Under the Competition and Markets Authority it is illegal for a company to pay for or incentivise positive reviews and/or pay for fake reviews.
To be clear, you can offer an incentive for reviews but this must be offered to all reviews regardless of scores, and not be linked to only positive reviews.
As a review platform HomeViews must take steps to verify reviews to ensure there are no fake reviews, and publish all reviews (not just positive reviews) that meet our criteria. HomeViews is only useful to consumers and the industry if everyone can trust our content and it is something we take very seriously.
The following activities are both unacceptable and illegal:
- Staff writing fake resident reviews using the names and flat numbers of their residents hoping we will verify.
- Offering an incentive to residents to write a positive review.
We verify reviews based on a resident's name and flat number and check they live in the development through a third party data provider, ID3. We ensure there are no duplicated email addresses and will look at IP addresses.
We have started introducing randomised spot checking of reviews asking for additional information from the reviewer. This includes asking them if the company that owns or operates their development have offered an incentive for a positive review.
If we find any evidence of fake reviews we will have to undertake a full audit of reviews for that development to ensure no fake reviews are being submitted, any area rankings and awards may be revised.
We know that the vast majority of our partners are working with HomeViews because they want to genuinely understand the opinions of their residents and to protect everyone we are taking these measures.
Please ensure your team are incentivised on the number of resident reviews collected and not the score they are receiving - transparency and honest feedback to improve product and service is crucial for your business and ours.