Question 1

Where should the QR code go?

Accepted Answer

Somewhere every customer passes at the end of their visit — on the receipt, a table card, the room folder, the checkout screen. The goal is that everyone gets the same opportunity to scan it, not that you choose who sees it. Avoid placements where only certain customers will ever encounter it.

Question 2

When is the right moment to ask?

Accepted Answer

After the experience is finished — as they pay, check out, or leave. Early enough that the visit is fresh in mind, late enough that they have actually experienced the whole thing. Do not prompt mid-service: you would be asking someone to review something they have not finished.

Question 3

Should I ask every customer, or only the happy ones?

Accepted Answer

Every customer. Selectively asking only the people you expect to be positive is review gating, and it is prohibited by Google's policies and by consumer-protection rules from the US FTC to the EU, the UK and Asia. It is also self-defeating: a listing where every single review is five stars reads as less trustworthy to shoppers than one with a realistic spread. Make the QR available to everyone.

Question 4

What if someone had a bad experience?

Accepted Answer

Let them say so — or better, fix it before they leave. Reviewslip drafts from what the customer selects, so the honest path for an unhappy visitor is to write their own words or to raise it with you directly. What you must never do is hide or withhold the review path from someone because you expect criticism. Suppressing negative reviews is exactly what the FTC rule — and its EU, UK and Asian counterparts — were written to stop.

Question 5

How many reviews is too many, too fast?

Accepted Answer

There is no published threshold — Google does not publish one, and anyone quoting an exact number is guessing. The principle is proportionality: your review rate should look like a plausible fraction of your real customer volume, and it should not change abruptly. A café serving 500 people a week can sustain far more than a six-room guesthouse. As a working rule of thumb, if one week's reviews would grow your all-time total by more than roughly a fifth, ease off.

Question 6

What does a suspicious spike actually look like?

Accepted Answer

A listing that averaged two reviews a month for three years and then collects forty in nine days is the textbook signature of bought reviews, and automated filters are tuned for precisely that shape. The reviews may never appear, may appear and then vanish days later, or may pull the whole listing into review. Ramping up gradually — a fraction of customers at first, widening over weeks — avoids the shape entirely.

Question 7

Is it a problem if everyone posts from my WiFi?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and this one catches people out. If every customer scans and posts while on your guest network, a batch of reviews all originates from a single IP address. That is a strong clustering signal, and it looks a great deal like someone posting reviews from the back office. Customers on their own mobile data avoid this naturally, so do not push people onto the venue WiFi purely to leave a review.

Question 8

Can customers post from a tablet at the counter?

Accepted Answer

No. Several reviews from one device — same fingerprint, often the same signed-in browser — is among the clearest artificial-review signals there is. It also puts you one short step from typing the review yourself. Reviews should always come from the customer's own phone and their own account.

Question 9

Can I email or text my whole customer list at once?

Accepted Answer

Be careful. A blast to thousands of past customers produces exactly the velocity spike described above, and reviews about visits from months ago are vaguer and less credible. If you do reach out, work in small batches, to recent customers, spread over time.

Question 10

Can I offer a discount or a free item for a review?

Accepted Answer

No. Incentivised reviews are prohibited by Google, and covered by the FTC rule and its EU, UK and Asian equivalents as well. This holds even if you would happily accept a negative review in exchange — the payment is the problem, not the sentiment. You can thank people. You cannot pay them.

Question 11

Can staff, friends or family leave reviews?

Accepted Answer

No. Reviews from people connected to the business are prohibited outright and are often easy to spot. That includes staff reviewing their own workplace and asking friends to pad the count after a bad month.

Question 12

Will AI-drafted reviews all read the same?

Accepted Answer

They can, and it is a real risk. Reviewslip mitigates it by drafting from the specific things each customer picks and by offering fresh phrasings on regenerate — but the genuine protection is that the customer edits the text. Encourage that. A page of reviews sharing sentence structure and vocabulary is a detectable pattern no matter who or what wrote them.

Question 13

Can I write the review for a customer who says they are happy?

Accepted Answer

No. Even with verbal permission, you writing and posting it makes it a review from you, not from them — and that is the definition of a fake review under Google's policy, the US FTC rule, and the EU, UK and Asian review laws alike. Hand them the QR code and let them do it.

Question 14

What is the worst that can happen?

Accepted Answer

Roughly in order of severity: individual reviews get filtered and never appear; a batch is removed retroactively, sometimes months later; the listing receives a consumer alert warning visitors that suspicious activity was detected; or the listing is suspended. On the legal side, the US FTC rule carries civil penalties assessed per violation — per fake review, not per business — and the EU, UK and Asian regimes carry their own fines and enforcement. And there is the plain reputational damage of being publicly caught.

Question 15

What do these rules actually ban?

Accepted Answer

Across the US FTC rule, the EU and UK review laws and their Asian equivalents, the common targets are the same: fake or AI-fabricated reviews from people who never had a genuine experience, undisclosed incentivised or sponsored reviews, insiders posing as customers, and the suppression or concealment of negative reviews. What none of them ban is helping a genuine customer put their own honest opinion into words — which is the whole design of Reviewslip.

Question 16

If reviews get removed, is that Reviewslip's fault or mine?

Accepted Answer

Yours, in practice. Reviewslip constrains what the AI can say and never posts on anyone's behalf, but it cannot control who you hand the QR code to, how hard you push, or whether you offer incentives. The practices on this page are what determine the outcome.

Question 17

Does this apply outside the United States?

Accepted Answer

Yes — the FTC rule is US law, but most markets now have their own. The EU's Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (updated by the Omnibus Directive) and Digital Services Act, the UK's Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, Japan's 2023 stealth-marketing regulation, and China's anti-unfair-competition rules on fabricated reviews all target the same conduct — and several have been tightening. Platform policies (Google, TripAdvisor, Facebook, LINE, Xiaohongshu, Wongnai) apply everywhere regardless. Treat the guidance here as the floor, not the ceiling, and check the rules for the markets you operate in.

Question 18

What does a healthy review pattern look like?

Accepted Answer

A steady trickle rather than bursts. A mix of ratings rather than a wall of fives. Reviews of varying length — some a line, some detailed. Timing spread across days and hours instead of clustered. Owner responses to the good and the bad alike. That profile is both what the platforms expect and what actually persuades someone reading your listing.

Question 19

How should I handle a negative review?

Accepted Answer

Respond publicly, without arguing. Acknowledge it, add context briefly if there is any, and say what you are changing. Prospective customers read the responses as closely as the reviews. Do not request removal unless it genuinely breaches platform policy, and never try to bury it under a rush of new positive reviews — that is the spike pattern again, this time with an obvious motive attached.

Question 20

How quickly will I see results?

Accepted Answer

More slowly than you would like, and that is rather the point. A programme adding a handful of genuine reviews each week compounds into a materially stronger listing over months, and never looks anomalous at any moment. Attempts to compress that into a fortnight are what trigger everything described above.

Question 21

Which platforms does Reviewslip support?

Accepted Answer

Google, TripAdvisor, LINE, Facebook, Xiaohongshu and Wongnai — so you can meet your customers on whichever platform matters most in your market. Each platform has its own rules, though, and some are stricter than Google: several restrict or prohibit soliciting reviews at all. Check the policy of any platform before you point customers at it, wherever you operate.

How to use Reviewslip without getting flagged.

Setting it up

Pace and patterns

Red flags that get you penalised

What is actually at stake

Running it well

Set it up properly from day one.