Review policy
This is the policy Placer Match reviews will operate under. Reviews are not live yet.
Last reviewed 2026-07-25
Reviews are not published yet
Who will be able to leave a review
Reviews will be tied to a recorded interaction — a project request submitted through Placer Match, or a verified relationship a business confirms. Anonymous drive-by reviews from people with no connection to the business will not be published. This is a deliberate trade: fewer reviews, but ones that mean something.
Moderation
A review will be removed or refused if it:
- Contains a personal attack, slur, or threat.
- Identifies a private individual, or publishes contact or address details.
- Describes something other than a genuine experience with that business.
- Is about a dispute already in litigation, where publication could prejudice it.
- Is duplicated across multiple accounts.
- Contains content unrelated to the service — spam, promotion, or off-topic material.
A negative review is not removed for being negative. Criticism of price, timeliness, communication or workmanship is legitimate and will stand.
Conflicts of interest
- A business may not review itself, or be reviewed by its own staff, owners or family.
- A business may not review a competitor.
- Incentivised reviews are not allowed. A business may ask a customer to leave a review; it may not offer a discount, gift or preferential treatment in exchange for one, or condition anything on the rating given.
- Placer Match staff will not write reviews of listed businesses, and paid membership never affects whether a review is published or how it is displayed.
Fraudulent reviews
We will investigate patterns that suggest manipulation — clusters of similar reviews, reviews from accounts with no other activity, or timing that correlates with a commercial event. Confirmed manipulation will result in review removal and can result in the listing being unpublished. Repeat or coordinated manipulation will end the business relationship.
Business responses
A business will be able to post one public response per review, held to the same moderation standard. A response may not disclose private customer information — including confirming details of the customer’s job, address or payment history — even to rebut a claim.
Removal and disputes
- A business flags a review and states which part it believes is inaccurate.
- We check the review against our records of the interaction.
- We may ask the reviewer for clarification or evidence.
- We publish the outcome to both parties: the review stands, is amended by the reviewer, or is removed.
Where the facts are genuinely contested and we cannot establish them, the review stays up and the business response stays alongside it. We will not silently delete a review, and we will not edit the words of a review to change its meaning.
A reviewer may delete their own review at any time, for any reason, without explanation.
What we will not do
- We will not write, commission, buy or generate reviews.
- We will not sell review removal, review suppression, or rating adjustment.
- We will not display an aggregate score until there are enough reviews to mean anything.
- We will not present a third-party rating as if it were a Placer Match rating.