Just Eat and Pasta Evangelists are under investigation by the Competition & Markets Authority as part of a crackdown on fake and misleading reviews.
The CMA is investigating the businesses to determine whether they have infringed consumer law.
The investigation into Just Eat will focus on its star rating system, and whether it has falsely inflated certain restaurants’ and grocers’ star ratings, so giving consumers “a potentially misleading picture of quality when choosing where to order”.
Pasta Evangelists is being probed to determine whether customers were offered discounts on future orders in exchange for leaving five-star reviews on delivery apps. “Without this being disclosed”, the CMA said, customers “may not have known how reliable or representative those ratings were”.
“Fake reviews strike at the heart of consumer trust – with many of us worrying about misleading content when looking at reviews online,” said Sarah Cardell, chief executive of the CMA.
“With household budgets under pressure, people need to know they’re getting genuine information – not reviews or star ratings that have been manipulated to push them towards the wrong choice,” she added.
In April 2025, several practices relating to online reviews became ‘banned practices’ under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, meaning they are automatically deemed unfair and illegal.
These include obtaining and posting fake reviews, and paid-for reviews that are not clearly marked as incentivised. It also covers how reviews are handled – for example, if negative reviews are hidden, or if star ratings present an inaccurate picture.
“We’ve given businesses the time to get things right. Now we’re deploying our new powers to tackle some of the most harmful practices head on,” Cardell said.
The investigations into Just Eat and Pasta Evangelists bring the total number of businesses now under review using the CMA’s new consumer powers to 14.
A spokesperson for Just Eat told The Grocer it was working with the CMA “to ensure the reviews and ratings on our platform are clear, transparent and easy to use for all our customers and partners”.
“Our goal has always been to create a platform that works for everyone – from the people ordering their favourite meals to our restaurants and retail partners serving their communities,” they added. “We will continue to engage constructively with the CMA throughout their investigation.”
A Pasta Evangelists spokesperson said the company took ”the integrity and transparency of customer reviews extremely seriously” and it is ”committed to ensuring that our practices are fully compliant with consumer law”.
“We are cooperating fully with the CMA as it works to understand the facts and the CMA has itself made clear that no conclusions have been reached. We will continue to uphold high standards for our customers and to engage constructively with the CMA throughout this process,” they added.
Some 89% of UK adults said they used online customer reviews when researching a product or service, according to a survey by PowerReview, with a similar proportion concerned about fake content when reading them.
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