Buy Trustpilot Reviews or Earn Them?

Earn them. That answer used to be advice about long-term thinking. Since April 2025 it is also the law of the land: the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 bans buying fake reviews in the UK, and the Competition and Markets Authority can fine businesses up to £300,000 or 10% of worldwide turnover for it.

But let’s give the temptation its due, because if your rating has taken a beating, the frustration is real. Good work gets buried under old complaints. Competitors with worse service sit on shinier profiles. Buying reviews looks like levelling a tilted playing field.

Here is the honest comparison, and a system for the side that works.

What buying actually gets you

Purchased reviews are priced per review, so the offer looks cheap against the revenue a better rating might bring. Count the whole bill instead:

• Removal risk. Trustpilot runs fraud detection and has removed bought reviews in bulk. You pay for reviews that vanish.
• Platform flags. Trustpilot has placed consumer warning banners on business profiles it found manipulating reviews. The banner sits above every genuine review you own.
• Legal exposure. Commissioning fake reviews is a banned practice under the DMCC Act 2024. Enforcement is active, not theoretical.
• Customer suspicion. Profiles full of vague five-star reviews written in the same voice get noticed. Doubt on one review spreads to the rest.

And the quiet problem: bought reviews do the opposite of what you need. A real prospect scrolling your profile wants evidence of real experiences. Bought reviews are the absence of exactly that.

What earning gets you

Earned reviews are slower, and that is the only real disadvantage. Against it:

• They stay. A genuine review survives platform cleanups and keeps influencing buyers for years.
• They compound. Recent, steady reviews read as a living business, which is the signal both Trustpilot and Google surface.
• No exposure. Nothing to remove, nothing to explain to the CMA.
• They answer the questions buyers actually have, because they come from people who actually bought.

The system that earns reviews without begging

Earning reviews is a process, not a mood. Businesses that get steady reviews do five things consistently:

1. Ask at the moment of the result. Right after a delivery, a fix, a completed job. Not weeks later in a newsletter.
2. Make it take 30 seconds. A direct link or a QR code at the till. Every extra step in the process costs responses.
3. Follow up once. A single polite reminder converts a meaningful share of non-responders. Once. Not four times.
4. Reply to every review, including the unfair ones. Prospects read responses as a preview of how you handle problems. Our Google review management service runs this as a routine for clients who do not have the hours.
5. Keep the profile complete. Photos, current information, recent activity. A dead profile undermines fresh reviews.

None of these steps involves purchasing anything. All of them show up in the profile permanently.

If a low rating is what drove you here

Most businesses that look into buying reviews got there honestly: the rating dropped, fair or not, and the fix needed to be fast. The legal and permanent version of “fast” is removing the fake or damaging reviews rather than papering over them with purchased ones.

That is our core business. We assess which reviews breach platform guidelines, report them through the proper channels, and manage the process to completion through our negative review removal service. Combined with a genuine review pipeline, it fixes the rating without planting anything that can later be cut out from under you.

Frequently asked questions

Is it legal to buy Trustpilot reviews anywhere?

Laws differ by country, but the trend is one direction. The UK bans it outright under the DMCC Act 2024. Trustpilot’s own guidelines prohibit fake and incentivised reviews everywhere it operates, so even where a law does not reach, the reviews remain removable and the profile remains flaggable.

Can a business get in trouble for reviews an agency bought on its behalf?

Yes. The UK ban covers commissioning reviews, and regulators treat the business as responsible for reviews published on its behalf. If an agency purchased reviews for you, get a written account of what was bought and where, then start cleaning the profile.

How long does earning reviews take?

The first new reviews can land within days of a proper ask. Rebuilding a rating takes months of steady, genuine reviews plus the removal of fake ones holding it down. There is no legal shortcut. Removing fake negatives can lift a rating faster than adding new positives alone, though how much faster depends on how many fakes are dragging the score down and how quickly genuine reviews arrive.