Reviews policy

This policy was published before reviews opened, so that it is a commitment rather than a defence written after the first argument. It describes what the site actually does today, not what it is meant to do eventually.

Who can write one

Anyone with an account. An account is a Google sign-in or a link sent to an email address — there is no password, because a password would be something for us to lose.

One review per person per business, editable rather than repostable.

How we verify reviews — the honest answer. We verify that an account exists, and that one account leaves one review per business. We do not check that a reviewer was a customer. Nobody is asked for an invoice before publishing.

There are two stronger rungs in the system and neither is switched on yet: phone verification, which needs an SMS provider we do not have, and a Verified customer badge for authors who show evidence of the transaction. When either starts working this page will say so before it does. In the meantime, the only situation in which anyone is asked for proof of a visit is a dispute — see "Right of reply" below.

What happens to a review after it is posted

It is published immediately. Nobody reads it first and decides whether it deserves to appear.

Two things happen automatically, and neither of them deletes anything:

• Reviews are translated into the other two languages, once, when they are saved. The original is always available and is marked as the original.
• A pattern check looks at the last 48 hours. When several reviews of one business arrive together from accounts that were created around the same time, and all of them point the same way, the whole group is moved to the not recommended list: still public, still readable, but not counted toward the rating. A person then looks at it and puts back anything genuine. Real customers do not all open an account on the same afternoon; bought reviews do.

What gets removed, and what never does

Removed for breaking a content rule: illegal content, personal attacks, someone else's personal data, content that is not about this business, and sabotage by a competitor.

Never removed for being negative. Not on request, not for a paying advertiser, not for a phone call. An advertiser's complaint goes into the same queue as anyone else's, and is logged as such. Removing criticism because a business asked is itself an unfair commercial practice under EU consumer law, and it would destroy the only thing this catalogue is for.

That is not only a promise. There are exactly four reasons a review can be reported for, they are the four in the form, and none of them means "this review is unwelcome" — so there is no way to record a removal against one.

Two of those four reasons cannot lead to a removal at all. If a review is reported as not from a customer or as containing a factual error, the most that can happen is that it loses its badge or moves to the not-recommended list. We can establish that nobody sent us an invoice; we cannot establish that somebody was never there, and acting as though we could would be exactly the unjustified removal the law forbids.

Reporting something, and what happens next

Every review has a report link. You do not need an account to use it — you need an email address, because we write to you with the decision.

1. You choose one of the four reasons and tell us anything that would help us check.
2. Nothing changes on the page while we look. A report is a notice, not a verdict.
3. For "not a customer" only: we write privately to the author and ask for evidence of the transaction — an invoice, a job card, a payment, a message arranging the work. They have 14 days. If nothing arrives, the review loses its badge or moves to the not-recommended list. It is not deleted.
4. We decide, and both the author and the business receive the same written statement of reasons, in the same words, whichever way it went — including when we decide to do nothing.
5. Whoever the decision went against gets one appeal.

Every step is written to a log that is only ever added to. If you ever need us to show our working, it is there.

Right of reply

Every claimed business can reply publicly to any review about it, always, without asking us. The reply appears under the review, in the reader's language, and we neither edit it nor approve it first.

There is no private channel for owners to ask for a review to be taken down. An owner who thinks a review breaks a rule uses the same report form as everyone else, and gets the same written decision.

Ranking and votes

Reviews sort by recency by default. There is an upvote and no downvote: at the scale of a small island, fifteen coordinated votes could bury a review, and burying criticism systematically is the thing the law forbids.

Votes never touch the star average, and never change how visible a critical review is. The most helpful positive review and the most helpful critical review are shown side by side at the top of every business page, always — whenever both exist, whatever the votes say.

Ratings

A business's score is a Bayesian average, pulled toward the site-wide average while it has few reviews. One five-star review does not outrank forty at 4.8 — which also removes most of the payoff from buying three fake ones.

That means the number on the page is deliberately not the plain average of the stars, and it will differ from what you get by dividing. It moves toward the plain average as more people write.

Helpful votes are not part of it. Neither is money: nothing on this site can be paid for that changes a rating or the order of a list. Sponsored placements, when they exist, will be separate and labelled.

Asking for reviews

Businesses are encouraged to ask their customers, and are given a link and a QR code to do it with. Two rules apply to them, and both are law rather than our preference:

• Nothing of value may be offered for a review — no discount, no prize draw.
• Everyone must be asked, or nobody. Asking only the customers who seemed happy is an unfair commercial practice.

If a garage offers you something for a review, tell us.

Reporting something else

Use the report link on any review, or write to hello@carservice.cy. Say which review and which of the rules above you think it breaks.