Terms of Use

1. Who these terms are between

These terms are an agreement between Ratecrest, the operator of the Ratecrest review platform, and you. "We", "us", and "Ratecrest" mean the operator. "You" means the person who creates an account, writes a review, claims a business profile, or otherwise uses the platform.

If you are using Ratecrest on behalf of a company or other organisation, you confirm that you have the authority to bind that organisation to these terms, and "you" then also refers to that organisation.

Signing in through a social provider, such as Google or Facebook, does not change these terms. They still apply.

2. Who can use Ratecrest

The platform is for adults. You must be at least eighteen years old to create an account or post a review. You must be a real person, not an automated system, an AI agent acting alone, or a synthetic identity.

You must have the legal capacity to enter into a contract under Nigerian law. If you are signing on behalf of a business, you must have the authority to do so.

Some features have additional requirements. Identity verification needs valid Nigerian identification. Paid business plans need a verified payment method. We can refuse service for any lawful reason, including suspicion of fraud, abuse, or breach of these terms.

3. Your account

One person, one account. Multiple accounts to circumvent suspensions, inflate review counts, or impersonate other people are not allowed.

Keep your password secret and your account secure. We recommend using a password you do not use anywhere else, and turning on two-factor authentication. You are responsible for the activity that happens through your account.

If you think someone else has access to your account, tell us through the contact form and change your password right away.

You can close your account at any time through your account settings. Some data may stay on the platform after closure, as explained in the Privacy Policy. Reviews you wrote may stay up under your display name unless you ask us to anonymise them.

4. Reviews you write

Reviews are the heart of Ratecrest. They only work if they are honest.

4.1 What you can review

You can write a review about a business if you had a genuine experience with that business. That experience can be a purchase, a service, an enquiry, or another direct interaction. Reviews about businesses you have not dealt with are not allowed.

4.2 Honesty and accuracy

Your review should reflect what actually happened. Opinions are protected, but factual statements should be true to the best of your knowledge. We may ask for evidence in disputes, particularly where a business challenges a serious factual claim. You are not required to provide evidence to post a review, but you may need to support specific factual claims if they are challenged.

4.3 No payment for reviews

We do not pay anyone to write reviews. Business owners may not pay you for a positive review, offer you a discount in exchange for a review, or condition any service on the review you give them. If a business asks you to do any of these things, you can tell us through the contact form, and we will look into it.

4.4 Ownership and licence

You keep ownership of the reviews you write. By posting a review on Ratecrest, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, display, copy, translate, format, and promote your review on and in connection with the platform. This licence continues for as long as the review is on the platform, plus a reasonable wind-down period after.

The licence is non-exclusive. You can post the same review elsewhere if you want to.

4.5 Editing and removing

You can edit your own review at any time from your account. We do not edit the meaning of your review. We may redact specific content where law or these terms require it, such as the names or contact details of uninvolved third parties, illegal content, or content that would expose another user to risk.

5. What is not allowed

The list below is not exhaustive, but it covers the conduct most likely to get content removed or accounts closed.

• Defamation. False statements of fact about a business or person that cause harm.
• Harassment, threats, and intimidation. Including conduct that could amount to an offence under the Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention, etc.) Act, 2015.
• Hate speech. Content that attacks people based on tribe, religion, nationality, gender, disability, or similar characteristics.
• Fake reviews. Reviews of businesses you have not used, reviews by employees or family members of the business reviewed, and reviews you were paid for.
• Review trading. Buying, selling, or exchanging reviews, ratings, or rankings.
• Bots and automation. Posting reviews, comments, or any other content through automated means, unless we expressly allow it.
• Scraping. Mass extraction of content from the platform without our written permission.
• Impersonation. Pretending to be another person, a business, or an official of Ratecrest.
• Personal data of others. Posting another person's home address, phone number, identity numbers, or other personal data without their consent.
• Illegal content. Any content that is illegal under Nigerian law, including child sexual abuse material, terrorism-related content, or content that incites violence.
• Circumvention. Avoiding suspensions, rate limits, verification requirements, or security measures.
• Commercial misuse. Using Ratecrest to build a competing service, or repackaging our content for sale.

6. How we moderate content

Reviews are published right away. We moderate after publication, with help from automated checks, flags from users and business owners, and our own staff. The detailed rules sit in our Content Moderation Policy; this section is the summary.

6.1 Flagging

Anyone can flag a review they believe breaches these terms. The flag form asks for the reason, and we encourage you to be specific. Flags with a clear reason carry more weight than flags without one.

6.2 What we review and when

We aim to review flagged content within 48 hours for the most serious flags, such as illegal content or active harassment, and within 7 days for other flags. These are targets, not promises. Volume can affect timing.

6.3 What happens to a removed review

If we remove a review you wrote, we tell you and explain which part of these terms it breached. You can appeal once. A different member of our team looks at the appeal. Their decision is final on the Ratecrest platform, though it does not prevent you from raising the matter with a court or regulator.

6.4 Law enforcement requests

We respond to lawful demands from Nigerian courts, prosecutors, and regulatory bodies. We do not respond to informal requests. Where the law allows, we tell the affected user that a request was made.

7. Reviews about your business

If you own or run a business listed on Ratecrest, this section is for you.

7.1 Your right of 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 under the review.

7.2 Disputed reviews

You can flag a review you believe breaches these terms. Be specific. "I disagree with this review" is not a basis for removal. "The reviewer has confused us with a different business with a similar name" is. Where you flag a review as factually false, we may ask the reviewer for support, and we may ask you for the evidence behind your position.

7.3 No suppression of honest negative reviews

We do not remove honest negative reviews simply because they are negative. A true review is allowed, even if it costs you customers. The platform's value rests on this rule.

7.4 Misuse of the flagging system

Filing flags in bulk without basis, filing the same flag repeatedly after a decision, or using the flag system to harass a reviewer can lead to flagging restrictions, profile penalties, or platform suspension.

8. Paid plans for businesses

Some features are reserved for paid plans. The current plans, their features, and their prices in Naira are listed on the pricing page.

8.1 Billing and payment

Plans are billed in Naira through licensed Nigerian payment providers such as Paystack and Flutterwave. By starting a paid plan, you authorise the provider to charge your chosen payment method for the price of the plan, plus any applicable taxes.

8.2 Renewal

Plans renew automatically at the end of each billing period unless you cancel before then. You can cancel at any time from your account settings. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current period. The paid features stay active until then.

8.3 Refunds

We do not refund the unused portion of a plan if you cancel mid-cycle. We may refund a plan in full, at our discretion, where billing was clearly wrong, where the feature you paid for was unavailable for the entire billing period, or where required by Nigerian consumer protection law. If we terminate your plan for breach of these terms, no refund is owed.

8.4 Pricing changes

We may change the price of plans with at least 30 days written notice. Your existing plan stays at the old price until your next renewal after the notice period.

8.5 Taxes

Prices on the pricing page may include or exclude VAT, depending on how each price is shown. The breakdown is shown at checkout. If you are a VAT-registered business, we issue a compliant invoice on request.

9. The service we provide

We work hard to keep Ratecrest available, useful, and safe. We do not promise it will be perfect.

• We do not guarantee that the platform will be available all the time. Outages happen.
• We may take the platform down for maintenance, ideally with notice on the site.
• We may add, change, or remove features as the product evolves.
• We do not promise the platform will meet any specific commercial need you have.
• Reviews come from other users. We do not guarantee the accuracy of any single review. We do work to weed out fake and abusive ones.

10. Our intellectual property

The Ratecrest name and logo are trademarks. The platform's code, design, database structure, and original written content are protected by copyright under the Nigerian Copyright Act, 2022, and applicable international law.

You may not copy, scrape, mirror, reverse-engineer, or repackage the platform without our written permission. You may link to any public page on Ratecrest. You may quote short excerpts of public reviews for news commentary or research, with attribution.

Use of our logo, screenshots of the platform, or other brand assets in promotional or commercial materials requires written permission, except for short, fair use in news commentary.

11. Suspension and account closure

We may suspend or close an account for serious breach of these terms, repeated lesser breaches, fraud, abuse of other users, or where the law requires us to.

Where we can, we tell you first and give you a chance to fix the problem. Where harm is ongoing, where the breach is serious, or where notice would defeat the purpose, we may act without prior notice.

When an account is closed, the reviews written through it may stay up because they form part of the public record on businesses. You can ask us to anonymise the authorship of your reviews.

12. The service is provided as it is

To the maximum extent allowed under Nigerian law, the platform is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis, without warranties of any kind beyond those that cannot be excluded by law.

We do not promise that any business you find on Ratecrest will perform well, that a paid plan will produce a specific number of new customers, or that the reviews about any business are fair to that business. Reviews are opinions and accounts from other users. Business owners remain responsible for their own conduct, products, and services.

13. Liability

To the extent permitted by Nigerian law, our total liability to you for any claim arising out of or in connection with these terms or the platform is capped as follows.

• For users on a paid plan, the cap is the total amount you paid us in the twelve months before the event that gave rise to the claim.
• For users without a paid plan, the cap is fifty thousand Naira (₦50,000), or the Naira equivalent of one hundred United States dollars, whichever is higher.
• We are not liable for indirect, consequential, or special losses, including lost profits, lost data, lost goodwill, or lost opportunity.

Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death, personal injury caused by our negligence, fraud, or any other liability that cannot be limited or excluded under Nigerian law, including under the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act, 2018.

14. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

If you have a dispute with us, please raise it through the contact form first. Most issues are resolved this way within a few weeks.

If we cannot resolve the issue between us, the courts of Lagos State, Nigeria have exclusive jurisdiction to hear the matter. Nothing in this clause prevents you from raising a consumer complaint with the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, the Nigeria Data Protection Commission for privacy matters, or another regulator with authority over the issue.

15. Changes to these terms

We update these terms from time to time. Small clarifications happen without fuss. Material changes will be highlighted on the site the next time you 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.

If you keep using Ratecrest after a change takes effect, you are agreeing to the updated terms. If you do not agree, you can close your account before the change takes effect.

16. How to contact us

The contact form on this site is the right way to reach us about anything in these terms. Mention the relevant section in your subject so the right team picks it up.