Reviewer Guidelines

_Last updated: 3 August 2026_

These Reviewer Guidelines explain what makes a review welcome on TrustRating, what will get a review hidden or removed, and what you can expect from us and from the businesses you review. They are part of the Terms of Service and work alongside the Acceptable Use Policy and the Review Verification, Moderation & Appeals Policy. If you remember only one sentence, remember this: write honestly about something that actually happened to you, and you will never have a problem here.

1. Who may write a review

You may review a company if you have had a genuine, recent experience with it — a purchase, a service, a delivery, a support interaction, a contract, a visit, an application. The experience must be yours, first-hand: not a friend's story, not a screenshot from social media, not something you watched happen to someone else in a queue. "Recent" means within the last 12 months, unless the experience is part of an ongoing relationship (a bank, an insurer, a subscription) in which case you may review the relationship as it stands today. You must hold an account with a verified email address; reviews from unverified accounts are not published. You may review the same company again after a new experience, and you may update your existing review at any time — updates are welcome, especially when a business resolves your problem.

You may not review: your own business or one you work for, have worked for in the last 12 months, or hold a financial interest in; a direct competitor of such a business; a company you have never dealt with, no matter how strongly you feel about it from news or hearsay; or on behalf of someone else — encourage them to write their own review instead. Family members' experiences belong to the family member.

2. Honesty and evidence

Describe what happened, when, and what the company did about it. Facts you state must be true to the best of your knowledge; opinions must be your genuine opinions. Do not exaggerate for effect ("they stole my money" when a refund was late), do not present speculation as fact, and do not copy someone else's text or reuse review text across unrelated companies. If a business or our moderators ask for evidence of your experience — an order number, an invoice, correspondence — providing it keeps your review published; a review whose author cannot show any connection to the company after a documented request may be taken down under the moderation policy. We ask for the minimum needed and handle documents under the Privacy Policy.

Reviews written after an invitation from the business are automatically marked verified, because the invitation itself proves the transaction. Organic reviews are equally welcome; verification simply adds weight, as described on the methodology page. A word on defamation, because reviewers sometimes worry about it: truthful statements of fact and honestly held opinions about a genuine experience are exactly what review platforms exist to publish, and we stand behind the right to publish them. What creates legal risk — for you, not the platform — is inventing facts. "The soup was cold and the waiter ignored us" is a review; "the owner is a convicted fraudster" had better be true and provable. Write what happened, and the law is on your side in every jurisdiction we operate in.

3. Independence — no paid or bargained reviews

A review must never be a transaction. Do not accept — and businesses must never offer — money, discounts, refunds, gifts, loyalty points, contest entries or any other advantage in exchange for writing a review, for a particular star rating, or for editing or deleting a review. Both sides of such a bargain violate this platform's rules: the reviewer's account is sanctioned, and the business is sanctioned under the Business Terms of Service. The one legitimate incentive is good service.

The mirror image is equally prohibited: do not threaten a business with a bad review, or offer to remove one, to obtain more than you are genuinely owed. Asking a company to fix your actual problem is your right; using the review as leverage for extras is extortion under the Acceptable Use Policy and ends accounts.

4. Content rules

Write about the company, not the world. A review should concern the reviewed company's own products, services and conduct — not its industry, its country's politics, or news events you were not part of. Keep it civil: criticism can be sharp, but harassment, hate speech, threats, obscenity and personal abuse are removed regardless of how bad the underlying experience was. Protect privacy — yours and others': never post full names of private individuals, home addresses, phone numbers, account numbers, health details or documents containing them; naming a staff member is acceptable only by first name and role where relevant ("the manager, Anna, resolved it"). No promotion: reviews must not contain advertising, referral codes, links to competitors or your own site. No prohibited content of any kind listed in the Acceptable Use Policy. Write in a language the platform supports so moderators and readers can understand you, and give your review a date of experience that is accurate.

Star ratings should match the text: a one-star rating with a text describing a solved problem confuses readers; if the business fixed it, consider saying so and rating the whole experience. And a note on timing — reviews written in the first heat of anger are the ones most often regretted and edited later. The platform does not require you to wait, but the review you would write tomorrow, with the facts in order and the adjectives cooled, is almost always the stronger one.

5. Editing, updating and deleting

You stay in control of your reviews. From your profile you can edit a review (for example to add "UPDATE: the company contacted me and resolved the issue"), change its rating, or delete it entirely. Edits keep the review's place in the record and update the company's score with the new rating; deletion removes both the review and its effect on the score. There is no penalty for either — the record is yours to keep accurate, and an updated review that tells the whole arc of a problem and its resolution is worth more to readers than the original snapshot ever was. Businesses can reply publicly to your review and may, through the platform, ask you for more information or report a review they believe breaks the rules — they can never edit your words, and deleting a truthful review is never something you owe anyone. If a business pressures you off-platform to delete a review, please report it via the contact page.

6. Flags, votes and community conduct

Every review carries a flag control. Use it when you believe a review is fake, incentivised, abusive or otherwise rule-breaking — flags from independent users automatically escalate the review for human moderation. Flag with a reason, and flag the rule violation you actually see: "I disagree with this review" is not a flag category, because disagreement is what the reply button and your own review are for. Use helpful votes to surface reviews that genuinely informed you. Do not weaponise these tools: coordinated flagging of honest negative reviews, or vote rings, are manipulation under the Acceptable Use Policy and are detected by the same systems that catch fake reviews.

Your public reviewer profile is part of the community fabric too: it shows your review history and lets readers judge your track record, which is why credibility accumulates and why the rules protect it. A profile of thoughtful, specific reviews across different companies is worth more to readers — and carries more weight — than any single rating ever could.

7. What happens to rule-breaking reviews

The pipeline, the automated TrustGuard screening, the human moderation queue and your appeal rights are described in detail in the Review Verification, Moderation & Appeals Policy. In brief: a review that breaks these Guidelines can be hidden pending investigation or removed; repeat or serious violations lead to a review ban (your account remains but can no longer publish reviews — shown as a label for transparency) or to full suspension; and everything is appealable. Removal of a review recalculates the company's TrustScore automatically, in both directions — we remove fake praise exactly as we remove fake attacks.

8. What you can expect from us

We publish reviews promptly when they pass screening; we never suppress a review because a business pays us — no plan, ad budget or partnership moves a score, as promised in the Content Integrity, Scoring & IP Policy; we tell you which rule was applied when we act on your content, and we give you a real appeal reviewed by a human who was not involved in the original decision; we protect your account data under the Privacy Policy; and we defend honest reviewers — a business that retaliates against truthful criticism through legal threats delivered via our platform, review-gating or harassment faces sanctions under the Business Terms of Service.

9. Common questions

Can I review a company I contacted but never bought from? Yes, if the interaction itself was a real experience — a sales process, a quote, an application, a support conversation. Say clearly what the experience was, so readers weigh it correctly. Reviewing a company you only read about is not allowed.

Can I review my former employer? Employment disputes are not customer experiences; TrustRating reviews concern a company's products and services to customers. If you were also a genuine customer, review the customer experience only, and remember the 12-month conflict rule in Section 1.

The company says my review is fake, but it isn't. What now? Keep calm and keep your evidence. If moderators ask for proof of experience, respond within the stated window — an order number or email thread settles most disputes in minutes. Your review stays up unless the process finds otherwise, and a wrong outcome is appealable under the moderation policy.

Can I include photos? Where the review form accepts images, they must be your own, relevant, and free of other people's personal data. Images are moderated by the same rules as text.

Can I write my review in my own language? Yes — reviews in the platform's supported languages are welcome, and readers see them with the profile. Choose the language you can be precise in.

What if my experience is ongoing — a dispute that isn't resolved yet? Review what has happened so far, dated accurately, and update the review as things develop. A review is a snapshot, and updates are the honest way to keep it true.

Someone offered to buy my established account. Selling or lending accounts is prohibited — an account's history is the basis of its credibility, which is exactly why fraud operations want to buy it. Report the approach via the contact page.

Does deleting my account delete my reviews? Published reviews persist by default (Section 4 of the Terms of Service explains why), but you can delete individual reviews yourself before or after closing the account, and your data rights under the Privacy Policy remain available.

10. Tips for a genuinely useful review

The best reviews on TrustRating share a shape: what you bought or used and when; what went well or wrong, concretely ("delivery took 19 days, support answered twice, refund arrived after the second email"); how the company responded when things went wrong — this is the single most useful signal for other buyers; and a rating that matches the story. Specifics beat adjectives: "amazing" tells a reader nothing, "the replacement arrived in two days with a prepaid return label" tells them everything. Dates and amounts anchor credibility. And the five-star scale means something: five is exceptional, three is adequate, one is seriously wrong — grade inflation helps nobody, including the good companies drowned in an ocean of casual fives. Two hundred honest words help a thousand strangers. That is the entire idea of this platform, and we are glad you are part of it. Questions? Visit the help center or contact us.