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The practice nobody is pretending not to know about anymore

Anyone working in B2B software has known for years: reviews on G2, TrustRadius, Gartner Peer Insights and Capterra are, to a significant extent, bought. Not in the literal sense of “the vendor writes the review” — that’s crude fraud and the marketplaces have reasonable filters against it. Bought in the sense of incentivized: the customer gets an Amazon gift card, a charity donation, product credits, or simply a coffee with Customer Success in exchange for “fifteen quick minutes” writing a review.

G2 itself allows incentives as long as (a) the vendor doesn’t know who wrote what and (b) the incentive is the same regardless of the score given. TrustRadius has an equivalent rule. The FTC, through its Endorsement Guides revised in 2023, requires conspicuous disclosure.

That’s fine. Incentivized reviews, not conditioned on score, are acceptable and even useful — they grow sample size and tend to regress toward the product’s real mean.

What crosses the line: incentive conditional on a perfect score

The red line — legal, ethical, and contractually with G2 itself — is conditioning the incentive on the score given. Sentences like:

“Send me a screenshot of the published review — if you rate us 10/10, I’ll release the voucher.”

“Just register there, check 5 stars on everything, then send me the link and the credit is yours.”

That isn’t an incentive: it’s buying a score. It’s exactly the scenario the FTC targeted in Operation AI Comply (2024) and in the Fashion Nova case (US$4.2M fine in 2022 for suppressing negative reviews). The distinction between “incentivizing a review” and “buying a 10” is the distinction between legal marketing and deceptive advertising — actionable in the US under FTC §5 and, in Brazil, under Consumer Protection Code art. 37.

Why this surfaces specifically in the backup market

Backup software has three properties that make the temptation enormous:

1. High-value, low-frequency technical decision. A company changes backup vendor every 5–10 years. Pre-purchase research clusters around a few sources — almost always Gartner, Forrester, and the review marketplaces.
2. The average buyer can’t test deeply. Real, at-scale disaster-recovery restoration is expensive to exercise. Most never thoroughly test what they bought — so “satisfaction” reported in the review reflects purchase and initial install experience, not the product under pressure.
3. Enormous renewal margins. A six-figure deal easily amortizes US$100 vouchers across 200 customers. The review-buying math closes with room to spare.

Result: backup is probably the B2B category most saturated with incentivized reviews — and the one that suffers most when the practice slides from neutral incentive into score-buying.

The pattern that repeats

Anyone in the sector for a few years has seen the same scene at more than one vendor: the incentive (voucher, donation, swag) is promised after publication, contingent on a review screenshot sent to the sales rep — and the subtext, rarely written but always present, is that “anything below 10 doesn’t count”. Not hypothesis: a known practice tolerated by at least a slice of C-level in the backup segment.

How the market should react

In the United States. The FTC is already acting. After Fashion Nova and Operation AI Comply, what is missing is an explicit class-action in B2B software. It is plainly viable under consumer-deception theory — particularly because US corporate buyers routinely cite G2 and TrustRadius in their due-diligence memos. That means there is documentary evidence the review influenced the purchase. It’s the missing link in most B2C fake-review suits: here it sits in the buyer’s own internal email. Either the FTC files first, or a plaintiffs’ firm with sector experience will.

In Europe. The EU, through the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Omnibus Directive 2019/2161, already obligates marketplaces to verify reviews come from real buyers and to disclose whether they were incentivized. Fines reach 4% of global turnover. The UK, via the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, made fake reviews illegal per se — no need to prove harm.

In Brazil. Consumer Protection Code (art. 37, §1º) defines deceptive advertising as “entirely or partially false, or by any other means, even by omission, capable of leading the consumer into error”. Reviews fabricated through conditional incentive fall squarely there. Customers can file with PROCON, CONAR, and at scale with MPF when public contracts are involved — and Brazilian public backup contracts number in the thousands.

Is there ethics in marketing?

The question isn’t rhetorical. Marketing is, by definition, persuasive communication — and it has a clear ethical limit: you may emphasize virtues, pick the most flattering angle, tell the story in the best light. You may not fabricate social proof. A review is, by implicit contract with the reader, a statement from someone who used the product. If the statement is filtered by score — only 10s get published — what remains isn’t a review: it’s a commissioned testimonial, and the reader is being misled about the very nature of what they’re reading.

This isn’t academic hair-splitting. It’s the same distinction as “blind taste test” versus “sponsored by Coca-Cola”. The two can coexist on an honest site provided they’re labeled. What G2 and TrustRadius sell to the B2B reader is “blind taste test”. When a vendor buys only the 10s, it becomes “sponsored” without the label.

What PodHeitor does

We don’t pay for reviews. We don’t condition gifts, vouchers, or discounts on scores. When a customer wants to speak well (or poorly) of the product, we publish it on video on the @podheitor channel, with their name and the tested version number. If the opinion is negative, it becomes a release-note item — and the next build fixes it.

It’s slower. It’s harder. It’s the path left when you don’t have the budget to buy 200 perfect-10 reviews — and when you’d rather the product improve than your G2 ranking improve.

To close

If you’re a US backup customer who was steered into a purchase by a G2/TrustRadius ranking we now know to have been manipulated, talk to counsel. There is a basis for class-action. If you’re in Brazil, consider filing with your state PROCON — and, for public-sector contracts, with TCU/MPF. In Europe, the DSA gives you a direct complaint path to the national digital-services coordinator.

And if you’re an executive who tolerates or directs this kind of practice in your organization: it is no longer a backroom conversation. It’s public text now — and the next conversation isn’t going to be with the trade press, it’s going to be with the customer’s legal team.

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