There is a particular email that has been making the rounds lately. A new customer finishes the job, gets the invoice paid, and a few days later they get a message from the tradie offering them $50 off their next job in exchange for a five-star review. Some of those messages are blunt. Some are dressed up as a loyalty thank you. The pitch is the same either way: write the words we want, get the reward. It might feel like clever marketing. It is also the fastest way to make customers stop trusting your business.
Here’s why incentivising reviews almost always backfires, what the law actually says about it in Australia, and how to get genuine reviews without paying for the words.
What customers see when you offer a discount for a review
The customer reading your offer doesn’t see a generous gesture. They see a tradie who needs to buy his way to five stars. The whole point of a review is that it is independent. The moment money is on the table, the credibility of every review on your page becomes suspect, including the genuine ones. A discerning customer reads “leave us a five-star review and get $50 off” and quietly downgrades their estimate of how trustworthy your business actually is. The transaction is not what you think it is. You are not buying reviews. You are buying suspicion.
The ACCC has been clear on this
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has been progressively tightening up on review incentives for years. Their guidance is straightforward. If a business has paid for, gifted, or otherwise rewarded customers in exchange for positive reviews, those reviews must be disclosed as such. Reviews that are presented as independent when they were actually paid for, even with a small reward, can amount to false or misleading conduct under the Australian Consumer Law. That is not a slap on the wrist. It is a serious commercial-conduct exposure that has cost businesses six-figure undertakings.
“Just for an honest review” is not a clean defence
Some tradies dress the offer up by saying the discount is for an honest review of any kind, not specifically a positive one. Read the room. The customer knows what you’re hoping for. So does the regulator. The fact that you didn’t explicitly say five stars doesn’t change the fact that the reward is conditional on the review existing. The selection bias is real: customers who would have given you a 3 quietly delete the email instead of cashing the discount in. The reviews you get are still skewed by money, even when the wording sounds neutral.
Real customers can usually tell
There is a tone to incentivised reviews that even a busy customer can pick up. They tend to be short, formulaic, and weirdly upbeat in the same way. Great job. Friendly. Would recommend. Three sentences. Five stars. No specifics. A page full of those reads completely differently from a page with a mix of detailed reviews, occasional fours, and the odd customer noting a small problem that the business handled well. Future customers don’t always articulate what feels off. They just decide to call someone else. The cost of incentivising shows up as bookings you don’t get.
What you actually want is unprompted volume
The metric that builds trust on Reviewey is not the average score. It is the steady, unprompted flow of reviews from real jobs. Twelve genuine reviews a quarter, with a varied score and varied content, sells more work than fifty incentivised five-star reviews in a single burst. The unprompted ones look like real life because they are real life. Customers reading them can imagine themselves in the same situation. They can see the tradie handling normal stuff. That is the only kind of credibility that actually converts.
What you can offer instead
There is a clean line you can stay on the right side of. You can thank a customer for taking the time to leave a review, in any way, with any score, after they have left it. A handwritten card. A small token at the next visit. A simple message of appreciation. The point is that the gesture is unconditional. It says we value the time you spent giving honest feedback. That is different from we will pay you to write the feedback we want. The first reads as professional. The second reads as bribery, even at $50.
The internal cost of running an incentive program
There is a quieter cost that gets ignored. Once you start incentivising reviews, you have created a business process around buying praise. That process needs tracking, fulfilment, and reconciliation. It also creates an awkward expectation: the customer who didn’t leave a review feels uncomfortable about your next visit. The customer who did leave a five-star review subtly expects more discounts in future. You have trained your customer base to associate honest words with payment. That is not a relationship you want with the people you rely on for repeat work.
What to do if you have already been incentivising reviews
If you’ve been running an incentive program, stop today. Don’t take down the existing reviews, that would create a different problem. Just stop adding to them. Then send a short, plain message to your customer list explaining you are no longer offering rewards for reviews, and that any feedback they choose to leave is welcome regardless. Some customers will respect the move. A small number will leave a real review now that they know the air is clean. The page slowly heals itself, and your future credibility starts to compound.
Reviews are credibility. Credibility doesn’t survive payment. The tradies on Reviewey who build the strongest long-term reputation are the ones who understand that a slow accumulation of unpaid honest reviews is worth more than a quick burst of bought ones. Stop offering discounts for stars. Ask cleanly. Let your work do the rest.