Collecting reviews without breaking the rules

Asking a customer for a review is allowed and usually works, paying for a specific rating or promising a reward only for a positive text is not, because that turns a review from a personal opinion into paid advertising with no disclosure.

A discount or a small gift for the plain fact of leaving a review, regardless of its content or rating, is usually permitted, but that practice has to be disclosed directly next to the reviews on the website, or visitors will read a motivated review as fully independent.

Asking only visibly satisfied customers for a review and skipping the rest creates a systematic skew that, in spirit, matches the unfair-practice rules against manipulating a review showcase, even when each individual review is true.

A website that shows reviews has to disclose whether and how it checks their authenticity, a simple line such as reviews from real customers is enough as long as the company actually applies some check rather than just copying someone else's phrase.

The moment right after a job is successfully finished usually delivers more willingness to write a review than an email two weeks later, once the impression has faded and the service has turned into an ordinary memory.

A specific, non-pushy wording works better than a generic ask, a direct question about how the collaboration went, for instance, rather than tell us about your experience, which reads like homework.

A reply to a negative review should stay factual, without excuses and without arguing in the comments, briefly acknowledge a real problem and offer a resolution outside the public feed, since future customers read the tone of the reply more often than the review itself.

A review that looks fabricated, an overly generic text with no order details, an account with no history, or timing that coincides with a wave of similar reviews at a competitor, can and should be disputed through the platform itself with concrete evidence, rather than simply removed on your own side where that is even possible.

This text explains the legal requirements and does not replace legal advice. Assessing a specific review-collection practice depends on its wording and the details of the case.