Review request texts and the DMCC Act 2024

"Offering an existing customer a free or discounted product in exchange for a five-star review." That's the first example the Competition and Markets Authority gives, in guidance it published on 4 April 2025, of commissioning a fake review. Two days later, on 6 April, commissioning a fake review joined the UK's list of commercial practices that are unfair in all circumstances. If a "£5 off for a 5-star review" text is sitting in your drafts, don't send it yet.

The law is paragraph 13 of Schedule 20 to the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. It's short, most of it is aimed at the platforms that publish reviews, and one part is aimed squarely at the business that asks for them. That's the part a review request text has to get right.

What the Act bans

Schedule 20 is titled "Commercial practices which are in all circumstances considered unfair". Paragraph 13(1) bans "submitting, or commissioning another person to submit or write" either "a fake consumer review" or "a consumer review that conceals the fact it has been incentivised". Paragraph 13(2) bans "publishing consumer reviews, or consumer review information, in a misleading way", and 13(3) bans publishing them "without taking such reasonable and proportionate steps as are necessary" to keep fake and concealed-incentive reviews out. Paragraph 13(4) catches anyone selling those services to traders.

The definitions in 13(5) do the real work. A fake review is one "that purports to be, but is not, based on a person's genuine experience". A review "conceals the fact it has been incentivised" if "a person has been commissioned to submit or write the review" and "that fact is not made apparent". And then the line that matters for anyone running a loyalty scheme: "commissioning" includes "incentivising by any means". A voucher is commissioning. So is a free pudding.

Paragraph 13(5)(i) also spells out what "publishing in a misleading way" includes: "failing to publish, or removing from publication, negative consumer reviews whilst publishing positive ones", "giving greater prominence to positive consumer reviews over negative ones", and "omitting information that is relevant to the circumstances in which a consumer review has been written (including that a person has been commissioned to write the review)".

All of this came into force on 6 April 2025 under regulation 2 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (Commencement No. 2) Regulations 2025, which switched on Chapter 1 of Part 4 of the Act (protection from unfair trading), Schedule 20 and, in the same regulation, Part 3 of the Act on enforcement of consumer protection law. Our post on the CAP Code and promotional texts covers the advertising rules that sit alongside this; the DMCC Act is consumer law, and the CMA enforces it.

Incentives are allowed, hidden ones are not

The CMA's guidance, reference CMA208, runs to 29 pages and is plainer than the Act. Paragraph 3.6 is the reassuring one: "Reviews that reflect a person's genuine experience of a product or service are allowed." It goes on: encouraging reviews "without predetermining the contents or sentiment expressed in the review, for example by merely emailing customers generally to ask if they wish to provide a review, is not prohibited under the banned practice". Swap "emailing" for "texting" and that's the whole of a plain review request.

Paragraph 3.7 deals with the voucher. "Traders may want to incentivise customers to leave a review for example by paying them, offering them future discounts or free products. Traders are free to do this but to comply with the law they must: (a) tell consumers that the review has been incentivised, and (b) the review must still reflect the reviewer's genuine experience." Paragraph 3.5 adds that where a platform allows incentivised reviews at all, the review "must be clearly identifiable as incentivised", usually by labelling it "prominently as incentivised, namely, as an advert", with a label that isn't ambiguous or hidden. And 3.4 notes that many platforms don't allow incentivised reviews, in which case "submitting an incentivised review is likely to be misleading" however well it's labelled.

The examples under "commissioning" in CMA208 read like a list of texts people send. Offering a free or discounted product for a five-star review. Asking a customer to review a free or discounted product "without making clear to the reviewer that they must clearly disclose the incentivisation". A social post "asking for five-star reviews in exchange for free products". And the one that catches well-meaning managers: "Contacting a customer who has left a negative review and offering them a refund and/or a gift card if they change their review to remove the negative commentary."

Asking only the happy customers

The second trap is quieter, and most businesses that fall into it think they're being sensible. Chapter 4 of CMA208 covers "suppressing and cherry-picking reviews", and paragraph 4.5 says it in one sentence: "Cherry picking positive reviews for publication over negative ones might be done either through suppressing negative reviews that have been submitted or by encouraging just those who are satisfied to leave reviews."

That second route is the "was everything OK? reply YES for a link" text. Ask the people who replied YES to review you, say nothing to the rest, and you've built a filter that only lets praise through. The CMA treats that as cherry picking, the same as deleting the bad ones.

Paragraph 4.4 lists what traders "should not" do to negative reviews, and one item is written for the campaign screen: "arbitrarily stopping and starting review invitations". The guidance also names "making an offer of dispute resolution contingent on a consumer not leaving a negative review", and "limit access to and/or the impact of negative reviews by editing, withholding or removing such reviews". A review programme that runs steadily, to every customer, and leaves what comes back alone is the shape the guidance points to.

Why the CMA cares this much about who gets asked comes down to how many people act on reviews. The figures it has are from 2015, from the report on its call for information published on 19 June that year. The survey it commissioned for that report found 54% of UK adults read online reviews, 61% of those under 55 and 42% of those 55 and over.

Across six sectors the CMA estimated "£23 billion a year of UK consumer spending is potentially influenced by online reviews", and the footnote breaks it down: £14.38 billion on travel and hotels, £3.93 billion on home improvements, £3.13 billion on electronic items, £1.01 billion on beauty and male grooming, £0.5 billion on CDs, DVDs and music and £0.36 billion on books. The report calls these "approximate estimates" built from "simplifying assumptions", so treat the total as an order of magnitude.

The same survey found between 76% and 80% of people who'd used reviews thought it "very likely" or "fairly likely" that the reviews were written by genuine consumers. That trust is the thing paragraph 13 exists to protect, and the 2015 press release already listed "negative reviews not being published" among the practices the CMA had heard about. It took ten years to make it a banned practice.

Is a review request a marketing text?

The DMCC Act says what a review may be. PECR says whether you may send the text asking for one, and the two answers depend on the same thing: the incentive.

The ICO defines direct marketing as "the communication (by whatever means) of advertising or marketing material which is directed to particular individuals". Its guidance on identifying direct marketing says service messages, sent "for administrative or customer services purposes", aren't marketing, and that "contacting people to conduct genuine market research is not direct marketing" either. A plain "how did we do?" after a visit sits close to that. The ICO's caveat is that a message which "actively promotes or encourages people to make use of a particular service, special offer, or upgrade" is likely to be direct marketing, and that a service message with marketing in it "will count as direct marketing" whatever its main purpose was.

Add "£5 off your next order" to the review request and you've added a special offer. The text is now marketing under PECR, so regulation 22 applies: the ICO's electronic mail guidance says you need either specific consent or the soft opt-in, which covers "an existing customer who bought (or negotiated to buy) a similar product or service from you in the past", provided you gave them "a clear chance to opt out" when you took their details and in every message since. Most review requests go to people who just bought something, so the soft opt-in usually fits. The opt-out line has to be there regardless, and our guide to UK SMS marketing rules has the rest.

Keep the plain ask plain, then. If there's no offer in it, it stays a service message and you can send it to anyone who's just been a customer. Put an offer in and it's a marketing text with two sets of rules on it.

How to ask by text

Ask everyone, on the same trigger. A review request that goes to every completed job, every checkout or every discharged appointment, at the same interval, is the opposite of cherry picking. Set it once and don't pause it because a bad week is coming.

Don't name the score. "Leave a review" is a request. "Leave a 5-star review" is commissioning a review whose sentiment you've predetermined, which is CMA208 paragraph 3.6 in reverse.

If you reward, say so in the text and ask the customer to say so in the review. Both conditions in paragraph 3.7 have to hold, and the second one (the review still has to be genuine) means the reward can't depend on what the review says.

Never go back to a negative reviewer with a gift card attached to an edit. Reply, fix the problem, offer the refund if one is due, and leave the review where it is.

Four samples, two to use and two to avoid. The plain request, which is a service message:

Crown Dental: thanks for coming in today. If you have a minute, a review helps other patients find us: crowndental.uk/review. Reply STOP to opt out

The rewarded request, which is a marketing text, so it needs the soft opt-in and it discloses the reward twice:

Bay Tree Deli: tell us how we did, good or bad, at baytree.co/review and show the review in store for a free coffee. Please mention the free coffee in your review. Reply STOP to opt out

And the two that breach paragraph 13:

Bay Tree Deli: loved your lunch? Leave us a 5-star review at baytree.co/review and get £5 off next time

Crown Dental: happy with your visit? Reply YES and we'll send you a link to review us

The first commissions a review with its sentiment fixed in advance and offers a reward that depends on it. The second is a filter: only the YES replies get asked, which is "encouraging just those who are satisfied to leave reviews" in the CMA's own words.

One practical point on timing. The CMA's guidance is about who you ask and what you ask for, and says nothing about when, so that part is yours. Sending the request the same day, while the visit is fresh, is usually what gets a reply, and a two-way inbox means the "the parking was a nightmare" replies land somewhere a person will read them. CaptiFi Connect's feedback and review request page shows the plain version set up as a scheduled send after a booking, with the STOP line on by default.

Paragraph 13 has been in force since 6 April 2025. The CMA's guidance was published two days before it, and its first example of commissioning a fake review is still a free or discounted product for five stars.