Testimonials and reviews under the Australian Consumer Law

Publishing a testimonial or a review is a narrower legal question than writing marketing copy about your own business. It is worth treating separately. What a business says about itself is one question. What a business does with someone else’s statement about it is another. Both sit under the Australian Consumer Law’s misleading and deceptive conduct provisions, and both are ways a genuinely well-intentioned business publishes something it should not.

Why publishing something misleading or deceptive is a different question from writing your own copy

A business writing its own claims controls every word and can check every word against the truth before publishing it. A testimonial or review was written by someone else, for a different purpose, and a business publishing it is making its own representation by choosing to display it — the ACL’s misleading conduct provisions apply to that choice, not only to original copy. The practical, non-legal side of choosing and formatting reviews for your own site is covered separately on displaying reviews and testimonials on your own website. This page is the narrower legal question underneath that practice.

The general legal position under the Australian Consumer Law (ACL)

Sections 18 and 29 of the Australian Consumer Law prohibit conduct, in trade or commerce, that is misleading or deceptive or likely to mislead or deceive, and prohibit specific false representations about goods or services, including false representations about approval, endorsement or sponsorship. A testimonial or review engages these provisions the moment it is published. Publishing it is treated as adopting it as part of the business’s own representation to the public.

What the ACCC’s guidance identifies as a risk

The ACCC’s published guidance on online reviews and testimonials identifies several specific patterns as a misleading-conduct risk: reviews written by the business itself or by people connected to it and presented as independent customer opinion; reviews solicited or incentivised without disclosing the arrangement; negative reviews selectively removed or suppressed while the remaining reviews are presented as a complete or representative picture; and reviews that are, in substance, fabricated rather than genuine accounts from an actual customer.

The four patterns of misleading reviews, and why each one is a risk

Pattern	Why it’s a risk
Fabricated reviews	A review with no real customer behind it is a false representation about the business’s reputation, not merely an exaggeration
Undisclosed incentivised reviews	A reader assumes an unprompted, unpaid opinion unless told otherwise; the arrangement itself is the material fact being withheld
Selective publication presented as complete	Curating out negative reviews while implying the displayed set is representative can misrepresent overall customer sentiment
Reviews from connected parties	An employee, contractor or family member’s review, presented as an independent customer’s, misrepresents its own source

Where genuine testimonials still need care

A real testimonial from a real customer, published with the customer’s knowledge, is not automatically safe simply because it is genuine. If the testimonial makes a specific factual claim — an outcome, a result, a comparison with a competitor — that claim is still subject to the ACL’s substantiation requirements, and the business publishing it is treated as adopting the claim by displaying it prominently. A customer’s opinion (“great to deal with”) carries a different risk profile from a customer’s factual assertion (“saved us 40% on our power bill”). The second kind needs the same substantiation a business would need for the same claim in its own words.

Star ratings, aggregated review scores and negative reviews

An aggregated rating is a star average across many reviews. It carries its own risk if the underlying reviews included in the average are not genuinely representative. For instance, negative reviews might have been selectively excluded from the calculation, or the review platform’s own methodology might not be disclosed. Displaying a star rating sourced from a third-party review platform is generally lower risk than compiling one internally, provided the source and its basis are stated accurately.

Testimonials in regulated industries, and what consumers actually see

Some regulated services carry an outright restriction on testimonials specific to that industry, over and above the general ACL position — health services regulated under the National Law being the clearest example, where testimonials about clinical aspects of care are prohibited by the practitioner’s own advertising obligations regardless of how genuinely the ACL question is handled. Where a business operates in a regulated industry, the industry-specific restriction should be checked in addition to, not instead of, the general ACL position described here.

What a reasonably careful review process looks like

A reasonably careful review process publishes only reviews genuinely received from customers, without editing their substance beyond removing anything defamatory or irrelevant. It discloses any incentive offered for leaving a review, at the point the review is solicited and, ideally, alongside the published review. It does not remove negative reviews from a platform that presents itself as showing a complete history. It retains the right to respond to them instead. And it treats a specific factual claim inside a testimonial with the same substantiation discipline as a claim the business made itself.

What to do next

Audit any testimonials or review content currently on your site against the four risk patterns above. Check whether any specific factual claim inside a testimonial could be substantiated if challenged. Whether a specific instance of review handling on your site meets the ACL’s requirements is a question for a lawyer with your actual review process in front of them — this page describes the general shape of the risk, not a finding about your business.

The same honesty standard that applies to a testimonial applies to any claim made about a specific industry. This is covered across what a website has to do differently by industry, where a claim earns its place only if it can be checked.