Verifying reviews in an online store: template and UOKiK bans

Reviews under products are, for an online store customer, one of the main arguments when buying. That is why the law takes them seriously: a store may not buy them, fake them or selectively hide them, and since 1 January 2023 it must also honestly state where they come from and whether they are checked.

In this guide, as of 21 October 2026, I show what exactly you must do, which practices to avoid and how to verify reviews in practice. At the end you will find a ready template of information to paste into your terms and conditions and onto the product page. This is a practical discussion of the rules, not legal advice: in disputed matters consult a lawyer.

What the law says about store reviews

The changes have applied since 1 January 2023. They come from the EU Omnibus Directive (Directive (EU) 2019/2161), which Poland implemented with the act of 1 December 2022. The rules on reviews went into the Act on Counteracting Unfair Market Practices (ustawa o przeciwdziałaniu nieuczciwym praktykom rynkowym). There are two main obligations.

• Information about verification. If you show product reviews, you must state whether and how you check that they come from people who used or bought the product (Art. 6(4), point 7 of the Act). Lack of this information may be treated as a misleading omission.
• Ban on fake reviews. You may not post, or commission others to post, false reviews, nor distort genuine ones in order to promote products (Art. 7, point 26). This also applies to reviews bought from an agency or written by employees or family pretending to be customers. It is also prohibited to claim that reviews come from people who bought or used the product if the store has not taken reasonable and proportionate steps to check this (Art. 7, point 25). The Act considers both practices unfair in all circumstances.

Where such practices violate the collective interests of consumers, the President of UOKiK (Urząd Ochrony Konkurencji i Konsumentów, Poland’s Office of Competition and Consumer Protection) may impose a fine of up to 10% of the turnover achieved in the year preceding the year the fine is imposed (Art. 106(1), point 4 of the Act on Competition and Consumer Protection, ustawa o ochronie konkurencji i konsumentów). A manager of the company who intentionally allowed the infringement faces a fine of up to PLN 2 million (Art. 106b). These are upper limits: in July 2024 UOKiK imposed fines of PLN 35,000 and PLN 50,618 on two small companies trading in fake reviews (the decisions were not yet final then).

Important: the rules don’t tell you to verify reviews. They tell you to write the truth about what you do. A store that checks nothing can honestly say so. What is prohibited is pretending that reviews are checked when they are not, including through sham verification. In the Samsung case, UOKiK challenged the “Confirmed purchase” label awarded after merely ticking a box with a declaration, with no order number or receipt.

Did UOKiK tighten inspections in 2026

UOKiK’s communications don’t mention an increase in the number of inspections in 2026, but reviews come up in them regularly. The latest cases from uokik.gov.pl:

• 12 June 2025. The President of UOKiK imposed a fine of over PLN 28.4 million on the OLX Group for a misleading rating system. Ratings could be given by people who bought nothing, and the way they were calculated inflated sellers’ scores. On the day of the announcement the decision was not final.
• 14 January 2026. Charges against Samsung Electronics Polska. The “Confirmed purchase” label was given to anyone who ticked a box with a declaration, and some unverified reviews counted toward the overall rating. According to UOKiK, such a declaration may not be a reasonable and proportionate way of verification.
• 3 June 2026. Charges against Nocowanie.pl. The service did not say whether reviews came from guests, and property owners could switch off the ratings panel, which made negative reviews disappear as well.

In the Samsung and Nocowanie.pl cases these are, for now, charges and not rulings. For a small store the lesson is simple: a “purchase confirmed” tag must come from order data, and negative reviews must not disappear.

In practice there is one conclusion: it’s not worth waiting for an inspection. A description of verification and order in your reviews can be done in one evening, and the risk of a fine and of losing customers’ trust is higher than the cost of this work.

List of prohibited practices

The list below contains practices you do not engage in at your store. Some follow directly from the rules, some from the fact that they mislead the customer.

1. Buying reviews from agencies, groups of “testers” or on classified-ads sites.
2. Writing reviews yourself, or having employees, family and friends write them, without noting that they are reviews connected with the store.
3. Hiding critical reviews, when you publish only praise even though there are more genuine reviews.
4. Editing the content of a review so as to change its meaning, e.g. shortening “product good, but delivery took two weeks” to “product good”.
5. Coupons and discounts for a positive review. The customer gets a reward for a good word, not for an honest review. This can undermine the credibility of the whole rating.
6. Collecting review requests only from satisfied customers, e.g. after checking who has not filed a complaint.
7. Moving reviews between products, e.g. showing reviews of another model under a new one that has none yet.
8. A “verified” label on reviews that nobody actually checks.

Points 1, 2 and 8 are directly prohibited by Art. 7, points 25 and 26 of the Act. Publishing only praise and deleting criticism (point 3) is given by the Omnibus Directive in recital 49 as an example of prohibited distortion of reviews, and the European Commission’s 2021 guidance also includes seeking only positive reviews (point 6) and paying customers for positive reviews (point 5). Editing that changes the meaning of a review and moving it under another product (points 4 and 7) may also be considered distortion of reviews or misleading. Confirm the classification in a specific case with a lawyer.

How to verify reviews: four ways

Verification doesn’t have to be complicated. In a small store, simple mechanisms are enough.

1. A review only after a purchase

The simplest method: the review form opens from a link in the email after the order or from the customer account. The system links the review to the order number. That gives you proof that the author bought the product, and did not merely fill in a form.

2. A “purchase confirmed” tag

When a review is added by a person with an order history, you show a “purchase confirmed” label next to it. Reviews from people without a purchase you can switch off or mark differently, e.g. “review without purchase confirmation”.

3. Pattern checks

Every week, go through new reviews looking for suspicious signals:

• several reviews added in a short time from the same IP address or email,
• overly similar wording in different reviews,
• reviews posted before the delivery date,
• reviews from addresses connected with the store or the supplier.

4. Open moderation rules

Write in your terms and conditions what you remove (profanity, personal data, ads, content unrelated to the product) and that you don’t remove a review just because it is negative. Then stick to those rules, also when the criticism concerns your bestseller.

If you use an external review system or a plugin, check in its description how it really verifies authors. Don’t copy the vendor’s marketing slogans into your terms and conditions. Describe what actually happens.

Template for the review verification notice

Below is a template you can adapt to your store. Choose the variant that is true, and don’t leave in anything you don’t do.

Variant A: reviews verified by purchase

Product reviews can only be added by customers who placed an order in our store. We send the link to the review form in an email after the order is fulfilled, and every review is linked to an order number. Reviews with the “purchase confirmed” label come from people who bought the product. We don’t pay for reviews and don’t offer discounts in return. We publish reviews unchanged, regardless of the rating. We remove only content that is vulgar, contains personal data or is unrelated to the product.

Variant B: reviews without verification

Product reviews can be added by anyone who visits the store. We do not verify whether the author bought or used the product, so reviews may come from people who are not our customers. We don’t pay for reviews and don’t offer discounts in return. We publish reviews unchanged, regardless of the rating. We remove only content that is vulgar, contains personal data or is unrelated to the product.

Variant B is honest, but it looks worse in the customer’s eyes. It usually pays to introduce purchase verification and move to variant A.

Where to place the notice

Putting it in the terms and conditions alone may not be enough, because the customer usually doesn’t read them. In the Samsung case, UOKiK pointed out that the customer should clearly and immediately know whether the reviews making up the rating are verified. Three places work well:

• on the product page, right next to the star rating, as a short text with a link “How we check reviews”,
• in the store’s terms and conditions, in a separate clause with the full description,
• in the email requesting a review, in a short sentence saying that the review will be published regardless of the rating.

A short version under the stars could look like this:

Reviews come from customers who bought the product in our store. How we check reviews (link to the clause of the terms and conditions about reviews)

Negative reviews: how to benefit from them

A bad review is not a catastrophe for a store. Customers suspect that a store with nothing but fives is hiding something anyway. Reply publicly, calmly and factually, and if the problem concerns an order, offer to get in touch.

Thank you for your review. We are sorry the parcel arrived late. We checked the order: the delay was caused by the courier. We have written to you in a private message to clear this up.

Reviews in a store are different from reviews in the Google Business Profile (your Google listing). I described the rules for collecting reviews and replying separately in the guide How to get Google reviews, and most of the rules (honesty, no rewards, replies) are shared.

Summary

Verifying reviews in an online store comes down to three things: write the truth about how you check reviews, don’t buy them and don’t hide criticism. You will adapt the notice from the ready template to your store in a dozen or so minutes.

If you want to be sure your store meets consumer rules, including reviews, Omnibus and GPSR (the EU General Product Safety Regulation), I will do a store compliance audit with a report. When building a new online store, I can design reviews linked to orders from the start. Write to me, I reply within 24 hours, and new clients get 20% off their first job.