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Review guidelines

Reviews are useful when they are first-hand, specific and fair. These rules apply to every reviewer and every business.

What makes a good review

  • Your own experience. You bought from, hired, booked or asked for a quote from this company, within about the last few years.
  • Specific. What did you buy or have done? Did the final price match the quote? Did it arrive or get done on time? How did they handle a problem? Specifics help the next customer more than adjectives.
  • Fair. Describe what happened and how you were treated. Strong opinions are welcome, insults are not.
  • Long enough to be useful. At least 40 characters, at most 3000.

What we don’t publish

  • Reviews from anyone who works for, is related to, or is paid by the company or one of its competitors.
  • Reviews written in exchange for a discount, gift, payment, entry in a draw or any other reward.
  • Reviews of a different company, or about a manufacturer, marketplace seller or payment provider rather than the company itself.
  • More than one review of the same company from the same person within 30 days.
  • Links, phone numbers, email addresses and full names or contact details of staff.
  • Threats, harassment, hate speech, profanity aimed at people, or sexual content.
  • Content copied from elsewhere, or written by AI tools rather than describing your own experience.
  • Allegations of crimes. Report those to the authorities; you can still describe what happened to you.

Rules for businesses

Businesses are welcome to ask every customer for a review. They must not:

  • Offer anything in exchange for a review, or only for a positive one.
  • Ask only happy customers, or discourage unhappy ones from reviewing.
  • Write reviews of their own business or a competitor, or have staff, family or agencies do it.
  • Pressure or threaten a reviewer to change or remove a review.

These rules follow the US Federal Trade Commission’s rule on consumer reviews (16 CFR Part 465). Reviews obtained by breaking them are removed.

Moderation decisions

A moderator reads every review written on Five Star Index before it is published. If we reject a review we keep a note of the reason. If you think we got it wrong, contact us with the company’s name and the email you used, and we will look at it again.