● Customer reviews
Review Gating
The practice of filtering customers before inviting them to post a review, soliciting only satisfied buyers to avoid negative feedback appearing publicly.
Full definition
Review gating refers to the practice of pre-qualifying customers before inviting them to post a review on a public platform. In practice, the merchant first sends an internal satisfaction survey. Only customers who express high satisfaction are redirected to public review platforms, while dissatisfied customers are directed to customer service to resolve their issue privately, away from public visibility.
This practice is explicitly prohibited by all major review platforms. Google, Trustpilot, and Avis Vérifiés ban any form of selective review filtering in their terms of service. The European Omnibus Directive (2022) reinforces this by requiring that published reviews reflect the full range of customer experiences. Merchants caught review gating face deletion of all their reviews and potential legal penalties.
The distinction with legitimate practices is important. Collecting all reviews without filtering, then using private negative feedback to improve the customer experience, is entirely acceptable. What is prohibited is conditioning access to public review platforms on prior satisfaction. Total transparency is the only sustainable strategy: a 4.9/5 rating built on authentic unfiltered reviews is worth infinitely more than an artificially inflated score through gating.
Concrete example
An e-commerce merchant implements a post-purchase survey asking: "Are you satisfied with your order?" Only customers answering "very satisfied" receive the Trustpilot link. This practice is reported by a competitor to Trustpilot, which deletes the entire profile and its 500 reviews, instantly erasing years of reputational work.
By contrast, a merchant who sends universal invitations to all customers, handles negative reviews with AI responses in under 60 seconds, and uses feedback to improve service, achieves an entirely authentic 4.6/5 rating. This score, while slightly lower than a fictitiously filtered one, is unassailable and credible to both consumers and algorithms.
With Review Collect
Review Collect is designed to collect all reviews without selective filtering, in full compliance with the rules of Trustpilot, Google, and Avis Vérifiés. All post-purchase invitations are sent systematically, regardless of the customer's profile. This approach guarantees certifiable authenticity of the review corpus and eliminates any risk of platform sanctions.
Rather than filtering reviews, Review Collect transforms negative reviews into opportunities: AI response in under 60 seconds, real-time alerts on dissatisfaction, and semantic analysis to identify and correct the root causes of negative feedback. Proactive management of negative reviews is more effective long-term than any filtering approach.
