How to ask for a customer review without breaking the fake reviews ban: the rules and an email template

A shop can still email every customer and ask for a review. What it cannot do, since 6 April 2025, is choose who gets asked, reward the answer without saying so, or tidy up what comes back. The rules sit in one paragraph of an Act and in guidance from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), and several of the habits they catch are ordinary settings in review apps.

Free tool

Customer feedback request email maker

Fill in the order, the delivery date and your public review link. The email asks every customer the same question, good or bad, and offers nothing in return.

Shop name Customer's first name Order number Date the order was deliveredThe date of the delivery scan. Link to the public review formThe form itself, not a score screen that sends low scores somewhere else. Your name

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• Send it to every delivered order on one trigger, such as a fixed number of days after the delivery scan, with nothing changed between customers.
• Do not leave out orders that had a complaint, a refund or a return.
• If you offer a discount or a free product for reviews, this wording is wrong for you: the incentive has to be disclosed, and many platforms do not allow it.
• Software may draft the request and your reply to a review. It must never write the review.

The rule this rests on: Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, Schedule 20 paragraph 13; CMA guidance CMA208, paragraph 3.6. A draft to check and adapt, not legal advice.

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The law in one paragraph

Paragraph 13 of Schedule 20 to the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 came into force on 6 April 2025. Three parts of it matter to a shop:

1. Submitting, or commissioning someone to write, a fake review or "a consumer review that conceals the fact it has been incentivised".
2. Publishing reviews "in a misleading way".
3. Publishing reviews without taking "reasonable and proportionate steps" to prevent and remove fake and concealed-incentive reviews.

A fake review is one that "purports to be, but is not, based on a person's genuine experience". Commissioning "includes incentivising by any means". Writing "includes creating by any means", which takes in text produced by software. Publishing in a misleading way includes "failing to publish, or removing from publication, negative consumer reviews whilst publishing positive ones" and "giving greater prominence to positive consumer reviews over negative ones". The CMA's short guide says a star rating is a review.

Nine common habits, checked

Paragraph numbers are from the CMA's guidance, CMA208.

Two rows need more than a cell.

The score screen. The guidance does not name it. It does say cherry-picking can be done "by encouraging just those who are satisfied to leave reviews", and that a business publishing reviews should not "try to persuade consumers to submit a complaint, rather than leave a review for publication". We read a screen that routes unhappy customers away from the public form as both. If your app has that setting, turn it off.

Incentives. Paragraph 3.7 says traders are free to offer discounts or free products for reviews, but must "tell consumers that the review has been incentivised", and the review "must still reflect the reviewer's genuine experience". Paragraph 3.5 says the review itself must be labelled prominently as incentivised. Paragraph 3.4 warns that many platforms do not allow incentivised reviews at all. We did not read the review rules of Etsy, eBay, Google or Trustpilot; check yours before offering anything.

The email

Send this to every delivered order, with nothing changed between customers.

Subject: How was your order from [shop name]?

Hello [first name],

Your order [number] was delivered on [date]. If you have a minute, we would like to know how it went, good or bad.

Leave a review here: [link]

Reviews are published as written. We do not offer anything in return for one.

If something is wrong with the order, reply to this email and we will put it right. You are welcome to leave a review as well, whatever the outcome.

[Name], [shop name]

"Good or bad" is there because paragraph 3.6 allows a request made "without predetermining the contents or sentiment". The complaint route sits beside the review link and does not replace it.

Five rules for sending it

1. Use one trigger for every order, such as a fixed number of days after the delivery scan. If the parcel has not arrived, the customer needs our where-is-my-order reply template first, and you may need the lost parcel claims guide.
2. Do not exclude orders that had a complaint, a refund or a return. The guidance lists "arbitrarily stopping and starting review invitations" among the ways of suppressing negative reviews.
3. Link straight to the public review form.
4. If software drafts your emails, it may write the request and the reply. It must never write the review.
5. Answer a bad review in public and fix the problem under your returns policy. Offer nothing in exchange for changing it.

If you show reviews on your own site

Then you are a publisher, and the third part of the law applies to you. The CMA's short guide says what is needed "depends on factors such as the source of the reviews, the volume of reviews you publish and the risk of fake reviews being contributed". It still expects a published policy that prohibits fake reviews, a risk assessment, and a way to detect and remove banned content. Using a review app does not move the duty: "you are still responsible for taking your own steps".

For a small shop the policy can be short. Use this only if each sentence is true of your shop:

Reviews on this site are written by customers who bought the product. We publish every genuine review, positive or negative, in date order. We do not write reviews, pay for them or reward them. If you think a review is fake, email [address]; we will investigate and remove it if it is.

Paragraph 8.10 says the policy should be easy to find, so link it beside the reviews.

What it costs to get wrong

The CMA's own press notice puts it plainly: if a company infringes consumer protection law, the CMA can fine it up to 10% of its global turnover. On 27 March 2026 it opened five investigations into reviews. One asks whether customers were offered undisclosed discounts for five-star reviews; another, whether staff were asked to write positive ones. The CMA has reached no conclusions. None of the five is a small shop, but the short guide says the law "applies to all traders who publish consumer reviews".

This is general information, not legal advice. The law and guidance are as published on the dates shown.