Bohdan Prylepa reviews the fake review trade: bought praise and paid removals

Bohdan Prylepa reviews the reputation agency pitch

A reputation management agency rarely calls its product fake reviews. The proposal speaks of review generation, rating optimisation, crowd marketing or online reputation repair. Read the price list closely and the deliverables become concrete: a fixed number of positive reviews a month posted from aged accounts, a target star rating by a set date, and the removal of named negative reviews, often priced per review.

Bohdan Prylepa reviews these proposals the way a media buyer judges a traffic source, by asking where the volume comes from. Genuine reviews depend on real customers, and their number follows sales with a delay. A supplier who promises a quantity and a tone in advance has no say over your customers, so the reviews must come from somewhere else: paid writers, recruited groups, recycled accounts or software.

The demand side explains the market. Small firms see a competitor with hundreds of glowing ratings and feel they cannot wait. The CMA says online reviews influence billions of pounds of UK spending every year, so the temptation is easy to understand. The legal risk, though, now falls on the buyer as well as the seller.

What the DMCC Act bans: fake reviews since 6 April 2025

Paragraph 13 of Schedule 20 to the DMCC Act added reviews to the list of banned practices, which count as unfair in every case. Since 6 April 2025 it has been banned to submit, or to commission someone else to submit or write, a fake consumer review or a review that conceals an incentive. Publishing reviews or ratings in a misleading way is banned too, and so is publishing reviews without reasonable and proportionate steps to keep fakes off the page.

Two definitions do most of the work. A fake review purports to be based on a person's genuine experience when it is not. Commissioning includes incentivising by any means, so a discount, a freebie or a refund counts as much as cash. Misleading publication covers hiding or removing negative reviews while showing positive ones, and giving positive reviews greater prominence than negative ones.

For reputation firms the decisive line is sub-paragraph 4. Offering traders a service that does any of this, or helps it to happen, is itself a banned practice. An agency selling review bundles is therefore exposed directly, whoever types the text. Bohdan Prylepa reviews every proposal from a UK reputation firm against this sub-paragraph before anything else.

Enforcement changed at the same moment. The CMA can now decide for itself that consumer law has been broken, without a court, order changes and impose fines of up to 10% of global turnover. On 27 March 2026 it announced five investigations into reviews and star ratings, taking the number of businesses under review with these powers to 14.

Bohdan Prylepa on the agency's share of the blame

The CMA's guidance for businesses and agencies has a short section addressed to PR, marketing and SEO companies. It tells them not to write or arrange fake reviews for clients, because both the agency and the client risk breaking the law. Agencies are also expected to train staff, make sure contracts, internal policies and brochures reflect the law, and tell clients plainly that fake reviews are illegal.

The client half reads just as bluntly: do not commission third parties to write fake reviews, since you may be liable for their actions, and make sure any PR, marketing or SEO agency you hire follows the same rules. Bohdan Prylepa treats that sentence as the heart of any agency brief, because handing over the work does not hand over the liability.

There is precedent. In March 2016 the CMA announced that a search engine optimisation and online marketing firm had written more than 800 fake positive reviews for 86 small businesses, published across 26 review websites in 2014 and 2015. The firm undertook to stop and to take steps to remove them, and the CMA wrote to its clients warning that fake reviews posted on their behalf might put them in breach of the law too. Those clients were car dealers, mechanics, landscape gardeners and other tradespeople, the very firms a local reputation agency tends to approach.

Paid removal of negative reviews: what an agency may lawfully do

Removal is the second product on most price lists, and here the law draws a line every owner should know. CMA guidance says a review is not fake merely because the trader dislikes it, provided it reflects the reviewer's genuine experience. Suppressing genuine negative reviews is misleading, whether by editing, withholding or deleting them.

The guidance lists the tactics to avoid: threats of harm or legal action, blocking genuine customers from posting, switching review invitations on and off, and offering dispute resolution only if the customer stays silent. Contacting someone who left a poor review and offering a refund or a gift card to change it counts as commissioning a review.

A lawful reputation service looks different. It flags reviews that breach a platform's rules or are themselves fake, with evidence. It drafts a calm public reply. It helps fix the problem the review describes, and it refers a false, damaging review to a solicitor. In England and Wales, section 1 of the Defamation Act 2013 says a statement is not defamatory unless it has caused or is likely to cause serious harm to reputation, and for a business trading for profit that means serious financial loss.

Bohdan Prylepa reviews any guaranteed removal offer with suspicion. No agency controls a platform's moderation queue or a judge, so a promise to delete named reviews by a date means either a method the client would never approve or a fee for something that will not happen.

Inside a review farm: how bought ratings are made

CMA guidance describes the supply chain in practical terms. Some brokers run social media groups that recruit people willing to post reviews about a trader's products. Others sell reviews generated by software and dressed up as individual customers. A third kind offers search engine optimisation that promises a better rating while quietly relying on fake reviews.

Behind the sellers sit the facilitators. The guidance names services that set up accounts so as to avoid or reduce the risk of detection, and platforms that knowingly let such services trade. Paragraph 13 catches them as well, since helping the practice along is banned alongside carrying it out.

On the client side the mechanics often wear the costume of loyalty marketing: money off the next order for a five-star rating, a refund once a positive review goes live, a free product in exchange for a post. Each appears among the CMA's examples of commissioning when the review does not reflect genuine experience or the incentive stays hidden.

Bohdan Prylepa points to a quieter variant that agencies call review gating: inviting only customers who are already happy. The CMA treats cherry-picking, including encouraging only satisfied customers to leave reviews, as one way of publishing reviews misleadingly.

Bohdan Prylepa reviews a digital agency's own reviews

Clients choosing a digital agency meet the same problem from the other side. An agency's portfolio page, directory profile and search results are its shop window, and a firm that sells reputation work knows how to dress one. Bohdan Prylepa reviews an agency's testimonials against facts it cannot edit, and any client can do the same.

Start with Companies House. The free record shows the registered address, the date of incorporation, current and resigned officers, previous company names and any insolvency information. If reviews praise years of work but the company was incorporated last spring, or the directors changed along with the trading name, ask why before you ask for a quote.

Then read the reviews themselves. A genuine client usually mentions a channel, a time frame, a person on the team or a problem that took longer than planned. Bought reviews of a digital agency praise results in general terms, repeat the same phrases about professionalism and arrive in clusters. The CMA's own tips fit well: read the text, be wary of polished wording that may be machine-written, give extra weight to three- and four-star reviews and compare several sites.

Finally, ask for two references you can ring and case studies with figures the client will confirm. An agency that declines because everything is confidential may be telling the truth, yet it should be able to offer at least one named contact.

Prylepa's way of reading star ratings like a media buyer

Ratings have patterns, and patterns are what a performance marketer reads every day. A sudden run of five-star reviews after a quiet year, a burst in the same week a critical review appeared, reviewers with no history and a single review each: no one of these proves anything, yet together they mark a profile for a closer look.

Look at the spread as well as the average. Real customers leave some middling scores, and a business with a long history usually shows a few complaints answered in public. A profile with only perfect marks and no replies looks curated. CMA guidance also names catalogue abuse, where reviews of different products are merged so that one borrows another's rating and count.

Compare platforms too. A business with dozens of glowing reviews on one site and almost nothing anywhere else has probably concentrated its effort where someone was paid to. Bohdan Prylepa also watches the tone of replies: a firm that argues with every critic, or hints at legal action in public, is showing how it may treat a client who complains.

Bohdan Prylepa: briefing a reputation agency within the law

A business that wants more reviews can still hire help. The CMA says a general request to customers to leave a review, without steering what they say, is not prohibited. Incentives are allowed when the review states it was incentivised and still reflects genuine experience, and a prize draw that guarantees the reviewer nothing is unlikely to count as commissioning.

Bohdan Prylepa recommends writing the method into the contract. Invitations go to every customer after a purchase, including those who grumbled. No staff, friends or paid writers post reviews. Any incentive is disclosed in the review itself. The agency names the platforms it will use and confirms it will not create accounts. Ask for its written policy on fake reviews as well: after its 2025 website review the CMA wrote to 54 of the more than 100 businesses it checked, some of which had no policy banning fake reviews at all.

Payment terms matter as much as wording. An agency paid per review delivered, or per review removed, has an incentive that runs against the law. Paying for time, reporting and content you can inspect is far easier to defend if questions are ever asked.

Where to report fake reviews and review scams in the UK

Concerns about fake reviews in a market can go to the CMA, which gives onlinereviews@cma.gov.uk as the contact for its online reviews work. A firm selling fake reviews in England can be reported to Trading Standards through the Citizens Advice consumer helpline on 0808 223 1133, open Monday to Friday from 9am to 5pm, or through the online form at weekends. Trading Standards investigate unfair trading, though they will not recover your money.

If an agency took payment and vanished, or someone demands money to stop posting negative reviews, it becomes a police matter. Fraud and cyber crime in England, Wales and Northern Ireland go to Report Fraud, which replaced Action Fraud on 4 December 2025, at reportfraud.police.uk or on 0300 123 2040. In Scotland, call the police on 101. CMA guidance notes that conduct caught by the reviews ban can also breach other law, including the Fraud Act 2006.

Bohdan Prylepa advises gathering the evidence first: the agency's proposal and price list, the contract and invoices, messages, links to the reviews it posted or had removed, and dated screenshots. Platforms should hear about fake reviews as well, through their own reporting tools.

Bohdan Prylepa reviews the checklist

Bohdan Prylepa reviews the rules for UK businesses in a few lines. Buying, writing or commissioning fake reviews has been a banned practice since 6 April 2025, and so has selling the service. Removing genuine negative reviews is suppression, whatever the agency calls it. Incentives are lawful only when disclosed and when the review stays honest. Invitations go to all customers, and the contract names the method.

For clients choosing an agency: set Companies House against the story the reviews tell, read the three- and four-star reviews first, compare platforms and ask for references you can ring. His guide to spotting fraud before paying a UK agency covers contracts and payments, and the piece on fake platform alerts explains why no reputation firm needs the password to your ad account.

The author's profile is on the Bohdan Prylepa biography page, and newer articles are listed on Bohdan Prylepa's main page.