Website reviews review policy

This policy explains how reviews of websites connected to RatingsPlus are collected, held, published, challenged, changed and removed. It applies to the merchant, to the people who write reviews and to anyone reading them. It is written to meet the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 and the CMA's guidance on fake and concealed reviews.

1. Who can write a review

• Only someone we invited by email after the merchant told us about their order, using the link in that invitation. Following the link proves the reviewer controls the address we wrote to.
• A review needs a star rating and at least 10 characters of written text.
• Every review carries a public label, Invited or Verified order, explained on what Invited and Verified order mean.

2. The 72-hour hold

• Every review is held for 72 hours after it is written, then publishes on its own. The reviewer is told this on the thank-you page and in the email confirming their review.
• The hold is not an approval queue. Nobody approves good reviews or refuses bad ones: a review that nobody flags and that passes our automatic checks is published when the hold ends, whatever its rating.
• During the hold we score the review for signs it is not genuine (for example, many reviews from one network or address). A suspicious score opens a case for our staff instead of publishing it automatically. The score is advice to staff; it never removes a review by itself.
• The merchant can see a held review and reply to it, but cannot stop it.

3. Flags

The merchant, or any reader (using "Report" on the review, no account needed), can flag a review for one of these reasons only:

• Not a genuine experience
• Conflict of interest
• Harmful or illegal content
• Personal data

• Flagged during the hold: publication pauses until our staff decide.
• Flagged after publication: a case opens and the review stays up while staff decide.
• A review has at most one open case at a time; a second flag joins the case already open.
• Staff aim to decide within 5 working days. The reviewer is emailed when their review is flagged and again with the outcome.
• Disagreeing with a review, or finding it unfair, is not by itself a reason to remove it.

4. Case outcomes

Every case is closed with one of these outcomes and a reason code, so that how often reviews are kept or removed can be published later:

• Kept — the review stays up, or publishes straight away if it was held. Reason: complies with the review policy, or not enough evidence of a breach.
• Removed — the review is taken down everywhere, for one of the flag reasons above and no other. It is recorded as removed by RatingsPlus, never as withdrawn by its author.
• Withdrawn by author — the reviewer withdrew the review before staff decided.

5. The reviewer stays in control

• The email confirming a review contains a private link. With it the reviewer can edit or withdraw their review at any time.
• Editing treats the review as new: it is checked again and held again for 72 hours before the new version publishes. A merchant's reply to the earlier version is kept and marked as a reply to an earlier version.
• Withdrawing takes the review off every public page and out of every count straight away, and erases it: its title, text, rating and photos, and the reviewer's name and email address. Where the merchant had replied publicly, a short notice that a review was withdrawn by its author stays on the store's page together with the reply, so the reply does not disappear or stand unexplained. Where there was no reply, nothing remains in public. A withdrawal is final, and the private link stops working.
• A review removed after a case can no longer be edited or withdrawn.

6. What the merchant can and cannot do

• Reply publicly to any review; the reply is labelled as the merchant's.
• Flag a review, as above.
• Not: delete, hide, edit, reorder or delay a review; choose which customers are invited based on the review they expect; or offer anything in return for a review.

7. Retention and erasure

• The order details behind an invitation are deleted 180 days after the order was fulfilled. The review keeps its label; the order record goes.
• A published review stays up for as long as the merchant's profile exists, unless its author withdraws it or staff remove it. Disconnecting a website or a lapse in its domain verification never deletes reviews.
• Anyone can stop all review invitations from RatingsPlus with the unsubscribe link in any invitation. The opt-out covers every store and our directory, not only the one that invited them.
• A reviewer can ask us to erase their personal data at any time through our contact page, in addition to withdrawing the review themselves. See the privacy policy for their other rights under the UK GDPR.