The Competition and Markets Authority has opened five new investigations into fake and misleading online reviews, including cases involving Just Eat, Autotrader, Feefo, Dignity and Pasta Evangelists. On the surface that looks like a story about big brands and major platforms. In practice, it is also a warning to smaller firms that rely on reviews to win trust online.
If you run a restaurant, shop, salon, trade business, local service firm or small online seller, this matters. Reviews help people decide where to spend, especially when budgets are tight. But the CMA is making it clear that the problem is not only made-up reviews. It is also looking at how ratings are collected, moderated and presented.
What has happened
According to the CMA, the new cases cover several different risks in the reviews chain. Autotrader and Feefo are being investigated over whether some 1-star reviews were not published or counted towards star ratings. Just Eat is being investigated over whether certain restaurant and grocer star ratings were inflated. Dignity is being investigated over whether staff were asked to write positive reviews, while Pasta Evangelists is being examined over discounts allegedly offered in exchange for 5-star reviews without that being clearly disclosed.
The important detail is that the CMA has not yet decided that consumer law has been broken in any of these cases. These are investigations, not final rulings. But they still matter because they show exactly where regulators are now looking: fake reviews, hidden negative reviews, misleading star averages and undisclosed incentives.
The legal backdrop has changed too. The CMA says several online-review practices became banned practices under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act in April 2025. That includes fake reviews and paid-for reviews that are not clearly marked as incentivised. The watchdog can also use its newer consumer powers without first going through the courts, and says firms can face fines of up to 10% of global turnover if an infringement is found.
Why smaller firms should care
Many SMEs assume this is mainly a platform problem. It is not. A small business can create risk for itself through a badly worded review request, an over-helpful staff member, a marketing agency using the wrong tactic, or a website setup that hides poor feedback from the average score. For businesses already trading in a cautious market, trust matters even more when customer confidence is fragile and demand feels softer. We touched on that broader pressure in our piece on why weak UK growth still matters for small firms.
There is a cashflow angle as well. Smaller firms often depend on repeat custom, referrals and conversion rates that larger competitors can afford to lose for longer. If your review process starts to look manipulated, the damage is not only legal. It can mean fewer enquiries, more refunds, harder sales and extra friction at a time when many businesses are already juggling tight working capital and delayed payments. That is why reputation systems now sit alongside wider operational discipline, including the kind of cashflow protection we discussed in our recent piece on late-payment pressure on UK SMEs.
What to check this week
First, make a list of every place your business collects or displays reviews. That could include Google, Facebook, Trustpilot, your own website, booking tools, delivery apps and marketplaces. If you cannot explain how the star score is produced on each platform, you are flying blind.
Second, review the wording in your follow-up emails, QR cards, SMS prompts and staff scripts. Asking for honest feedback is one thing. Nudging people towards only positive responses, filtering unhappy customers away from public reviews, or promising a reward for a 5-star rating is where the risk starts to build.
Third, check any agency, web partner or software tool that manages reviews for you. Ask directly whether negative reviews are ever suppressed, delayed, excluded from averages or handled differently from positive ones. If incentives are offered for feedback, make sure the disclosure is clear and the platform itself allows that approach.
Finally, give staff a simple rule: no fake reviews, no asking friends or colleagues to pad ratings, no editing customer comments, and no treating the public score as something to game. A balanced review profile may feel less flattering than a wall of 5-star praise, but it usually looks more believable to customers anyway.
The practical takeaway
The CMA’s fake-reviews crackdown is not just about catching obvious fraud. It is about the whole system around reviews, from how they are gathered to how they appear on screen. For smaller firms, the safest approach is also the most sustainable one: ask for genuine feedback, show a fair picture, disclose incentives clearly if they exist, and fix the service problem rather than trying to bury the evidence.
That may not feel as urgent as wages, energy or tax. But for a lot of small businesses, trust is one of the few advantages they can build without spending heavily. This week’s investigations are a reminder that trust has to be earned honestly, and shown honestly too.
Sources
- CMA press release, Fake and misleading reviews: 5 businesses under CMA investigation, published 27 March 2026
- BBC News, Just Eat and Autotrader among firms investigated in fake reviews probe, published 27 March 2026
- CMA case page, Just Eat: consumer protection enforcement case, published 27 March 2026
- CMA case page, Autotrader: consumer protection enforcement case, published 27 March 2026
