Review guidelines

A review should reflect something that actually happened to you. That means you used the product, hired the service, visited the place, or had some other direct interaction with the business — not something you heard about second-hand, read somewhere else, or imagined might be true.

If you haven’t personally dealt with a business, don’t review them. There’s no way to write a fair review of an experience you didn’t have.

The most useful reviews say exactly what happened. Vague praise and vague criticism are equally unhelpful to the people reading your review and to the business trying to improve.

Specific details — what you bought, what went wrong or right, how the business handled it — give your review real weight. They help future customers make a decision and give the business something concrete to act on.

Most experiences aren’t all good or all bad. If something went wrong but the business handled it well, say so. If you loved the product but the packaging was a mess, say that too. An honest mixed review is more valuable than a dishonestly clean one.

Don’t inflate your rating because you feel awkward leaving a bad one. Don’t deflate it because you were having a rough day. Rate the experience you actually had.

Your review is about the business and your experience with them — not about other customers, not about unrelated events, and not about personal grievances that have nothing to do with the transaction.

If your complaint is with a third-party courier, a payment processor, or something else entirely outside the business’s control, it’s worth mentioning the context, but be fair about where the responsibility actually lies.

Each email address can leave one review per business. If your situation changes after you’ve reviewed — for example, a problem got resolved — contact us and we can look into updating or removing your review. Don’t create a second account to leave another one.

Threatening to leave a negative review unless a business gives you a refund, a discount, or special treatment is not a legitimate use of a review platform. It’s unfair to the business and it undermines the credibility of every other review on the platform.

If something went wrong with your order or service, contact the business directly first. Reviews are for sharing your experience after the fact — not for applying pressure during a dispute.

Paid, incentivised, or otherwise arranged reviews are not allowed — with one narrow exception: if a business has given you something in exchange for an honest review (a sample product, a discount, etc.) and you clearly disclose that in the review text, that’s acceptable. Hidden incentives are not.

If you work for a business, or are closely connected to its owners or employees, you should not review it. People can tell, and it damages everyone else’s credibility.

Reviews that contain the following will be removed, and repeat violations may result in your account being suspended:

• Hate speech or discriminatory language of any kind
• Threats, harassment, or personal attacks on named individuals
• Private information about other people (phone numbers, addresses, etc.)
• Content that is sexually explicit or gratuitously offensive
• Deliberate falsehoods presented as fact
• Links, promotional copy, or spam
• Content that has nothing to do with the reviewer’s experience with the business

We don’t remove reviews because a business doesn’t like them. A business can respond to your review, but they cannot have it taken down just because it’s negative — as long as it follows these guidelines.

If you come across a review that you believe violates these guidelines — whether it’s about your business or one you’re reading — you can report it to us at contact@trustcaptain.io. Include the URL of the review and a brief explanation of your concern. We read every report and will follow up if we need more information.

If you’re unsure whether something you want to write is appropriate, the simplest test is this: would you say it to the business’s face, and stand behind it publicly? If yes, it probably belongs in a review. If not, it probably doesn’t.

For anything else, get in touch at contact@trustcaptain.io.