Review rules

Only a customer whose booking or job happened can review it. Once the booking is closed, we ask that customer once. A booking that was cancelled, declined, expired or not attended cannot be reviewed, because there is no service to describe.

One booking, one review. A customer who books the same business again can review the new booking. A job with several visits is reviewed once, as a whole, with an optional rating for each part.

A listing that has not been claimed, or a business on the Free plan, has no reviews. There are no bookings through Bookables to review.

A review is a rating, some words, and the kind of booking it was (a wedding, a skin fade, a deep clean). It is shown with its date and, where a job has parts, the rating for each part.

A listing shows an average rating only once it has five reviews. Below that, each review is shown in full, so a single early review is never mistaken for a verdict.

A review must be your honest experience of that booking. It may be critical. It may be short. What it may not do is:

• describe a booking other than the one it is attached to, or an experience you did not have;
• name or identify a private person, such as a member of staff, in a way that goes beyond their role in the booking, or include anyone’s contact details, address or other personal information;
• make claims about anyone’s health, or give medical, legal or financial advice;
• contain abuse, threats, harassment, discrimination, or sexual or violent content;
• be written for money, a discount, a refund or anything else of value, or in return for withdrawing a complaint;
• advertise another business, or be written by a competitor, an employee, an owner, or a relative of one;
• be unlawful, including defamatory, or breach anyone’s intellectual property or confidentiality.

A business must not ask for a particular rating, offer anything in exchange for one, or discourage a customer from leaving a review they are entitled to leave. Doing so is likely to breach consumer law as well as these rules.

Nothing, on the review itself. A business cannot add, hide, choose, edit or remove a review, and it does not reply to reviews. A review stands as the customer wrote it, and being reviewed comes with being listed.

A business can report a review that breaks these rules, and it can keep its own private notes about a customer on that customer’s record. Those notes are the business’s, are never shown publicly, and are never shared with other businesses.

Either side can report a review that breaks these rules: the business it is about, or the customer who wrote it. A report says which rule is broken and, where it helps, why. The person who reported it is not shown to the other side.

A member of our team reads every report. We remove a review only when it breaks a rule on this page. We do not remove a review because it is unflattering, because the business disagrees with it, or because the customer and the business have since fallen out. While a report is being looked at, the review stays up.

When we remove a review, we tell the customer who wrote it which rule it broke. When we decline to remove one, we tell the person who reported it. Either can appeal once, and the appeal is decided by a different member of our team from the one who made the first decision.

A review cannot be edited after it is posted. If you wrote one and want it taken down, contact us and we will remove it.

The Service records no-shows, late cancellations, response times and bookings a business cancels after confirming them. Response times and business cancellations affect where a business appears in search. We do not publish any of these as a score against a person.

A customer told they did not show up can contest it within 7 days. Either side can log a dispute about a booking, and either side can download the booking’s full record. Bookables stays neutral in that dispute and does not decide it.

We act against an account only for abuse: fraud, harassment, illegal activity, or a business repeatedly cancelling confirmed bookings. That decision is made by a person, under a written policy, and can be appealed. A bad review is never a reason.

Reviews are not yet switched on. When they are, they will work as this page describes, and any change to these rules will be shown by the date at the top of the page. Nothing here changes the terms a customer agreed with a business when they booked.

Questions about these rules, or a report you cannot make from the review itself, can be sent to us via our contact page.