Claiming that you can't ask people to leave a review on Trustpilot sounds like a deceptive sales tactic with no legal basis.
On the other hand, regarding reproducing reviews, I believe that (1) people own the copyright on their own reviews and (2) Trustpilot's T&Cs likely include that when you leave a review you grant them a licence. Therefore it may indeed be that the only way to reproduce a review is to get the consent of the author or of Trustpilot.
Getting the consent of the author seems to not matter a jot to TPilot, also they are not keen to disclose this fact when pressed i.e. "can't I just ask the person who wrote it if its ok".
On your first point, quite, it's quite incredible the lengths they will go to in order to prevent you collecting reviews whilst not paying them a fee.
Claiming that you can't ask people to leave a review on Trustpilot sounds like a deceptive sales tactic with no legal basis.
On the other hand, regarding reproducing reviews, I believe that (1) people own the copyright on their own reviews and (2) Trustpilot's T&Cs likely include that when you leave a review you grant them a licence. Therefore it may indeed be that the only way to reproduce a review is to get the consent of the author or of Trustpilot.
Getting the consent of the author seems to not matter a jot to TPilot, also they are not keen to disclose this fact when pressed i.e. "can't I just ask the person who wrote it if its ok". On your first point, quite, it's quite incredible the lengths they will go to in order to prevent you collecting reviews whilst not paying them a fee.