The honest one-paragraph answer
A trade directory is a reasonable filter and a poor verdict. It will reliably tell you that a firm exists, has been trading, has customers, and has a record somebody can complain about. It will not reliably tell you that the firm is right for your particular job, and no rule change has altered that. What has changed, and changed recently, is that the platform is now under a legal duty about the reviews it publishes rather than merely a reputational one.
What became illegal on 6 April 2025
Paragraph 13 of Schedule 20 to the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 came into force on 6 April 2025. Practices in Schedule 20 are "banned practices", which means they are automatically unfair: a regulator does not have to show that anyone was harmed.
The banned practice has several limbs. Reading the Act and the CMA's guidance together, these are now prohibited:
| Practice | What it covers |
|---|
| Submitting or commissioning a fake review | A review that "purports to be, but is not, based on a person's genuine experience", positive or negative |
| Concealed incentivised reviews | A commissioned review where the incentive is not made apparent. The CMA lists money, commissions, discounts or vouchers, freebies, free stays and event invitations as examples of commissioning |
| Publishing reviews in a misleading way | Suppressing genuine negative reviews, cherry-picking positive ones, hiding that reviews were incentivised, merging reviews of materially different things, leaving stale reviews up after a material change |
| Publishing review information in a misleading way | Star ratings, review counts, summaries and rankings that do not reflect what they appear to |
| Offering to procure or facilitate any of the above | Aimed at the brokers and services that sell reviews to traders |
| Failing to prevent and remove | A positive duty, described below |
One clarification from the guidance that cuts both ways: "A review is not fake just because the trader who it is about does not like or agree with it, as long as it reflects the reviewer's genuine experience."
The duty that actually protects you
The most useful part for a homeowner is the sixth limb, because it is the one that puts work on the platform rather than on the reviewer. The CMA describes it as creating "a positive obligation, meaning it requires traders who publish consumer reviews or consumer review information by any means to take effective action to comply with the law, rather than merely refraining from a specified action".
The guidance names the publishers it applies to, and "trader recommendation platforms" are on the list alongside search engines, marketplaces, specialist review sites, retailers and booking agents. It then sets out what all publishers will need:
- A clear, published policy prohibiting fake reviews and setting out the approach to incentivised reviews and to review information.
- A risk assessment of how such material might appear on their site, and proportionate steps to address what it finds.
- Processes to detect, investigate and act, including sanctions.
- Regular evaluation of whether any of that is working.
The guidance is explicit that there is no "one size fits all" or "tick box" approach, and that the standard is reasonable and proportionate steps rather than perfection. That is the honest boundary of the protection. A platform can be fully compliant and still have a fake review on it this morning.
Is it enforced?
So far, yes, and visibly. The CMA has said it swept over 100 review publishers, issued advisory letters to 54 firms, and that 90 per cent made changes in response with 75 per cent saying they better understood the rules. It then opened investigations into five companies across car sales, review services, funerals and food.
The penalties are not nominal. The CMA has said it can fine businesses up to 10 per cent of global turnover for infringements, up to 5 per cent for breach of undertakings with daily penalties on top, and up to 1 per cent for failing to co-operate with an investigation.
None of the five investigations named by the CMA is a trade directory, and nothing here suggests any trade directory has breached anything. The point is only that the regime has teeth and is being used, which is a better reason to trust a published review policy than it was two years ago.
- Find the reviews policy. The law now requires one, and requires it to be easy to find and in plain English. Two minutes of hunting is a finding in itself.
- Check whether reviews are tied to a verified job. Some platforms only accept reviews from customers they can match to a booking. Others accept anyone. Both models exist and they produce different data.
- Check whether incentivised reviews are allowed, and if so how they are marked. The law permits incentives provided they are disclosed and the review is genuine. What you want to know is which rule the platform has chosen.
- Check whether the trade can reply, and whether replies are shown. A visible reply thread is the cheapest evidence of a functioning complaints route.
- Check what happens to a removed review. The CMA says a rating and count should be promptly updated when reviews are removed as fake. Whether a platform says it does that is worth a look.
- Check whether paid placement is separated from review-derived ranking. Labelled advertising is fine and ordinary. A ranking that looks review-derived but has been influenced by payment is the thing the CMA's guidance calls out.
- Check whether there is a dispute route, and whether it is free. Some come with alternative dispute resolution attached, some do not.
- Check the firm independently anyway. Company number, insurance, registers. The five free checks take about fifteen minutes and are not replaceable by a score.
Where directories genuinely earn their place
We would rather say this than pretend otherwise, and we are saying it as a firm with an obvious interest in the opposite conclusion. A directory is the better route when you have no personal recommendation and no way of getting one, which is most people most of the time. It is better when you want three prices on a job that is not urgent. It is better when you are new to an area. And it is better when what you actually want is a complaints process that exists and a body that can remove a member, because a firm you found yourself has neither.
Where it is weaker is the emergency. A marketplace that distributes your enquiry to several members is optimised for competing quotes, not for one van arriving this afternoon. If water is coming through a ceiling, ring somebody directly and sort the rest out later.
Our position
We are a London leak firm, not listed on any directory, and we would like you to ring us. Nothing above is our opinion of any platform: it is the wording of an Act, the CMA's own guidance and the CMA's own published enforcement figures. We have deliberately not characterised any named platform's vetting, fees or scoring, because we were not able to read their published pages directly and we are not prepared to describe a company's policies from search results.
If you do ring us: £150 per hour, agreed before we attend, no find no fee on the search, and we repair and reinstate rather than finding the leak and leaving. How we price covers the rest.
