Review policy

1. Principles

• The same rules apply to every business, whether or not it pays for membership.
• Membership fees never affect ratings, review order or review visibility.
• We don’t remove a review because a business disagrees with it or because it’s negative.
• We never write, buy, generate or invent reviews, reviewers or testimonials.

2. What reviews must be

• About the reviewer’s own, genuine, previous experience of the business’s products or services, within roughly the last three years.
• Written by someone with no conflict of interest — not the owner, staff, their relatives, or a competitor.
• Not given in exchange for any incentive (discounts, gifts, refunds, prize draws or payment).

3. What isn’t allowed

• Personal information: phone numbers, email or home addresses, or details that identify staff or other customers beyond first names.
• Harassment, threats, hate speech or discriminatory content.
• Statements presented as fact that are false and damaging (possible defamation), or other unlawful content.
• Spam, advertising, links, or automated or bulk submissions.
• Duplicate reviews of the same experience, or reviews of a different business.

4. How enforcement works — fully automated

1. Every review is confirmed by email before publication.
2. Reviews containing phone numbers, email addresses, links, threats or abusive language can’t be submitted — the reviewer is told what to fix.
3. On confirmation, rating-blind rules reject reviews with a conflict of interest (for example an email on the business’s own domain, or a registered member of the business) and repeat reviews of the same business from the same network within 30 days.
4. Verified owners can dispute up to 5 reviews every 30 days. Anyone can report a review; three reports from different people count as a dispute.
5. A dispute automatically asks the reviewer to reconfirm. Reconfirmed reviews stay and can’t be disputed again by the business. Reviews not reconfirmed within 14 days are removed automatically.
6. Every automated decision and its reason is logged.

5. Decisions and reasons

When a rule rejects or removes a review, we tell the reviewer which rule applied. When a dispute closes, the business is shown the outcome in its dashboard.

6. Restoring and complaints

A reviewer can restore a removed review at any time by reconfirming it from their private link, or write a new review that follows this policy. To object to an automated decision, or for anything the rules don’t cover, use our complaints form. You may also have rights to take a complaint to an out-of-court dispute settlement body or to the courts.

7. Business responses

Responses must be professional and truthful. They must not reveal customer information, threaten (including legal threats), harass, or pressure a reviewer. Responses with contact details or abusive language can’t be published.

8. Soliciting reviews

Businesses may invite all customers to leave honest reviews. They must not: offer incentives; ask only satisfied customers; filter, gate or redirect dissatisfied customers; write reviews themselves; or ask staff, friends or family to. Serious or repeated breaches can lead to a public notice on the profile or suspension of membership without refund.

9. Legal notices

If you believe content is illegal (for example defamatory), use the report button on the review or our legal & privacy request form, explaining which content and why. We act on valid legal notices and tell you what we did.

10. Removing your own review

Reviewers can withdraw their own review at any time using their private manage link.