Can You Offer a Discount for a Review? What the FTC Rule Means for Your Business

Short answer: don’t trade discounts or freebies for reviews, and never offer anything in exchange for a positive review or for removing a negative one. Making things right with an unhappy customer is still fine — as long as it isn’t tied to what they write.

This article is general information, not legal advice. If you’re unsure about a specific promotion, ask a lawyer.

What the FTC rule says

In August 2024 the Federal Trade Commission finalized a rule on fake reviews and testimonials. It was published in the Federal Register on August 22, 2024, and lets the FTC seek civil penalties from businesses that break it. Two parts matter most for everyday business owners:

• No incentives tied to sentiment. You can’t offer money, discounts or other rewards for reviews that express a particular sentiment, positive or negative. That applies whether you say it outright (“10% off for a 5-star review”) or just imply it.
• No review suppression. You can’t use baseless legal threats, intimidation or certain false accusations to stop or remove a negative review. And if you hide reviews based on their rating, you can’t claim the reviews you show represent all or most of them.

Google’s rules are stricter

Google Maps doesn’t allow incentivized reviews at all. Its content policy says businesses may not offer incentives such as payment, discounts or free goods or services in exchange for a review — even an honest one. It also prohibits incentives for changing or removing a negative review, discouraging negative reviews, and only asking happy customers to leave one. Reviews that break these rules can be removed.

Asking every customer for an honest review, with no reward attached, is allowed.

Yelp is stricter still

Yelp discourages businesses from asking for reviews in any form, and from offering incentives or using third parties to collect them. On Yelp, focus on running a great business and replying well to the reviews you get.

What you can still do

• Ask every customer for an honest review on Google, by text, email or a card at checkout. No rewards, and no filtering for happy customers first.
• Make things right privately. If someone had a bad experience, a refund, a redo or something on the house is good customer service. Offer it on a call or by email, and don’t ask them to change their review.
• Reply to every review publicly, including the negative ones. Here’s a 4-step way to do it.
• Report reviews that break the rules (spam, conflicts of interest, people who were never customers) through the platform’s own tools.

A quick self-check

• Does any offer depend on the customer leaving a review? If yes, stop.
• Does any offer depend on what the review says, or on removing one? Definitely stop.
• Do you only send review requests to customers you think are happy? Send them to everyone.
• Are your recovery offers made in public replies? Move them to a private call or email.

How First Response handles this

When clients set up First Response, they tell us what they can offer an unhappy customer. Those offers are only ever made privately, by their manager, and never in a public reply or in exchange for changing a review. Our replies invite the customer to talk to a real person, which is where most problems actually get solved.