The rules on how online shops show reviews, prices and adverts got much tougher in April 2025, and the Competition and Markets Authority can now fine a business up to 10% of its worldwide turnover for breaking them. These are the rules most likely to catch out a new dropshipping shop.
Fake reviews are banned
It is now banned to write, or pay someone to write, a fake review, or a review that hides the fact the reviewer was given something for it. Copying reviews from your supplier's listing or another shop onto your own website, as if your own customers wrote them, is likely to count, because they aren't reviews of buying from you.
If you show reviews on your website, you also have to take reasonable steps to stop fake ones appearing and to take them down. The CMA's guidance says you should have a published policy that says fake reviews aren't allowed, and that using a review service doesn't pass the responsibility on to them.
The first price must be the price they pay
Showing one price and then adding charges every customer has to pay as they go through the checkout, known as drip pricing, is banned. On 2 November 2026 the CMA wrote to online shops about delivery charges in particular: if every customer has to pay a delivery charge, the lowest one must be included in the price shown on adverts, product pages and the basket, all the way through. The CMA says it has already fined businesses more than £5.1 million over this.
"Was" prices need proof
If you show a price as reduced, the Advertising Standards Authority says the higher price must be a genuine price you normally sold it at, for longer than the sale price, and it expects at least three months of pricing history to back it up. A new shop can't show a "was" price for a product it has only just started selling.
Claims you can prove
The advertising rules say your adverts must not mislead, and you must hold evidence for any claim a customer would take as fact, such as "lasts twice as long" or "the UK's best seller". If you can't prove it, don't say it.
Adverts must look like adverts
If you pay someone, or give them free products, to post about your shop, the post must be clearly labelled as an advert, for example with "Ad" at the start. The advertising regulator expects the label up front, not hidden at the end.
What your website must tell customers → How to price your products →
