The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has taken Meriton Property Services to the Federal Court over what it claims is misleading or deceptive conduct in online reviews of properties on the TripAdvisor website.
Meriton trades online as Meriton Serviced Apartments. TripAdvisor has a service called Review Express under which participating businesses provide the website with the email addresses of recent customers.
The website then contacts these customers asking them to submit a review of their interactions with the business in question.
The ACCC alleged that from November 2014 to October 2015 Meriton had taken steps to prevent guests whom it suspected would provide negative reviews of its services from receiving the Review Express emails.
{loadposition sam08}This was achieved by adding letters to the email addresses given to TripAdvisor so that they would not work, and also by not sending any additional email addresses over.
In a media release, ACCC commissioner Sarah Court said: "We allege that Meriton’s conduct was a deliberate practice, undertaken at the direction of Meriton’s senior management, aimed at minimising the number of negative reviews.
"This practice was likely to create a more positive or favourable impression of the standard, quality or suitability of accommodation services provided by Meriton."
Court said consumers relied on independent review platforms like TripAdvisor when making purchasing decisions.
"If reviews are manipulated to falsely create a more favourable impression about a provider, consumers may choose that provider on the basis of that falsehood over another accommodation provider who has not engaged in misleading conduct," she said.
The competition regulator is seeking pecuniary penalties, declarations, injunctions, corrective publication orders, orders for the implementation of a consumer law compliance programme and costs from Meriton.