Bell will also pay an administrative penalty of $1.25 million, the bureau said in a statement. This enforcement approach is consistent with the Competition Bureau’s (the “Bureau”) stated position that the application of competition laws to the digital economy is one of the Commissioner’s enforcement priorities. The employees did not disclose the fact that they were employed by Bell.
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Bell employees were said to be encouraged by the company to post good reviews and give five star ratings to the MyBell Mobile and Virgin My Account apps.
As it turned out, a few of those reviews were actually written by high-level Bell employees, and Bell asked them to do it. Now, the company is paying for it.
Here’s what Bell had to say about the issue – “The postings were the result of an overzealous effort on the part of our service team to highlight the app. It’s certainly not Bell’s practice to encourage employees to rate our products, and we’re sending a clear message out to the team to that effect”.
Last year, the Competition Bureau published a bulletin which reminded consumers not to patronize products that were given fake online reviews and to also report such cases to their office.
According to Bell Canada director of communications and social media Paolo Pasquini, the company isn’t in the business of having its employees give positive reviews of its apps.
Bell Canada has reached a deal with the federal Competition Bureau involving the anonymous posting of favourable reviews of company apps by Bell employees.
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Although Bell was proactive about removing the fake reviews and ratings, “the Bureau determined that these reviews and ratings created the general impression that they were made by independent and impartial consumers and temporarily affected the overall star rating for the apps”.
