Is writing your own product reviews legal or against policy?

[stefan25]

Hello,

I have recently installed the Judge.me Product Reviews App from the Shopify App Store and I noticed it gives my the possibility to add reviews on my own and I have read mixed opinions about this. Is it against any policy or is it legal to do?

Of course, I would not call this ,,fake review" because the products I have imported are all highly appreciated on Aliexpress and I would rely on writing something about the quality of the products, not some fake reviews about my store or anything.  This would get my store to sell much faster hence I'd really want this to work.

Any validated opinions about this?

Thanks a lot in advance.

[cristian_dev · Accepted solution]

Hi Stefan,

Reviewing your own store is usually against the Terms of Service of all large review platforms: Trustpilot, reviews.io, etc. because you are obviously not going to post a genuine review of your own store.

TrustPilot goes as far as not allowing brands give discounts to incentivise reviews.

Also, in the grand scheme of things, your 1 extra review will not make much of a difference once your customers will start giving reviews on your store 🙂

Something you can work on is improving your email template sent to customers to ask for a review, which will increase the number of reviews you get.

Don't forget, reviews are meant to build trust with customers and if a prospect customer would think you are manipulating your reviews, that will probably have the exact opposite effect.

Hope my reply helps.