Newspaper Investigation Raises Concerns Over User Reviews of Vodafone UK
A recent investigation by the Sunday Times, which was supported by analysis from TruthEngine®, examined unusual review patterns linked to broadband and mobile provider Vodafone UK and allegations over how some customers “had reviews posted in their names without consent“. Some of the reviews also praised individual store employees.
According to the press shot, TruthEngine’s analysis found that the proportion of Vodafone UK Trustpilot reviews mentioning staff members by name rose from 7.6% before 2023 to 73% today. The company also found that more four and five-star reviews were posted during April 2023 alone than during the previous fourteen years combined. Reviews left by accounts that had only ever posted a single review increased by 44% since October 2024 and now account for 53% of Vodafone UK’s Trustpilot reviews, compared with a telecoms-sector average of 33%.
When contacted for comment, Vodafone is claimed to have attributed the rise in four and five-star reviews to a new system, introduced in 2023, that encourages customers to give feedback, so it could “continually learn and improve”. The Sunday Times also reported that Trustpilot removed 3,800 suspicious Vodafone reviews in 2025 and continues to monitor the company’s UK profile.
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The report also highlights how advances in AI are making fake and manipulated reviews easier to produce at scale and increasingly difficult for consumers to distinguish from genuine feedback.
Daniel Mohacek, CEO of TruthEngine, said:
“The Vodafone case shows why businesses need much greater visibility and oversight of what is happening around their reviews.
When reviews mention named staff at this kind of level, and when there is also a significant increase in accounts that have only ever left a single review, it is a pattern that warrants proper scrutiny.
Most consumers read reviews assuming they have been written freely by genuine customers. If there is any pressure, incentive or interference behind those reviews, that trust can break down very quickly.”
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) now has direct consumer enforcement powers and can impose significant financial penalties against companies that abuse their rules, worth up to 10% of global turnover, without first taking a business through the courts.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Evri seem to do the same thing – they will direct you to review a single interaction with a courier and then it gets posted to Trustpilot as if you’re reviewing their service. I assume the incentive for Trustpilot to do anything about this is very low as it serves the companies being reviewed if they’re allowed to manipulate the scores in this way, and they’re not going to pay for a service that won’t give them a good score.
Does anyone actually trust online reviews or take them seriously? The internet is now so enshittified that my starting point is now that it’s all garbage.
I use Amazon and eBay to some extent. The worst is Google, where you can get auto-banned for leaving a negative review if the company you reviewed reports you.
Trustpilot has some odd maths used to come up with their average anyway, have a look at the Trustpilot average and then look at the review numbers against 1 to 5, it does not make sense and is weighted towards the company.
Trustpilot’s customers are companies. Those are where their revenue stream is, so it creates an obvious conflict-of-interest. Those companies that pay get tools to reply to and flag reviews.
Not saying the Trust Pilot score is weighted, or how it is if it is. But it is more likely that a upset customer will leave a bad review (on what ever platform it is), then for a happy customer to leave one.
Small typo “four and five-start”
Haha fake news reporting fake reviews.
From an insider, three after the merger have adopted the same trustpilot system as Vodafone. Previously the customer metric used nps/ccs. A random text sent to a customer asking for a rating from 1 to 10. Each store gets a trustpilot number that they need to get. In this case it’s 5 a month. So all employees do is wait for a data transfer or a good interaction and ask for a review. So all the reviews are overwhelming positive.
A flawed system to milk trustpilot to increase a company’s score to influence potential customers
The previous system for all it’s flaws was at least representative of a stores customer score
The company font condone employess leaving reviews on behalf of customers but how accurate is a score when all you need to do is wait for a good interaction and ask for feedback. Employees bonus is also in part linked to trustpilot
TBF reviews on this site are also highly manipulated.
To be fair we’ve always been pretty aggressive and open with tackling such incidents in the past, including banning providers from the system and naming/shaming. So if you have solid evidence we can work with, rather than mere suspicion (big claims require big evidence), then I’ll happily investigate.
At the moment there’s only one provider that I’m keeping an eye on in the system due to some suspicious patterns.
I have used Vodafone retail stores several times over decades and generally the service I as a non business customer have received is good, however at various times I have seen some customers including business customers that were very dissatisfied and unhappy about Vodafone services requesting help in Vodafone retail stores to resolve problems with handsets and connections.
I have also been unable to log into my Vodafone account using email but can with the mobile number on my mobile phone despite numerous attempts in store, online and over the phone to customer services so I can appreciate the frustration of some Vodafone customers.