Is Trustpilot Legit? The Truth About Trustpilot Reviews 2026
No, businesses cannot pay to remove negative reviews or buy a higher TrustScore. He helps ecommerce brands build trust through fair, flexible, customer-led review management across every store and market. But the platform isn’t perfect, and the paid-tier model raises genuine concerns about bias that don’t go away when the company denies them.
Out of curiosity, I reposted the exact same review — word for word — but gave the company five stars instead. To my surprise, it was approved and published without issue. Meanwhile, scammers pump out one-liner five-star reviews that sail trustpilot review moderation through. That’s a business model built on reputation manipulation. And yet, on Trustpilot, I’m painted as a “terrorist” while scam companies rake in five-star reviews unchecked. I even work with the FBI, Homeland Security, and the IRS to provide intelligence on international fraud networks.
However, as The Guardian and others note, many fraudulent or misleading reviews still slip through, especially when combined with real feedback. For industries like VPNs, whcih advertise strict no-log policies, this raises serious concerns. Some also claimed positive, verified reviews vanished after refusing paid service upgrades, raising concerns over editorial independence. Reddit users have reported that negative reviews were removed, even when accompanied by documentation. “These scammers see Trustpilot as a vital part of their playbook” — KwikChex, via The Guardian In some cases, scam firms have used entire fake reviewer networks to boost their own scores while posting negative reviews on competitors.
Take RecoveryFin, one of hundreds of shady “crypto recovery services” that endlessly rebrand and pump out new websites targeting desperate scam victims. Newapexway is a trusted 4.5 on trustpilot and it’s my experience that they are sofistacated scammers as they have taken 140k from me Why are trustpilot allowed to continue with fraudulent report’s This policy is subject to change at any time and without notice. This critical examination of Trustpilot highlights the need for transparency and integrity in online review platforms.
BankFive is a community bank in SouthCoast Massachusetts and Rhode Island with a “claimed profile” (i.e. paying subscription) on Trustpilot with over 5,000 reviews and a 4.7 of 5-star rating. FreeCash.com is not accredited at the Better Business Bureau and has 1 of 5 stars at the BBB from 32 reviews. Petrović is a serial Ponzi schemer, according to an investigation by BehindMLM.com. Users who had still assets in their wallets cannot withdraw them anymore and remain defrauded. Users have no way to retrieve the holdings they put into the platform and remain defrauded. Despite this, its Trustpilot account remains active with a 4.4-star rating.
The Risk of Manipulation and Deception
“These scammers see Trustpilot as a vital part of their playbook,” said Chris Emmins, KwikChex’s co-founder. An investigation by the verification firm KwikChex found operators using fake reviews, forged certificates and stolen corporate identities to lure victims. If someone has left a misleading or fictitious review, Google does not charge to investigate the claim, meaning that everyone has an equal right to appeal reviews and ensure that reviews are a fair reflection of the service.
Our company is involved in financial activities including but not limited to Forex, Stock, Agro Farming, Nft, Bond, Oil & Gas, Real Estate Investment, Loan, Private Equity funds and largely, Cryptocurrency Trading and Cryptocurrency Mining. Mergtrade receives 4.7-stars on Trustpilot, while its website mergtrade.ltd is offline. InFace Invest Group is a company based in Mahe (Seychelles), founded by Zoran Lazarević and Mladen Pejić. Reviews for Swift-Finance Ltd on Trustpilot show the typical markers of a financial scam, by users giving it 5 stars with unprecise everything-is-always-perfect-with-them rhetoric.
Trustpilot’s Response
However, businesses cannot unilaterally delete negative reviews from the platform. Businesses on any plan, including Free, can flag reviews for Trustpilot to investigate, and they can respond publicly. Trustpilot removes reviews that violate its content guidelines (including hate speech, conflicts of interest, and factually false claims) but it does not remove reviews simply because they’re negative. Businesses can (and do) pay for fake positive reviews, and competitors can leave fake negative reviews. The problem is at the individual-review level and for small businesses, where a handful of fake reviews can swing a star rating dramatically.
Indeed, Trustpilot serves as a recognized platform for reviews utilized globally. A 4.8-star rating on Trustpilot is unlikely to change my mind if something seems too good to be true. Simply looking at the star rating is not the correct approach.
Review bombing, which involves a coordinated surge of 1-star reviews, along with extortion reviews that aim to pressure a business into making payments, is a risk associated with open posting. This is relevant to all review platforms, including Trustpilot (refer to the summary of the FTC regulation). Your email will remain confidential and not be published. Fake reviews, biased opinions, and the removal of negative feedback can sway ratings. Before placing your trust in a company, ensure you verify information with additional platforms. Nevertheless, it does not imply that all reviews found on the site are authentic or trustworthy.
If your competitor hires a review-bombing spammer to add negative reviews en masse, well, you’ll just have to upgrade to the next-tier plan.” A blog post from 2024 describes how legacy publisher Penguin-Random-House suddenly “found themselves under siege by a sudden influx of negative reviews on Trust-pilot—reviews that its management believes are fake.” Web hoster RSH writes in an October 2025 post “All those website that advertise “2000 reviews on TrustPilot” “5 star rating out of 10,000 reviews” THEY ARE ALL PAID FOR” But after seeing firsthand how they’ve enabled malicious, fake, defamatory reviews, extorted small businesses, and used AI to silence legitimate complaints—we’re done. I asked Trustpilot to check the IP addresses of the positive reviews and informed them 99% would be from the same address.
