Said It Here

Why won't customers leave product reviews?

Customers refuse to leave reviews because being asked by every single business is exhausting and the submission process is annoying to complete. For store owners, default review systems are easily falsified and most buyers never create an account, making it nearly impossible to collect genuine reviews.

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

  1. 1
    Manually or using AI to copy and paste reviews from external sources like Facebook and Trustpilot into product pages
  2. 2
    Using heavy and expensive third-party widgets like Trustpilot or Yotpo
  3. 3
    Turning off native reviews entirely
  4. 4
    Offering incentives like a free soda for an honest review
  5. 5
    Sending a quick follow-up message the next day
  6. 6
    Putting a QR code or easy link on a paper receipt

In their words

Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.

r/smallbusiness4 people · September 2026

“Being asked to leave a review by every business that I interact with stops me from leaving reviews. It's fucking tiresome.”source ↗

MeatballSandy22 · r/smallbusiness · 4 upvotes

“I cannot get anybody to leave me a review for the life of me.”source ↗

Glittering-Chef3871 · r/smallbusiness · 3 upvotes

“"Verified Owner" is not a trusted badge and can be easily falsified. Most of my customers do not create an account, so they wouldn't be given the badge anyway...”source ↗

JKGK · r/smallbusiness · 2 upvotes

“B/c it's annoying to complete as a customer.”source ↗

dunculo · r/smallbusiness · 2 upvotes

Where this came up

People with this problem also raised