- The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 introduces new rules against fake reviews, requiring businesses to take reasonable preventative measures such as working with a verified reviews partner, and implement detection systems to ensure only genuine review content is displayed, by April 2025.
- Businesses must demonstrate that reviews are authentic representations of customer experience, with non-compliance potentially resulting in fines up to 10% of global annual turnover or £300,000, and individuals facing fines up to £150,000.
- Feefo customers are already compliant due to the platform's purchaser-verified model and moderation technology, though Feefo will make minor cosmetic changes to widgets in April 2025 to highlight ratings more clearly.
Recent legislation under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCC Act) has introduced new rules and guidelines to help protect consumer rights online.
These target existing practices such as auto-renewing subscription offerings, secondary ticketing and unfair commercial practices.
This covers two main issues: drip-pricing (adding further costs during checkout process) and fake consumer reviews. It empowers the CMA to take action against non-compliant companies.
This rule comes into effect in April 2025.
How to be DMCC ready
Here, we explore what you need to understand to stay compliant if your business collects, displays, or manages reviews.
Feefo customers do not need to worry.
What's prohibited
First, let’s look at the specific practices forbidden by the new law.
- Fake Reviews. Any reviews that aren't based on genuine customer experience are now banned.
- Hidden Incentives. Reviews that don't disclose incentives (payments, free products, discounts) are prohibited.
- Misleading Presentation. You can't present reviews in ways that mislead consumers, such as highlighting only positive reviews or suppressing negative ones.
- Facilitation Services. Offering services to create or publish fake reviews for other businesses is now prohibited.
What do I have to do to comply with the DMCC act?
What does this mean? Any business that displays reviews and feedback on their site now has specific obligations:
- Take Preventative Measures. You must implement "reasonable and proportionate steps" to prevent fake or misleading reviews from appearing on your platforms. (See below)
- Have Clear Policies. Your business needs documented policies prohibiting fake reviews and explaining how incentivised reviews are handled.
- Conduct Risk Assessments. Regularly evaluate the risk of fake reviews appearing on your website and other channels.
- Implement Detection Systems. You need processes to detect, investigate, and respond to fake or misleading reviews.
- Take Action. If problematic reviews are discovered, you must act to prevent consumers from being misled.
What "Reasonable Steps" actually means
What counts as "reasonable and proportionate steps" depends on your specific business. Factors include:
- Your business model and size
- The functionality of your platform
- The type of content shown to consumers
- The potential impact of fake reviews in your industry
While expectations may be lower for small businesses than for large platforms, all businesses must demonstrate meaningful efforts to comply.
In essence, you need to demonstrate that the reviews you collect are honest and accurate representations of the product or service they apply to.
Using a reviews provider such as Feefo, who only ask verified purchasers for feedback, makes compliance easy. With this model, you can be assured that all the review content received and displayed is authentic. Our moderation and fraud detection are core to what we do, and our zero tolerance for fake reviews has been a key part of the platform since inception.
Other providers will have their own policies for mitigating fake or misleading reviews.
Where these rules apply
These regulations apply across all your business "platforms," including:
- Your website and mobile apps
- Social media channels
- Online marketplaces where you list products
- Physical locations and advertising materials
- Email campaigns and other communication channels
What happens if I don’t comply with the DMCC Act?
While displaying fake reviews isn't classified as a criminal offense, it can result in:
- Civil enforcement action
- Potential prosecution for related unfair commercial practices
- Penalties that include fines and, in severe cases, imprisonment (up to two years)
Prosecutions must commence within three years of the offense or one year of its discovery by prosecutors, whichever comes first.
The CMA may impose turnover-based fines on companies for procedural breaches (such as breaching undertakings, directions, or court orders, or refusing to cooperate with investigations).
Fines levied can be £300,000 or up to 10% of global annual turnover, while individuals may face fines of up to £150,000 for procedural breaches in consumer law investigations.
I’m a Feefo customer. What changes do I need to make?
If Feefo is your only reviews platform, you do not need to change anything.
Our purchaser-verified model and sophisticated moderation technology (with human backup) means that fake or misleading reviews are unlikely to have got anywhere near your website.
You are using a provider that has combated fake reviews since 2007.
We already:
- Apply fair and consistent content moderation standards which prevent questionable reviews from being published
- Have fraud detection mechanisms in place which identify and remove fake reviews which, in some cases result in account closure
- Automatically update total counts and ratings if reviews are removed
What if I display feedback from multiple providers?
If you are using Feefo alongside another provider, it is worth speaking to them to understand their fake review detection and removal process.
Ask them:
- What measures they put in place to detect fake reviews
- What the process is to have false or misleading feedback removed
- What happens to the overall star rating
- How do they label influenced reviews
Remember – the onus is on you to ensure the reviews displayed are accurate, genuine and not misleading. Using a purchaser-verified partner can take this worry away.
How is Feefo affected?
We will continue to provide a platform that you can trust to collect only authentic feedback based on genuine experiences.
Feefo have zero tolerance for fake reviews and always have. We welcome the new CMA powers to ensure an honest landscape for consumers.
Read more about our compliance procedure here.
Will Feefo be making any changes?
We are making some small changes to our widgets to more clearly highlight star ratings, the number of reviews that form the average rating, the review source and if it’s incentivised.
These are purely cosmetic and will enhance our current display, ensuring customers can continue to trust the feedback on your site.
These changes will be implemented during April 2025.
I have more questions
We’d be delighted to answer any further questions you have. Please contact compliance@feefo.com, your customer success contact or your sales rep.
Feefo have championed genuine, authentic customer feedback since inception; we are delighted that there will be greater consumer protections in place. Feefo customers can rest assured that they are doing everything possible to comply with the new ruling where it pertains to fake reviews.
Further reading
CMA Unfair commercial practices guidance page
Google’s response to the CMA ruling
