joke though I don't remember. Edit: Nope, real idea pitched by CEO in 2012.
- leni536 2y ago
  While mostly agree, they do have some questionable practices. Like pretty much guaranteeing a middle seat if you don't reserve one, except if you purchase "avoid middle seat" from the popup right before checkout. Or deliberately breaking up random seat allocation for group booking, even if the seats are for an adult and a small child. They do offer free reserved seating options though for certain group bookings, so I'm not complaining much. I could even arrange things through customer service chat with them.
- riffraff 2y ago
  it's been a while, but doesn't ryanair force you to pick seats (and pay for the privilege) when traveling with small kids, even tho _they_ are required to seat you together?
switch007 2y ago
Car rental companies are the worst because they actually act like the mafia. "It would be a nightmare if something happened to the vehicle...we are forced to charge £1500 for each and every separate piece of damage". Actual quote from an employee of Enterprise while trying to upsell me extra insurance
- rightbyte 2y ago
  Sure but I don't think he even implied the rental company would smash it?
  - switch007 2y ago
    They implied they would screw me up to the maximum amount possible, beyond any cost of the actual repair Car rental companies, not this one to be fair, are well known for finding hidden and unrecorded damage when you return too But the company isn't called "Mafia" so I guess my comparison doesn't hold any water right?
    - rightbyte 2y ago
      Ye I was mainly pointing out that the mafia also cause the damage when you don't pay the "fee" in the classical use of the saying.
- xrortrad 2y ago
  This is a ridiculous way to view things. Of course, it is their job to try to upsell you insurance. In the US though, the insurance is completely reasonable if you want to have no risk. Drop the car off with no risk of a ding or scratch for a few bucks. Framing it like the mafia loan sharking is completely absurd.

londons_explore 2y ago

How exactly will they enforce a ban on fake reviews? Will reviewers be needing to upload a copy of their photo id for verification?

owisd 2y ago
It's just a ban on buying and selling fake reviews, so the same way they regulate buying and selling anything.
- ludston 2y ago
  It's like how when you buy something now you need to take a photo and email it to your local police station to prove you weren't buying drugs or something.
  - johnisgood 2y ago
    I know, imagine what would have happened to society if people unwinded after a long day of work in their own home with weed, or if they drank coffee every morning. /s
- geor9e 2y ago
  It's not though. There's no govenment enforcement on either of those parties. The ban is worded below from a government page, and puts the entire burden on the website host to enforce it all. > Website hosts are accountable for the reviews on their page. Businesses and online platforms will be legally required to take steps to prevent and remove the publication of fake reviews that are published on their websites. This could include, for example, having adequate detection and removal procedures in place to prevent fake reviews being published. By the government's own wording, it sounds like any competent Amazon seller and competent Amazon reviewer can continue buying and selling fake reviews with each other over Facebook, Gmail, and PayPal, just like they have for years, with no consequences, even if they publically admit to it to a government prosecuter. They just have to stay under the radar of Amazon. Don't do too many under one account; make sure to sprinkle a lot of legitimate reviews in with the fakes. Amazon just needs to say in court that they did their best to look for these people. All Amazon can do is look at the data they have—which is pretty much just the actual reviews written by actual people on actual products—and do some data science, astrology, and tea leaf reading to call some of them fake reviewers. When really, there's no possible way they can detect a skilled one. They don't have subpoena power to check their Facebook messages or PayPal transactions. There are people who have been getting hundreds of $100-plus dollar products from Amazon free for 5+ years by just writing a quick fake review for it. There is a huge ecosystem of factories in China with Amazon seller accounts and fake review agents in Lahore, Pakistan, and places like that, who intermediate this, and then spreadsheets of thousands of products you can choose from, from hundreds of different sellers. So will Amazon go to the trouble of infiltrating these networks to find the exact product pages that are being offered in exchange for fake reviews? As far as I can tell, Amazon wants fake reviews to happen. It's how a new product gets it's initial reviews. Nobody's going to buy a product with no reviews. I don't think the government is going to be able to burden Amazon with hiring Pinkerton detectives to infiltrate these networks; that type of enforement work doesn't seem like something that a court could require a private business to do. And the government hasn't said these networks are against the law; just that the website hosts can't host their reviews. So, I doubt this will have much effect on Amazon. It will probably only be enforced on more flagrant websites, where all the reviews are just AI-generated slop.

mattlondon 2y ago

Glad to see this. Booking fee, service fee, transaction fee, technology fee, banking fee, payment handling fee, convenience fee, venue fee, ticket handling fee, verification fee, administration fee etc etc etc. So underhanded - they're just making fees up at this stage.

MaxikCZ 2y ago
Mutha?ucka charge a two buck transaction fee Makes my payment short, my rent comes back to me Minus a twenty-five dollar penalty So, you'll feed me 'cause of your mutha?uckin? fee

switch007 2y ago

Looks somewhat promising. They've given the regulators a bit more power. Time will tell if companies are actually scared of the regulators. And if larger companies just take it as the cost of doing business and smaller companies give up, with the added burden of even more red tape (unfortunate timing with the trade war perhaps.) The fake reviews part is just political theatre. It would take a multi year investigation by the regulators and probably will lead nowhere. And smaller companies may decide not to advertise their reviews for fear of investigation, so bigger companies will get away with it. Bigger companies are probably excited about this new law

entuno 2y ago

From the actual government announcement (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/fake-reviews-and-sneaky-hidden-fees-banned-once-and-for-all https://www.gov.uk/government/news/fake-reviews-and-sneaky-h...): > Website hosts are accountable for the reviews on their page. Businesses and online platforms will be legally required to take steps to prevent and remove the publication of fake reviews that are published on their websites. This could include, for example, having adequate detection and removal procedures in place to prevent fake reviews being published. I guess the big question is what that ends up meaning, and how well it's enforced. If companies start getting significant fines for hosting fake reviews (especially the likes of Google and Amazon) then that might encourage them to do something about them - but that requires an enforcement agency with teeth, and for them to prove that the reviews are fake, which often isn't easy.

like_any_other 2y ago
Hosting a website in the UK carries a lot of liability for the actions of your users. What would this mean for e.g. a consumer reviews forum someone is hosting as a hobby? Or a forum about any hobby, that includes discussions and reviews about the products used by that hobby, e.g. bicycle reviews on a cycling forum?
- cjs_ac 2y ago
  The web is becoming professionalised: if you want to publish user-generated content on the web, you will need to moderate all of that content. The Internet is going the same way as radio: for most people, you'll be tuning in to regulated, commercial services. For enthusiasts, there will be a separate space where you can do whatever you want, but you can't offer laissez-faire services on behalf of the great unwashed. It's a great loss of theoretical freedom, but it'll have no impact on anyone's real life.
  - like_any_other 2y ago
    Given that the internet has almost completely supplanted the public square, I wouldn't say that putting it all under corporate control ("regulated, commercial services") would have no impact on real life.

racedude 2y ago

good well done EU

gostsamo 2y ago
This is not an EU thing, but I'd like it if it is proposed here as well.
graemep 2y ago
I am not quite sure whether you misread the content, or misread the date, or maybe even got confused by the common bad habit of people calling the EU Europe (which is rather like calling the USA "North America" - but worse). To be clear, it is a UK law that goes into effect today, many years post Brexit.

verisimi 2y ago

How is it that sneaky fees were ever legal? Surely the legal principle is very well established that the price shown is 'the price'? And that sneaky fees were already illegal? I can't help but wonder whether a blind eye was turned, in order to then require new legislation that includes onerous clauses. Such as requiring photo id/verification etc, as others say. Ie that whatever this legislation is, it may be an open ended expansion of legal powers.

switch007 2y ago
It's a common question about new legislation that appears to overlap with existing. AIUI it helps regulators/police etc with charging, as the new legislation can require less burden of proof etc. Happy to be corrected But there is of course plenty of other political motivation for legislation and I can see what you're saying.
vladms 2y ago
Legislation usually tries to catch up with technology. In the times when people paid cash at a ticket office and they would not have had hundreds of options many of the things mentioned would not have happened - life was slower, there were fewer options, reputation was more important. Would it have been possible for legislation to change faster? Probably, but that's politics, deciding together what is the next things to solve while having different opinions and many things to solve. It is not bad they try to fix it, am I personally sure this was the most important? Not sure. There are many horrible things out there when some group takes advantage of another one...
mytailorisrich 2y ago
They are not hidden fees buried into a contract that you've signed. The term in the article is "dripped fees": the full price is disclosed step by step. Ultimately the full price is shown before you enter into a contract and before you pay. You have no obligation to buy. They are more of a misleading advertising practice to get your attention and further along the sale funnel.
bubblethink 2y ago
>How is it that sneaky fees were ever legal? The fees are still visible to you before you purchase; they are only visible at the last step. So you are giving consent. Nothing obviously illegal per se, just a poor experience. At least in the US, Biden was unable to anything about it. Whether it was lack of will or incompetence, he didn't achieve anything. At the local level, CA tried to pass some laws to similar effect, but they also didn't go anywhere and were ultimately watered down to create carve outs for the most profitable junk fees.

physicsguy 2y ago

It sounds great but how do you prevent it? The sellers are all based abroad. If I look at any product on Amazon now, say a USB C cable, it’s full of fake reviews. Take this one as an example which came up as a sponsored link - 4.3/5 rated - https://amzn.eu/d/bHCXNQG https://amzn.eu/d/bHCXNQG - 7% of reviews are 1* and variously say that the description is misleading in capabilities of the cable, the cable broke, etc. If you look at the 5* reviews and click through to any profile writing them, they’re giving out all 5* reviews on a totally random array of cheap Chinese products. On top of that they’re always on products that no real person would buy since they’re always a mixture of things aimed at young/old and male/female, and yet the reviews are all written in the first person. If you’re not at least skeptical you will end up wasting money on rubbish. You have to now look at the distribution of reviews rather than the overall average since fake ones at 4 and 5 star swamp all else. Here in the U.K. I prefer Argos for small purchases I used to make from Amazon, but it’s not got the full range of items you might want to buy online unfortunately.

jcjmcclean 2y ago
Completely agree with you on Argos. Even better, you can go there when it's open and often you can collect straight away.
- thinkingemote 2y ago
  +1 on Argos. They will do same day delivery too.
- test1235 2y ago
  I'm hearing this sentiment a lot, and I agree. I hope Argos are forward thinking and aware enough to capitalise on this opportunity to improve their services further.
Springtime 2y ago
> You have to now look at the distribution of reviews rather than the overall average since fake ones at 4 and 5 star swamp all else. An unfortunate recent change for anyone using Amazon as a general review resource is they login-gated links to everything except the summary page. So without an account or logging in one can't view lower starred reviews.

marliechiller 2y ago

Does this extend to restraunts that now sneakily adding service charge onto a bill by default in order to prey on customers feelings of awkwardness? I always find that one stings and really irks me

switch007 2y ago
They've been doing that for a good 20 years at least. Might be more common but it's nothing new. I only say that not to correct you but just to say it's pretty common knowledge. It also has to be written on the menu. They do seem to be getting more reluctant and even sometimes angry when removing it though.
- iamacyborg 2y ago
  In London it’s gotten significantly worse in recent years (post-Covid). Service charge used to be an exception only added to bills for large groups of diners, now they’re the rule.
  - pasc1878 2y ago
    But unlike in other countries that replaces a tip. My view was that previously large groups might not tip especially if splitting the bill but ones and twos would tip.
rusk 2y ago
Pretty standard in jurisdictions where tipping isn’t common, esp for larger groups. Usually noted on the menu but you can always decline if the hardworking minimum wage staff did not meet your satisfaction or if you can’t afford it.

rwmj 2y ago

So far ... It's alleged one of the demands in the current US/UK trade negotiations is removal on all these "restrictions" on US internet companies. Edit: Source - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/03/uk-trade-deal-us-concessions-food-safety-digital-services-vat https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/03/uk-trade-dea... and another one from a campaigning group: https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Trump-Big-Tech-trade-deal-briefing-April-2025.pdf https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/...

blackhaj7 2y ago

The UK has great consumer protection laws. I didn’t realise this until I lived abroad (Colombia, USA). It’s something we should be proud of and I wish other countries would emulate