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Why this matters.
The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 introduced a new list of automatically unfair commercial practices in Schedule 20, which came into force on 6 April 2025. For the first time, UK law explicitly bans submitting or commissioning fake consumer reviews, and bans hosting reviews without taking reasonable steps to check they’re genuine and to prevent or remove fake ones. This applies to any business that publishes reviews on its own website, or relies on reviews on marketplaces, directories, or platforms like Google, Trustpilot, or Feefo.
Common practices that now carry real legal risk include asking staff, friends, or family to post positive reviews, only inviting customers likely to leave good feedback while excluding dissatisfied ones (“review gating”), offering undisclosed incentives for reviews, and suppressing or selectively deleting genuine negative feedback. The Competition and Markets Authority enforces these rules directly under its new powers from the same Act, without needing to go to court first, and can fine businesses up to 10% of global annual turnover for breaches of consumer protection law. Given how heavily UK consumers rely on reviews before buying, this is an area regulators are actively watching as awareness of the new rules spreads.
