Commercial blogging – ‘flogging’ – becomes an offence in Europe
The end, it seems, could be nigh for those cheeky hoteliers who pretend to be customers on TripAdvisor and write themselves glowing reviews.
As of April 6, Brussels will be banning such underhand activities as the EU’s Unfair Commercial Practices Directive comes into force, making commercial blogging, or flogging as it’s known, an offence.
The new law includes two categories of unfair commercial practise – misleading practices and aggressive practices. Whether a practise is deemed unfair will be judged in light of the effect it has on the average consumer’s consequent decision to purchase.
The law means companies, no matter how small (and that includes sole traders), will not be able to post online themselves or pay anyone else to post reviews or blogs about their own companies that are misleading.
The law comes into force at a time when the public are beginning to make their disapproval about flogging heard.
In the US, the recent Travel 2.0 Consumer Technology Survey which was commissioned by Phocuswright revealed that when travel purchasing decisions are being made, most Americans said they would rather make their own minds up than follow the views of people they didn’t know (and therefore, buy implication, could not trust).
by Dinah Hatch
Phil Davies
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