Why Verix is needed.

You've followed a 5-star recommendation before and been disappointed. That's not a coincidence — it's a business model.

That's exactly what's not possible with Verix — try it ↓

The source behind the number.

According to a study by Fachhochschule Worms (2017) roughly a third of all reviews on platforms like Amazon, Tripadvisor, or eBay aren't authentic. For Switzerland, SRF Data confirms this picture: examining around half a million Google Maps reviews, data specialists found thousands of profiles that had to be classified as "highly suspicious".

"A large part is likely attributable to companies that offer such fake accounts and sell positive reviews."

— Lukas Frischknecht, SRF Data — October 2021

"They violate the Unfair Competition Act and are punishable."

— Prof. Florent Thouvenin, University of Zurich — in the same SRF article

The consequence: whoever trusts a review often trusts a lie. Honest providers lose customers to poor competitors with a bought reputation. Consumers pay for services they would never have chosen otherwise.

In Switzerland, this is already illegal.

Fake reviews violate the Swiss Federal Act against Unfair Competition (UWG). Under Art. 3 para. 1 lit. b UWG, inaccurate or misleading statements about goods, works, or services are prohibited. The Swiss Consumer Protection Foundation actively pursues such practices, and the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) publicly documents the legal basis for this.

Purpose of the law (Art. 1 UWG): to ensure fair and undistorted competition in the interest of all parties involved.

The big platforms know — and don't act.

When a platform earns money from review volume, every fake review is revenue — a structural misalignment of incentives, not an isolated failure. Why this conflict of interest can't be solved, and what Verix does differently →

This isn't a Swiss one-off. The European Commission found in a coordinated sweep that 55% of the 223 websites screened were suspected of breaching EU consumer law — for 144 of them (roughly 65%), authorities couldn't confirm that reviews came from real customers. The US FTC issued its own final rule against bought and fake reviews in 2024, and the UK CMA published its own guidance in 2025. Even Amazon — 200 million fake reviews removed worldwide and its own lawsuits against fake-review providers — is fighting a problem that its own platform economics helps create.