Scam watch: the emails offering to delete your bad reviews and sell you 5-stars

A wave of cold emails is doing the rounds offering to remove bad reviews from Google and Trustpilot, and to sell glowing 5-star ones in their place. They arrive from free Gmail accounts with ordinary-sounding personal names, a different name each time, and they go out to many businesses at once.

They sound helpful. They are not. At best you pay for something that breaks the law and puts your profile at risk. At worst you hand money to the same kind of people who post fake 1-star reviews in the first place.

What the email looks like

The subject lines go straight for the pain point:

• "Negative Reviews Costing You Customers? Start With Just One! Pay Only After the First Review Is Successfully Removed."
• "That 1-star review? Let's swap it for a sticky 5-star."
• "New Review Process Introduced – Updated Rate for Your Project"

Inside, the body is short and full of emoji icons. One promises removal from Trustpilot and Google "100% guaranteed" at $100 a review, with a bulk discount. Another claims a "distinct, sophisticated approach" that deletes bad reviews and replaces them with "permanent, sticky 5-star reviews". The third pretends you are already a customer, talks about "your review project", and lists "updated" prices: $20 for each positive review and $90 for each removal, plus "extra charges" where "additional documentation" is needed.

Every one of them asks you to move the conversation to WhatsApp or Telegram. Some links go through a mail-merge service, which can track who clicks.

How the scam works

1. Bulk sending. Free webmail accounts send the same pitch to many businesses at once, each copy under a different name.
2. Bait. "No upfront payment" and "pay only after removal" lower your guard. "Start with just one" makes it feel like a small test.
3. Off the record. Once you message on WhatsApp or Telegram, there is no email trail and no company behind the name.
4. The first job. A review may well disappear. That can happen because the seller floods it with false reports, or because the seller, or people linked to them, posted it in the first place. Google warns that review extortion can start with a sudden burst of 1-star and 2-star reviews, followed by a demand for money to remove them.
5. The upsell. After the first "win" come bigger orders, bulk deals, packs of 5-star reviews and new fees for "documentation".

How the scammers make money

• Selling reviews. Fake reviews are cheap to make and easy to sell. A Which? investigation in 2022 found brokers selling fake reviews for as little as £4, and one broker claimed to have created nearly 16,000 reviews for 570 customers. Which? got 19 fake reviews onto a made-up business on each of Facebook, Google and Trustpilot.
• Charging for removal. At $90 to $100 a review, a business with a handful of bad reviews is a few hundred dollars of income. If the seller planted those reviews, the "removal" costs them nothing.
• Repeat business. A business that pays once has shown it will pay. Review-extortion research warns that paying makes a business a target for future attacks.
• Fees on top. "Documentation" charges, "updated rates" and bulk packs keep the money coming.

The business that pays carries all the risk. Since 6 April 2025, UK law has banned commissioning fake reviews and offering to write them, and the CMA can now fine firms up to 10% of their global turnover. Under its agreement with the CMA, Google adds warnings to profiles found using fake reviews and can delete all reviews for six months or more for repeat offenders. Trustpilot can take fake reviews offline and place a public Consumer Warning on the business's page. Misusing the flagging tool to get genuine reviews taken down also counts as misuse.

How to spot it

• A free Gmail address with a person's name, not a company website or a registered business.
• A claim to remove reviews "100% guaranteed". Only Google and Trustpilot decide what comes down.
• Talk of "your project" when you never hired anyone.
• A push to move to WhatsApp or Telegram.
• "Sticky" or "permanent" 5-star reviews. Real reviews come from real customers.
• An offer that arrives soon after a sudden burst of bad reviews.

How to protect your business

• Never buy reviews and never pay anyone to remove them. Google says paying "doesn't guarantee the removal of reviews" and can encourage more attempts.
• Flag unfair reviews yourself, through your Google Business Profile or your Trustpilot business account. It is free.
• If someone demands money to remove reviews, keep screenshots and report it with Google's merchant extortion report form, found in the Google Business Profile Help Centre.
• Reply calmly and publicly to genuine bad reviews. A thoughtful reply often does more than a deletion.
• Ask every real customer for a review, not just the happy ones, and never offer a reward for it.
• Brief your team. Whoever reads the shared inbox or runs your social pages should know these offers are scams.

If you replied or paid

1. Stop. Don't send more money and don't share logins to your Google or Trustpilot accounts.
2. If you gave anyone access, remove them from your Business Profile, change your passwords and turn on 2-step sign-in.
3. If you paid, contact your bank or card provider straight away, then report it to Report Fraud at reportfraud.police.uk (or to Police Scotland).
4. Report the email by forwarding it to [email protected], and mark it as spam or phishing in your email app.
5. If fake reviews were posted for you, flag them for removal yourself. That is far better than waiting for the platform to find them.

Good reviews come from good service and asking for them. Anyone selling a shortcut by email is selling a risk.