Last Updated on July 10, 2026
Fake and incentivised reviews are now illegal in the UK. The regulator has started naming names. Most small businesses are still using tactics that quietly break the rules
The uncomfortable argument
For years, the advice handed to small businesses was simple: get more five-star reviews, by almost any means. Ask staff to post one. Offer a discount for a five-star rating. Quietly bury the bad ones. Pad the numbers until the average looks healthy. It was treated as harmless marketing.
As of 6 April 2025, a lot of that is against the law. The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 made writing, commissioning or hosting fake reviews a banned practice, and it pulled hidden incentivised reviews into the same net. In March 2026 the Competition and Markets Authority stopped warning and started investigating, opening cases against five named businesses including a food delivery brand accused of trading discounts for five-star ratings.
So here is the part that should change how you think about your ratings. A wall of generic five-star reviews is no longer a trophy. To a sharper consumer, and now to a regulator, it can look like a red flag. The shortcut that used to feel clever is now both a legal risk and a commercial liability. This report sets out what the law actually bans, who is already under investigation, and what to do instead.
Key facts
Key takeaways
- Since 6 April 2025, the DMCC Act 2024 bans writing or commissioning fake reviews, and bans incentivised reviews where the incentive is concealed. An incentive includes cash, a discount, a freebie, an event invite or a financial interest in the business.
- Penalties are real. Businesses can be fined up to 10% of global annual turnover or £300,000, whichever is higher, and individuals can be fined up to £150,000.
- In March 2026 the CMA opened investigations into five named businesses over how they handle reviews, including suppressing negative ones and offering discounts for five-star ratings.
- Platforms now have a legal duty to take reasonable and proportionate steps to detect and remove fake reviews, so the old workarounds are getting harder, not easier.
- Trust in reviews has been falling since its 2016 peak. Consumers increasingly read the negative reviews and give lower-rated businesses a fair hearing, which means a suspiciously perfect score can hurt you.
- The fix is not a clever tactic. It is structure: deliver a service worth reviewing, ask every genuine customer, and reply well to the bad ones. Genuine reviews are now the only safe ones.
Contents
What the law actually bans now
The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 brought in a new set of banned commercial practices, and the rules on reviews came into force on 6 April 2025. The CMA published its guidance in April 2025 and gave businesses a short grace period to fix their systems. That grace period is over.
Three things are now clearly prohibited. Submitting a fake review, or commissioning someone else to write one, is banned. Submitting a review that conceals the fact it was incentivised is banned. And publishing reviews, or consumer review information, without taking reasonable and proportionate steps to remove the fake ones, is banned for the platforms that host them.
The detail that catches most small businesses is the meaning of incentivised. An incentive is not just cash. The CMA guidance treats discounts, freebies, prize draws, invitations to events, and the reviewer having any financial interest in the business as incentives. If a review was encouraged by any of those and that fact is hidden from readers, it is a concealed incentivised review, and it is against the rules.
The everyday tactics that are now illegal
None of these would have raised an eyebrow a few years ago. All of them now sit on the wrong side of the line.
| Common tactic | Why it now breaks the rules |
|---|---|
| “Leave us a five-star review and get 10% off” | A concealed incentivised review. The discount is an incentive, and tying it to a positive rating, undisclosed, is banned. |
| Asking staff, friends or family to post reviews | They have a financial or personal interest that readers cannot see, which makes the review misleading. |
| Buying review packs from an online seller | These are fake reviews by definition. Commissioning them is explicitly prohibited. |
| Only publishing the good reviews on your own site | Selectively hosting reviews to create a misleading overall impression falls foul of the platform duties. |
| Writing your own reviews on a competitor | Fake negative reviews are banned in exactly the same way as fake positive ones. |
| Gating: only inviting happy customers to review you | Steering who gets asked, to skew the average, sits in a grey area the CMA has signalled it is watching. |
This is general guidance, not legal advice. If you are unsure whether a specific practice complies, check the current CMA guidance or take advice.
The CMA has started naming names
For most of 2025 the CMA focused on education and warnings. That phase is over. On 26 March 2026 it announced five new consumer law investigations into how businesses handle online reviews, across funerals, food delivery, car sales and reviews platforms. The CMA has not reached any conclusions, but the cases show exactly which behaviours it is now testing in public.
| Business | What the CMA is examining |
|---|---|
| Auto Trader and Feefo | Whether a number of one-star reviews, moderated by Feefo, were not published or counted towards star ratings, denying consumers a full picture. |
| Dignity | Whether staff were asked to write positive reviews about the company’s crematoria services. |
| Just Eat | Whether its ratings system inflated certain restaurants’ and grocers’ star ratings. |
| Pasta Evangelists | Whether customers were offered discounts on future orders in exchange for five-star reviews, without this being disclosed. |
Source: CMA, via ICPEN, 26 March 2026. The CMA states it has not concluded that any of these businesses has broken the law.
Look at that Pasta Evangelists case again. A discount in exchange for a five-star review, not disclosed, is the single most common review tactic small businesses are still told to use. If a national brand is being investigated for it, a local one doing the same thing is not too small to matter, it is simply less visible.
Why a perfect five-star rating is now a liability
Set the law aside for a moment, because the commercial case has shifted too. The assumption behind review padding is that a higher average always sells more. That is no longer reliably true.
Trust in online reviews peaked around 2016 and has been declining since. Consumers have grown more sceptical and more sophisticated. They read the one and two-star reviews on purpose, to see how a business handles problems, and surveys show a growing willingness to give a lower-rated business a fair hearing if the details stack up. A flawless score with a hundred near-identical five-star reviews and no detail does not reassure that reader. It makes them suspicious.
At the same time, reviews still carry enormous weight when they are believed. Research cited by the CMA found that 89% of people use reviews when researching a product or service, and the regulator estimates online reviews potentially influence around £23 billion of UK consumer spending a year. The prize for being trusted is large. The penalty for looking fake is losing that trust at the exact moment someone is deciding to buy.
What it can cost you
The DMCC Act gave the CMA direct enforcement powers, so it no longer has to go through the courts to act. The financial exposure is significant, and it reaches individuals, not just companies.
For a business the cap is the higher of £300,000 or 10% of global annual turnover. For an individual, such as a director or marketer who arranged the fake reviews, the cap is £150,000. For a small business, the bigger cost is rarely the fine itself. It is the reputational damage of being publicly named for misleading customers, and the loss of trust that follows.
What to do instead
The honest news is that the safe path and the effective path are now the same path. You cannot game your way to durable trust, and you no longer need to. Here is the structure-first approach.
- Make the service worth reviewing. Reviews are an output, not a tactic. If the work is good and the experience is smooth, genuine five-star reviews follow. Fix that first, before any review campaign.
- Ask every customer, the same way, every time. A simple, consistent request to all customers after a job is legal and effective. Do not screen for who is happy first. Ask everyone and let the average be real.
- Never tie a reward to a positive rating. You can run a fair prize draw for anyone who leaves an honest review, if you disclose it clearly. You cannot offer a discount for a five-star one. Keep the incentive away from the score.
- Welcome the negative reviews and answer them well. A calm, specific public reply to a complaint reassures the next forty readers far more than another five-star line. See our guide to responding to bad reviews.
- Audit what you are already doing. Check your website, your booking emails and your social posts for any “review for a discount” wording, and remove it. Check that you are not hiding negative reviews on your own site.
- Build a steady, honest stream. A regular trickle of genuine reviews is the best protection against the occasional unfair one. Our guide to getting more Google reviews the right way walks through the system.
This is the Build stage in practice. You do not need a shortcut, you need a repeatable system that turns good work into honest proof. That proof is now the only kind worth having.
Cite this research
Whito Research (2026). Fake Reviews Are Now Illegal in the UK (And Your 5-Star Average May Be a Liability). Whito. https://whito.co.uk/research/fake-reviews-illegal-uk/
Key finding: Since 6 April 2025, the DMCC Act 2024 bans writing or commissioning fake reviews, and bans incentivised reviews where the incentive is concealed. An incentive includes cash, a discount, a freebie, an event invite or a financial interest in
This is original Whito research. You are welcome to reuse these figures with a link to this page as the source.
Methodology and sources
Compiled by Whito in June 2026. The prohibitions on fake and concealed incentivised reviews, in force from 6 April 2025, and the platform duties to take reasonable and proportionate steps, are set out in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 and the CMA’s fake reviews guidance (CMA208), published April 2025. The maximum penalties of up to 10% of global turnover or £300,000 for businesses and up to £150,000 for individuals reflect the DMCC Act’s direct enforcement regime as summarised in published legal analysis. The five named investigations, and the specific concerns about Auto Trader and Feefo, Dignity, Just Eat and Pasta Evangelists, are drawn from the CMA announcement reported via ICPEN, dated 26 March 2026; the CMA states it has not concluded that consumer law has been broken in any of these cases. The figure that online reviews potentially influence around £23 billion of UK consumer spending a year, and that 89% of people use reviews when researching, are CMA and Which? figures. The decline in review trust since its 2016 peak, and growing consumer willingness to consider lower-rated businesses, reflect BrightLocal consumer review research. This report is general information, not legal advice. For a specific situation, check the current CMA guidance or seek professional advice.
Common questions
Are fake reviews illegal in the UK?
Yes. Since 6 April 2025 the DMCC Act 2024 bans writing or commissioning fake reviews and bans incentivised reviews where the incentive is concealed, including cash, discounts, freebies or event invites.
What is the penalty for fake or incentivised reviews?
Businesses can be fined up to 10% of global annual turnover or £300,000, whichever is higher, and individuals up to £150,000. In March 2026 the CMA opened investigations into five named businesses.
Can offering a discount for a review get me in trouble?
Yes, if the incentive is concealed. Offering a discount for a five-star rating is exactly the kind of incentivised review the law now targets. Ask every genuine customer instead, and reply to negative reviews.
