Review Policy

Reviews on This Is Yarm are written by people in and around Yarm about businesses they've actually used. This page explains what we allow, what we don't, and what we do when something looks wrong. We'd rather publish an uncomfortable review than a flattering one we can't stand behind.

Who can leave a review

Anyone with a This Is Yarm account and a verified email address. You can leave one review per business. You don't need a receipt or proof of purchase — if the experience was yours, it counts, including a meal someone else paid for or a visit that didn't go to plan.

Write about your own experience

Your review must describe something that genuinely happened to you. Reviews that invent an experience are banned by law, and that applies just as much to a glowing review as to a damning one. Don't review a business you own, work for, or are related to the owner of, and don't review a competitor.

Payment and incentives

We don't allow paid or incentivised reviews. No business may offer you money, a discount, a freebie, a refund or anything else in exchange for a review, for a particular star rating, or for taking a review down. If a business asks you to do any of that, tell us — we'll look into it, and we may put a notice on their listing.

Our monthly prize draw is the one exception, and it works differently: every genuine review submitted in a month is entered, whatever the star rating and whatever it says. The draw doesn't reward praise and it can't be influenced by a business.

What we won't publish

We hold or refuse a review if it:

• doesn't describe a real, first-hand experience you had with that business
• was written in exchange for payment, a discount, a freebie or anything else
• contains swearing, slurs or abuse
• names or otherwise identifies an individual member of staff
• states as fact that a business has committed a crime, a fraud, or a health-and-safety breach
• includes someone's personal details, contact information or private information
• is about a different business, or about a legal dispute you weren't part of
• is spam or an advert rather than a review
• repeats a review you've already left for the same business

That's the whole list. We apply it in exactly the same way to a five-star review as to a one-star one.

What we will never do

We don't remove a review because it's critical, because it upsets a business, or because a business asks us to. A business disagreeing with your account of what happened is not a reason to take your review down. We don't hide low ratings, we don't promote high ones, and we don't let businesses pay to change how their reviews appear.

Businesses cannot approve, edit, hide or delete reviews on their own listing. Moderation is done by us, and only by us.

Automated checks

When you submit a review, it's checked automatically against the list above before it goes live. The check reads the words of your review and nothing else — it isn't told who you are, and it doesn't look at your account, your location or your browsing.

Most reviews raise nothing and are published straight away, usually within a few seconds. Where the check finds something it can point to in your own words, one of two things happens:

• For clear-cut, factual problems — swearing, naming a member of staff, personal details, or spam — the review is refused automatically and we email you to explain why.
• For anything that needs a judgement call, the review is held and a person reads it. We don't let software decide whether we believe you.

Your star rating never influences the check, and the check is never allowed to refuse a review for being negative. Automated checks do get things wrong, which is why every refusal comes with a way to challenge it.

If we don't publish your review

We'll email you, tell you which part of this policy is the problem, and show you what you wrote. If you think we've got it wrong, just reply to that email — a person will read it and take another look. Almost every held review turns out to be publishable.

Businesses replying

A business that has claimed its listing can post one public reply to each review. Replies appear underneath the review and are clearly labelled. Replies have to follow the same rules as reviews, and we'll remove any that don't — tell us if you see one that doesn't. A reply is the way to put your side of the story; it isn't a route to having a review removed.

Reporting a review

If you're signed in, you can report any review using the "Report this review" link underneath it. Tell us which part of this policy you think it breaks and anything else we should know. We'll look at it and record what we decided.

Reporting a review doesn't mean it comes down. We only remove reviews that break one of the grounds above, and "we don't agree with it" isn't one of them.

How the star rating works

A business's rating is the plain average of every published review it has, with every review counting the same. Reviews we're still checking don't count towards it. If we remove a review, the rating, the review count and the business's rating badge are all updated promptly.

We show reviews newest first, everywhere they appear. We never order or filter them by star rating.

When reviews break the rules

We remove reviews we're satisfied are fake or paid for, and we correct any rating they affected. Depending on what we find, we may also stop an account leaving reviews, ban it, put a notice on a business's listing warning readers that we've found fake reviews there, remove a listing's reviews from public view, or remove the listing altogether. Where a business does this systematically, we report it to the Competition and Markets Authority.

Reviews and complaints are different things

If you have a problem with a business you can complain to them directly — but you can also leave a review, and we'll publish it either way. We won't ask you to complain instead of reviewing, and sorting a problem out afterwards doesn't mean your review comes down.

The law

Fake reviews, hidden paid-for reviews, and hiding or cherry-picking genuine ones are banned under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. This policy is how we meet our obligations under it. We review it at least once a year.

This policy forms part of our Terms & Conditions. Questions? Get in touch.