Seven clauses to check in commerce reviews commercial contracts

What to take away

The seven clauses and the wording to ask for

Ownership and the licence you grant

Check who owns review text, photographs and video once a customer submits them. Many platform terms take a broad licence over that content.

That licence may let the supplier reuse your customer's words in its own sales material, so narrow it in writing.

Name where you can republish: product pages, email, paid social and printed catalogues.

A short guide to review disclosure ethics explains how these ownership terms sit alongside the disclosure duties you already owe.

Incentive labelling

Offering a discount, prize draw entry or free goods for a review means the incentive must be clear wherever that review appears.

The Advertising Standards Authority publishes rulings on misleading reviews and testimonials that show how promotional wording is judged.

Require the label to travel with the review into every widget, feed, email and syndicated placement.

Example wording for licence and labelling clauses

You may reproduce submitted review text, images and video on your own product pages, email and paid social. The supplier may display that content only inside the services you buy.

This review was written by a customer who received a 15 per cent discount code. The code was offered to all customers and did not affect the content.

The supplier keeps consent records for 24 months after collection and returns them on exit.

Adapt this wording to your own contract rather than using it unchanged.

Moderation rights and the audit trail

Write down whether the platform may edit, reorder, translate or suppress a review. Rights to remove negative content create a compliance problem even where the contract permits them.

Ask for an audit log covering each decision, its reason and its date. If the log cannot be exported, treat the gap as a commercial risk.

Complaints, takedown and enforcement

Set a named contact, a response window and an escalation route for disputed reviews. Five working days is a workable starting point for a first response.

The Competition and Markets Authority is the UK authority handling consumer enforcement, so patterns of fake reviews can reach a regulator. The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 sit behind much of that work.

Scottish actions seek an interdict rather than an injunction, and Trading Standards Scotland leads national enforcement. Our guide to how review enforcement differs in England sets out the routes.

Fraud screening and misrepresentation

Fabricated reviews and undisclosed paid placements can fall within offences under the Fraud Act 2006, so governance belongs in the contract rather than a policy document.

Require the supplier to screen for bulk submissions and copied text, and to report what it finds.

Exit, records and retention

Ask what you receive when the contract ends, and agree it in the schedule:

The ICO's guide to UK GDPR is the reference for consent records and retention. Keep them while you still rely on the review in marketing.

Fees and performance measures

Tie fees to measures you can verify: collection volume, response rate or moderation turnaround. Star rating averages reward suppression rather than honest feedback.

Our comparison of the best commerce review providers shows how those measures appear in standard terms.

Common questions

Does English law apply to a platform based abroad?

Consumer protection and advertising rules still bite where content reaches people in England, whatever the supplier's address. Name a governing law and a dispute forum.

Can we delete a review we believe is false?

You can act on evidence, and most platforms provide a dispute route. Removing content without a recorded reason weakens your position.

Who is liable if a review breaches advertising rules?

Liability usually sits with the advertiser whose page carries the claim, although contracts try to shift it to the supplier. Read the indemnity clause with an adviser.