Review Policy

1. What this policy does

Ratecrest is only useful if reviews are honest, the rules are clear, and decisions are fair. This policy sets out the rules for reviews, the process we follow when a review is challenged, and the standards we hold ourselves to when making decisions.

The wider rights and duties of users sit in the Terms of Use. The detail of how we handle content removal sits in the Content Moderation Policy. This page is the part you read if you want to understand the review system itself.

2. Who can write a review

You can write a review on Ratecrest if all of the following are true.

• You are at least eighteen years old.
• You have a Ratecrest account that is in good standing.
• You had a genuine, direct experience with the business you are reviewing.
• You are not an employee, owner, contractor, business partner, immediate family member, or close associate of the business reviewed.
• You are not a competitor of the business reviewed.
• You were not paid, offered a discount, or otherwise rewarded for writing the review.

If a review fails any of these tests, we remove it. Repeated breaches lead to account suspension or closure.

3. What counts as a real experience

A real experience is a direct interaction with the business. The most common kinds are buying a product, paying for a service, making a serious enquiry that the business responded to (or failed to), receiving a delivery, attending an appointment, or being a guest at the business's premises.

You do not need a receipt to write a review. We do not gate reviews behind proof of purchase, because that would shut out the customers most likely to leave honest feedback (such as walk-ins, cash buyers, and people whose receipts are long gone). If a business challenges a specific review, we may ask the reviewer for whatever support they can offer, but the absence of a receipt is not, by itself, a reason to remove a review.

What does not count as a real experience: hearing about a business from a friend, reading about it online, walking past it, or being annoyed by its advertising. Reviews about businesses you have not dealt with are removed.

4. Opinions and factual claims

Reviews are made of two kinds of statements, and we treat them differently.

4.1 Opinions

An opinion is your view about your experience. "The food was bland", "the queue was too long", "I felt the staff were rude", "I will not be returning". Opinions are protected. You do not need to prove your opinion. A business owner cannot have an opinion removed just because they disagree with it.

4.2 Factual claims

A factual claim is a statement about something specific that either happened or did not. "The bill was ₦15,000", "I waited 90 minutes for my food", "the salesperson said the warranty was 12 months". Factual claims should be true to the best of your knowledge. We may ask for support if a business challenges a serious factual claim. Where a factual claim is shown to be false, we may ask for it to be corrected or, in serious cases, remove the review.

4.3 The grey area

Most reviews mix opinion and fact. "The food was bland and arrived cold after 45 minutes" is half opinion, half fact. We assess these as a whole. A small factual error inside a broadly accurate review usually leads to a correction request, not a removal.

5. Defamation and the Cybercrimes Act

Nigerian law gives a business strong remedies if a review contains false statements of fact that cause real harm. Defamation under common law and certain offences under the Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention, etc.) Act, 2015 can apply to online content.

We take these areas seriously. Where we are shown that a specific factual claim in a review is false and damaging, we will act on it. Where the law requires us to remove or restrict content on the order of a Nigerian court, we comply.

We do not, however, remove reviews simply because a business owner says they are defamatory. Calling a review "defamatory" is not the same as showing it. The bar in Nigerian law is high, and we apply it carefully so that honest critics are not silenced through complaints that have no basis.

6. What is not allowed in a review

Even where the eligibility rules above are met, a review will be removed if it contains any of the following.

• False statements of fact that cause harm.
• Threats of violence against the business, its staff, or other named people.
• Harassment, intimidation, or stalking content.
• Hate speech targeting people on the basis of tribe, religion, nationality, gender, disability, or similar characteristics.
• Slurs and profanity that go beyond strong feeling and into abuse.
• Personal data of staff or other customers, such as home addresses, phone numbers, identity numbers, or photographs taken without consent.
• Sexual content, sexual harassment, or sexualised commentary about staff.
• Content that infringes copyright, including photographs you do not own.
• Promotion of unrelated businesses, including links and contact details.
• Anything illegal under Nigerian law.

Reviews containing this material are removed. Repeated breaches lead to account action.

7. Flagging a review

Anyone can flag a review they believe breaches this policy. Flags are how we hear about problems. We read every flag, and we act on the ones that are well founded.

7.1 How to flag

Use the flag link next to the review. Choose the reason that fits best, and add a short note explaining what is wrong. Flags with specific reasons carry more weight than flags without them. "Not honest" is less useful than "The reviewer was never our customer. We have no record of an Ada Okeke as a client."

7.2 What you can expect

We aim to look at flags on the most serious grounds (illegal content, active harassment, threats) within 48 hours. Other flags are usually resolved within 7 days. These are targets, not promises. Volume can affect timing.

7.3 What we will do

We will look at the review, the flag, the reviewer's history, the business's history, and any other context we have. We may ask the reviewer or the business for more information. We will then decide whether to leave the review up, remove it, or ask for a correction. We will tell the person who raised the flag what we decided.

7.4 Misusing flags

Filing flags in bulk without basis, filing the same flag repeatedly after a decision, or using flags to harass a reviewer can lead to flagging restrictions or other account action.

8. What business owners can do

8.1 Public reply

You can reply publicly to any review about your business, free of charge, whether or not you are on a paid plan. The reply appears right under the review. A good reply addresses the specific points raised, acknowledges what went wrong if anything did, and explains what you have done about it. Sarcasm, insults, threats, and personal attacks on the reviewer breach our rules and will be removed.

8.2 Flagging a review

Use the flag link, the same as everyone else. Be specific. "I disagree with this review" is not a basis for removal. "The reviewer says we charged ₦50,000 for a service that costs ₦5,000. Here is our price list." is.

8.3 What you cannot do

You cannot pay for positive reviews, offer discounts in exchange for reviews, condition any service on the review you get, instruct staff or family to leave reviews, or write reviews of your competitors yourself. These are all serious breaches and lead to profile penalties, including loss of paid features and removal from search results.

9. Appeals

If we remove your review, you can appeal once. If we leave a review up after you flagged it, you can also appeal once.

An appeal is reviewed by a different member of our team, looking at the review fresh. We tell you the outcome and the reason. Our decision on appeal is final on the Ratecrest platform, though it does not prevent you from raising the matter with a court or regulator.

For serious matters, including allegations that touch on defamation, we may pause the public visibility of a review while the appeal is being considered.

10. How reviews affect ratings and ranking

A business's overall rating is calculated from the ratings on the reviews about it. We do not weight reviews based on whether they are positive or negative. We may weight reviews based on signals that have nothing to do with sentiment, such as the age of the review (more recent reviews can count for more in the rolling average), whether the reviewer is verified, and whether the review has been flagged but not yet resolved.

We do not sell ranking. A business cannot pay to have its overall rating raised, to have negative reviews hidden, or to appear higher in search results than its rating warrants. Paid plans give business owners more features, not better ratings.

11. Asking for reviews the right way

Asking your customers for honest reviews is good practice, and we encourage it. You can email them, message them, hand them a card, put a QR code on a receipt. What you cannot do is condition the asking on the rating you expect to get back. "Please leave us a review" is fine. "Please leave us a 5-star review" is not. "Please leave us a review, and tell us first if it would be a low one so we can fix it" is also not, because it sorts reviews by likely rating before they are posted.

Businesses that systematically suppress negative feedback through these tactics ("review gating") lose paid features and may be suspended.

12. Updating and removing your own review

You can edit your review at any time through your account. If you change a star rating, the change is reflected in the business's average from that point on. We do not edit the meaning of your review when you edit it.

You can also delete your own review at any time. If you delete a review and then post a similar one shortly after about the same business, our systems may flag it for review.

13. When we act without a flag

Sometimes we remove a review or restrict an account without anyone flagging it. The most common reasons are automated detection of suspicious posting patterns (such as the same review text appearing on many businesses, or many accounts posting from the same fingerprint), reviewer accounts created within minutes of a posting burst, and clear breaches of the rules above that our team spotted during routine work.

Where we act on our own initiative, we tell the affected user, explain the reason, and give the same right of appeal as if a flag had been involved.

14. Transparency

We aim to be open about how the review system works. Where we make a decision that affects you (your review, your business, your account) we explain it in plain language. Where the law allows, we may publish aggregate statistics about flag volumes and removal rates from time to time, so the wider public can judge how we are doing.

15. Changes to this policy

We update this policy as the platform evolves. Small clarifications happen without fuss. Material changes will be highlighted on the site when you next visit, and we may notify registered users by email where the change is significant. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page always reflects the current version.

16. How to contact us

The contact form on this site is the right way to reach us about a review, a flag, or anything in this policy. Write "Review policy" in the subject so the right team handles it.