Why the CMA Could Fine Autotrader 10 Percent of Turnover Over Reviews

• The Competition and Markets Authority is investigating whether Autotrader failed to publish 1-star reviews moderated by Feefo, and left them out of dealer star ratings shown to buyers.
• Hiding genuine negative reviews has been a banned practice under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 from April 2025 onward, and the CMA can fine a company up to 10% of its global turnover for a breach.
• The case is one of five opened by the CMA on 27 March 2026 into UK consumer platforms, and no finding against Autotrader has been made.

Why the CMA Could Fine Autotrader 10 Percent of Turnover Over Reviews

Millions of UK car buyers check a dealer’s star rating on Autotrader before they ever pick up the phone or drive out to view a car. The Competition and Markets Authority now wants to know whether some of those ratings told the full story. An investigation opened on 26 March 2026 is examining whether Autotrader failed to publish 1-star reviews that had already been moderated by the review platform Feefo, and whether those reviews were then excluded from the star ratings buyers see on listing pages.

The CMA has been clear that no finding has been made against Autotrader and that it should not be assumed the company has broken the law. What makes the case significant is the law itself. From April 2025, hiding or suppressing genuine negative reviews became a banned practice under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, the legislation that gave the CMA direct fining powers over consumer protection breaches for the first time without needing a court order.

Who Else Is Under Investigation

Autotrader is one of five companies named by the CMA on 27 March 2026 in its first wave of enforcement action under the new review rules. Feefo, the review moderation service Autotrader uses, is under investigation alongside it, over whether it moderated reviews in a way that led to the same negative ratings being excluded from public view. The other three cases involve different sectors entirely: funeral provider Dignity, over allegations that staff were asked to write positive reviews of cremation services; food delivery platform Just Eat, over allegedly inflated restaurant and grocer ratings; and meal kit firm Pasta Evangelists, over claims it offered discounts on future orders in exchange for 5-star reviews without disclosing the arrangement.

CMA chief executive Sarah Cardell said fake and misleading reviews “strike at the heart of consumer trust,” pointing to widespread concern among shoppers about whether the reviews they read online are genuine. For used car buyers specifically, a star rating is often the only independent signal available before money changes hands: a private buyer cannot inspect a dealer’s service history or speak to previous customers the way they might with a smaller, local business.

What the Law Actually Bans

The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 gives the CMA power to act directly against three specific practices: publishing fake reviews, paying for reviews without disclosing the payment, and suppressing or hiding genuine negative reviews so they do not appear in a business’s overall rating. It is the third category that applies to the Autotrader and Feefo cases. The law does not ban a business from moderating spam or abusive content out of its reviews. It bans removing or discounting reviews on the grounds that they are negative, while leaving positive reviews untouched.

Breaching these rules carries real financial consequences. The CMA can fine a company up to 10% of its global annual turnover for an infringement, and up to 5% for breaching a formal undertaking given at any point in an investigation, with additional daily penalties available for continued non-compliance. For a company the size of Autotrader’s parent group, a 10% turnover fine would run into tens of millions of pounds, a figure well beyond what a court-based enforcement route could previously have delivered without lengthy litigation.

What It Means for Anyone Buying a Used Car

The practical effect for now is that nothing about how Autotrader displays reviews has changed, and the investigation could run for months before the CMA reaches a decision. Buyers should treat the case as a reason for caution rather than a reason to stop using star ratings altogether. A rating built from every review a dealer received, good and bad, is a useful signal. One that has had its worst reviews quietly filtered out is closer to marketing than to feedback.

Anyone researching a used car dealer right now can take a few steps the investigation does not affect. Reading the written text of reviews, not just the star average, often reveals patterns a filtered rating would hide, such as repeated complaints about the same fault or the same sales tactic. Checking whether a dealer has reviews on more than one platform, rather than relying on a single site’s rating, spreads the risk that any one platform’s moderation practices are skewing the result. The Motor Ombudsman’s accredited dealer scheme and its published complaints data offer an independent second check that sits outside any single review platform entirely.

Why the CMA Can Now Fine Companies Directly

Before the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, the CMA had to take a company to court to secure a civil penalty for a consumer protection breach, a process that could take years and often ended in a settlement rather than a public fine. The Act changed that by giving the CMA the same direct fining power over consumer law that it has held over competition law from 2003 onward. The five cases opened in March 2026, including Autotrader and Feefo, are among the first tests of that new power against live UK consumer platforms, which is why legal and retail industry observers are watching the outcome closely regardless of the sector each case falls in.

The practical effect of the change is that a company can now be fined without the CMA first having to win a case in the Competition Appeal Tribunal. A business under investigation can still challenge a CMA decision through the courts after the fact, but the starting position has shifted: the regulator decides first, and the burden falls on the company to appeal if it disagrees. For consumer-facing platforms built on ratings and reviews, that is a materially higher level of risk than existed before April 2025.

What Happens Next

The CMA has not set a public deadline for concluding the Autotrader and Feefo cases. Under its standard process, the next formal step would be either a statement of objections setting out the CMA’s provisional findings, or a closure of the case if the evidence does not support further action. A company found to have breached the rules is typically given the chance to offer formal undertakings, changes to its practices agreed with the regulator, before any fine is confirmed, so a finding against Autotrader would not necessarily mean an immediate penalty.

Autotrader has not been contacted for comment by the CMA at the stage this investigation has reached, and the company has not published its own statement on the case beyond acknowledging that an investigation is under way. Feefo, which provides review moderation services to a wide range of UK retailers beyond the car sector, is facing the same scrutiny over how its moderation decisions are applied. Motoring Chronicle will report the outcome once the CMA publishes its next update, along with any changes Autotrader makes to how star ratings are calculated and displayed on dealer listings in the meantime.

Read more: Autotrader Data Shows Buyers of Older Used Cars Now Pay £463 More and Used Car Complaints to the Motor Ombudsman Jumped 14 Percent Last Year.

Sources

Competition and Markets Authority, “Autotrader: consumer protection enforcement case,” gov.uk (opened 26 March 2026): https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/autotrader-consumer-protection-enforcement-case

Competition and Markets Authority, “Fake and misleading reviews: 5 businesses under CMA investigation,” gov.uk press release, 27 March 2026: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/fake-and-misleading-reviews-5-businesses-under-cma-investigation