Asking for reviews the legal way: UK rules on gating and incentives

What changed in April 2025

The DMCC Act added fake and misleading consumer reviews to the schedule of practices that are banned outright in UK consumer law. The provisions took effect in April 2025, with the CMA publishing its guidance (reference CMA208) on 4 April. Because the practices sit on the banned list, the CMA does not have to prove that a particular review changed anyone's buying decision. The practice itself is the offence.

The CMA also gained the power to decide breaches and impose fines itself rather than going to court, with maximum penalties of up to 10 per cent of a business's annual global turnover. It allowed a three-month adjustment period, April to June 2025, before enforcement began. In July 2025 it reported that a sweep of more than 100 businesses' websites found 54 that might be falling short of its guidance, and said it was writing to them.

What is banned

• Fake reviews: any review that claims to be based on a genuine experience and is not. Writing your own, having a mate write one, buying them.
• Concealed incentivised reviews: a review where the customer was given money, a discount, a free product or similar and that fact is hidden.
• Publishing reviews in a misleading way: which the CMA guidance says can include suppressing negative reviews, highlighting positive ones that do not reflect the overall experience, or encouraging only satisfied customers to leave reviews.
• Offering or facilitating any of the above, including through someone acting on your behalf.

Can I still ask for reviews? Yes

The guidance is explicit that asking customers generally whether they would like to leave a review, without predetermining what they say or how positive it should be, is not prohibited. A text after the job with a link to your Google profile is fine. A card on the worktop is fine. Asking in person is fine.

What matters is that the invitation goes to customers regardless of how you think the job went. The CMA describes cherry-picking as including "encouraging just those who are satisfied to leave reviews". A trade that asks the happy customers and quietly skips the awkward ones is doing exactly that. The safe habit is simple: ask everyone, in the same way, at the same point. Our piece on why review velocity matters more than review count argues that this is also what works best.

Review gating: the practice that is now a problem

Review gating is the technique, often built into review software, of asking the customer how they felt first, and sending only the happy ones to the public review site while routing the unhappy ones to a private feedback form. For years it was sold as reputation management. Under the CMA's reading of the new law it is a form of cherry-picking, and Google's own review policies have long prohibited it as well.

If your review tool or your process does this, change it. Every customer should get the same link to the same public review page. You can still ask for private feedback separately, as long as the public invitation is not conditional on the answer.

Incentives: allowed if disclosed, and only where the platform permits

The guidance says traders are free to incentivise reviews, provided the customer is told and the review is clearly identified as incentivised, usually by a prominent label, and provided the review still reflects their genuine experience. An incentive must never be tied to a particular rating. Offering a refund if a customer changes a negative review is given as an example of prohibited conduct.

There is a second gate, though. Many review platforms do not allow incentivised reviews at all, and the guidance notes that submitting one where the platform's rules forbid it is likely to be misleading. Google's review policies fall into this category. So for the platform most trades care about, the practical rule is: no incentives, full stop. A prize draw for "everyone who leaves us a review this month" on Google is a breach of Google's rules and a risk under the Act.

Negative reviews: what you cannot do

The guidance says traders should not interfere with a customer's ability or willingness to leave a negative review. Examples it gives include threats of legal action, preventing genuine customers from reviewing, and making the resolution of a complaint conditional on the customer not leaving a negative review.

That last one catches a common trade habit: "I will come back and sort the leak if you take the review down." Fix the leak because it is your job, respond to the review publicly and calmly, and let the record stand. A measured reply to a fair complaint does more for the next homeowner's trust than the complaint does harm, a point made in what homeowners actually check before they ring a tradesperson.

What about reviews on your own website?

If you display reviews or testimonials on your own site, the same rules apply to how you present them. Showing only the five-star ones while hiding a genuine two-star review you received through the same channel is selective publication. The simplest approach is to embed or link to the platform where the full set lives, so the homeowner can see everything.

Testimonials collected directly, by asking a customer for a quote to use, are fine as long as they are genuine and you do not present them as if they were an independent review score. The same honesty applies to the photos beside them, as set out in using job photos in marketing: permissions, privacy and the neighbours.

A compliant review process for a trade

• Ask every customer, at the same point (invoice or day after completion), with the same message and link.
• No incentives for Google reviews. If you ever incentivise elsewhere, disclose it and check the platform allows it.
• No gating. Private feedback can be asked for separately, never as a filter before the public ask.
• Never make a fix or a refund conditional on a review being changed or removed.
• Reply to negative reviews factually. Do not threaten.
• Keep records of your process. If the CMA or a platform ever asks, you can show what you do.

Will the CMA come after a sole trader?

Its early attention has been on larger businesses and the platforms that publish reviews. But the rules apply to every trader, the platforms are tightening their own enforcement in response, and a competitor or a customer can report you. More to the point, the compliant process above is also the one that produces the steadiest flow of genuine reviews. There is no trade-off here. Asking everyone, honestly, is both the legal route and the effective one.

Frequently asked questions