In this article7 sections · 6 min
The thing that makes Trustpilot different
On most platforms a review is tied to some signal of a transaction. Trustpilot is deliberately open: a person can write about a company without having been asked to and without proving anything at the point of writing. That openness is the whole product, and Trustpilot defends it.
The consequence for a business is counter-intuitive. Because anyone can post, Trustpilot has built a documented route for challenging a review — and because the route exists and is documented, it expects you to use it properly. A flag that shows its proof is a case. A flag that says the review is unfair is noise, and a business that files a lot of noise gets noticed.
What Trustpilot will consider removing
The grounds are the ones every major platform recognizes, with one that carries more weight here than almost anywhere else.
- No genuine experiencethe reviewer has had no buying or service experience with the company. On an open platform this is the central ground, and Trustpilot asks the business to show it rather than assert it.
- Wrong companya review left on the wrong profile, which happens far more than people expect when two businesses share a name.
- Conflict of interestcompetitors, former employees, and anyone with a stake in the company’s reputation, in either direction.
- Harmful or illegal contentabuse, hate, threats, and anything unlawful.
- Personal informationnames of staff members, contact details, order numbers, anything identifying an individual.
- Promotional contenta review used to advertise something else.
- Off-topicnot about an experience with the company at all.
What it will not remove, and is unusually firm about
A genuine customer’s negative opinion stays. Trustpilot is blunter about this than most platforms, and it does not soften for large advertisers. A review can be intemperate, one-sided and commercially damaging and still be entirely within policy.
It also will not remove a review because the dispute was later resolved. Sorting out the customer’s problem is worth doing for its own sake and it often prompts the reviewer to update the review themselves — but that is the reviewer’s decision to make, not the platform’s, and asking Trustpilot to make it for them does not work.
The part that catches businesses out
Trustpilot polices companies, not just reviewers, and this is where firms get themselves into trouble without meaning to.
- Incentives are prohibited. Offering a discount, an entry into a prize draw or anything else in exchange for a review is a violation by the business.
- Selective inviting — sending invitations only to customers you expect to be happy — is treated as manipulation, not marketing. Invitations are supposed to go out to everybody or to nobody.
- Misusing the flagging system has consequences. Flagging genuine reviews in volume, in the hope that some are removed by attrition, is the fastest route to a compliance review of your own profile.
- Buying reviews attracts the most serious response available, up to a publicly visible warning on the profile itself.
That last point deserves emphasis because it is the reason to be careful about who you hand this work to. A firm that promises a Trustpilot rating rather than specific removals may be planning to post reviews rather than remove them, and the penalty for that lands on your profile, in public, not on theirs.
What a Trustpilot case needs
On Trustpilot the burden sits with the business. The platform asks you to show, not assert, that a reviewer was never a customer — and it notices businesses that challenge reviews loosely. A case that holds up is prepared before anything goes in, on records that genuinely cover the period, with the ground named in Trustpilot’s own terms, and it is followed through until Trustpilot reaches a decision.
If you would rather hand it over, our review removal service takes it on, and you pay only for removals that are verified.
Reply in public while the case is open
Trustpilot shows business replies prominently, and a reply is visible to every reader whether or not the review is eventually removed. Use it. State what you were able to check, without naming the person or disclosing anything about them, and offer a route to sort it out.
One caution worth stating plainly: do not write in a reply that you believe the reviewer is fake unless you can support it. A public accusation that turns out to be wrong is worse than the review, and it is the kind of thing that gets screenshotted.
When a Trustpilot profile is worth defending at all
Not every business needs one. If your customers find you through Google and never look at Trustpilot, an under-used profile with four reviews on it is mostly a liability, because the average of four reviews moves violently with each new one.
The profiles worth real effort are the ones that rank for your brand name, the ones your buyers check before a large purchase, and the ones in categories where Trustpilot has become the default reference. Work out which you are before spending money on it.
About this guide
Written by the Erase Trax review team: specialists in review policy, working with businesses in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and the United Arab Emirates. Each guide is written against the platforms’ own published policies. Last reviewed .
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- We never buy, write or incentivize reviews
- The platform makes the final decision
