Fake reviews: You could be fined even if innocent

If your business publishes customer reviews, you now have a legal duty to prevent the posting of fake or misleading reviews. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has moved from guidance to active enforcement on fake reviews, and its first wave of investigations spans funerals, food delivery and car sales.

Even if you are unaware that other people have posted fake reviews about your business, you could be liable. This article explains the new law and how to comply with it.

What counts as a fake review?

Since 6 April 2025, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCCA) has banned fake consumer reviews and the practices that encourage them, alongside misleading use of review information generally.

The CMA has given examples of practices it is concerned about:

• posting or commissioning reviews from people who have not used the product or service
• employees or connected parties writing reviews without disclosing the connection
• offering discounts, freebies or payment in exchange for a positive review, without making that incentive clear
• moderating out negative reviews before they reach a public rating, so the displayed score looks better than the underlying feedback
• excluding certain reviews from a collated star rating without disclosing that this has happened

Any business that hosts or publishes consumer reviews is expected to take reasonable steps to prevent, detect and remove fake reviews. Guidance published by the CMA in April 2025 sets out what “reasonable and proportionate steps” looks like in practice, and expectations scale with the size and risk profile of the platform.

Why the CMA is taking this so seriously

The CMA sees fake reviews as undermining the basic reliability of online choice. Reviews and star ratings often act as a proxy for quality, especially where consumers cannot easily assess a product or service before purchase. If that information is manipulated or incomplete, consumers may make worse decisions and honest competitors lose out.

Having published its guidance in April 2025 and allowed a three-month grace period, the CMA carried out an online sweep of review platforms, and has since moved into formal investigations.

The CMA gained direct enforcement powers under the DMCCA, meaning it can investigate and fine businesses for breaches without going to court, for an amount up to £300,000 or 10% of a trader’s annual worldwide turnover, whichever is higher. It can also issue infringement notices, order changes to business practices and require consumer redress.

Recent CMA enforcement action

So far, the CMA focussed on enforcing it’s price dipping laws. It opened investigations into 14 businesses, ordered more than £1.3 million in consumer refunds, imposed fines approaching £6 million, issued 157 advisory and warning letters and sent 46 information notices.

Now, the CMA has moved to addressing fake reviews.

Following its July 2025 sweep of more than 100 businesses in relation to online review practices, the CMA found that over half lacked an adequate fake reviews policy, and began writing to more than 50 companies whose websites showed potential non-compliance.

In March 2026, the CMA opened investigations into five businesses over fake or misleading reviews:

• Just Eat, over whether its ratings system inflated certain restaurants’ and grocers’ star ratings;
• Autotrader and Feefo, over whether negative reviews were excluded from Autotrader’s platform and star ratings;
• Dignity, over whether staff were asked to write positive reviews of its crematoria services; and
• Pasta Evangelists, over whether customers were offered undisclosed discounts in exchange for five-star reviews.

You could be innocent but liable

Even if your business has not posted or commissioned fake reviews itself, it may still be held responsible if it fails to take reasonable and proportionate steps to prevent, detect and remove fake or misleading content. A fake review posted by a third party, without your knowledge or involvement, may therefore still create risk if you cannot show that you have taken steps to prevent, detect and remove such fake reviews. The kind of measures the CMA is expecting include a published policy, a risk assessment, active monitoring or detection tooling and a process for investigating and acting on flagged reviews.

What businesses should do now

• Publish a clear, accessible policy on your website that bans fake and misleading reviews and explains how incentivised reviews are handled and disclosed, plus an escalation and removal channel for suspicious reviews
• Check whether any reviews are being filtered, moderated or excluded from a published score, and make sure that practice is transparent rather than concealed
• Review how staff, contractors and connected parties are asked or encouraged to leave reviews, and put disclosure requirements in place
• Audit any incentives offered in exchange for reviews, such as discounts or free products, and confirm they are clearly labelled wherever the review appears
• Keep a record of your review policy, any changes made and the reasoning behind them, since the CMA has shown it takes compliance history into account when assessing penalties

Get in touch

If you would like us to review your reviews policy and practices against the CMA’s guidance, get in touch with our team today.