Review Policy

Trusted Locally is operated by The Solution Team Pty Ltd ABN 63 682 316 525 trading as Trusted Locally, an Australian created, owned and run business. This policy explains how reviews on the site are collected, checked, displayed and removed, and what businesses can and cannot do about them. It forms part of our Terms of Service.

1. Who can leave a review

Anyone with a Trusted Locally account can review a business they have dealt with. You need to be signed in, and each account can leave one review per business. Reviews must be based on your own genuine experience. Business owners and their staff must not review their own business, and businesses must not review competitors.

2. How reviews are collected

Reviews are written directly on the business page. We do not buy reviews, import reviews from other platforms, or let businesses pay for reviews. Businesses may invite their customers to leave a review, but they must not offer payment, discounts or other incentives in exchange for a review or for a particular rating.

3. How reviews are checked

When a review is submitted it is screened automatically for spam, abusive or hateful language, adult content, scams, web links and personal contact details. The screening looks only at the words in the review. It does not look at the star rating, and a review is never blocked or hidden because the rating is low.

• Reviews that clearly breach this policy are rejected at submission and are not published.
• Reviews that may breach this policy are published and placed in a queue for a person on our team to check. If the person decides the review breaches this policy, it is removed.
• All other reviews are published straight away.

Photos attached to reviews are not shown until a person on our team has approved them.

4. When we remove a review

We remove reviews that:

• are not based on a genuine experience with the business, or are written by the business, its staff or a competitor;
• contain abuse, threats, hate speech, discrimination or adult content;
• include another person's personal information, such as full names of staff, phone numbers or addresses;
• are spam, advertising, or contain web links;
• are about a different business, or are duplicated across businesses;
• we are required to remove by law or a court order.

We do not remove a review because a business disagrees with it, because it is negative, or because the business asks us to. Businesses cannot pay to have reviews removed.

5. How businesses can respond

A business owner who has claimed their listing can post one public response to each review. Responses must follow the same content rules as reviews. If an owner believes a review breaches this policy, they can report it to us at info@trustedlocally.com.au with the business name and the reason. We will look at the review against this policy and reply with our decision. The reviewer is not told who reported the review.

6. Ratings, badges and awards

A business's star rating is the plain average of all published reviews. Badges and awards shown on listings are calculated by Trusted Locally from information on this site. They are not an independent audit or certification of the business.

• Top Rated: average rating of 4.5 or more from at least 5 published reviews.
• Most Reviewed and Rising Star: where shown, based on the number and recency of reviews received on this site. These are not currently being awarded.
• Community Favourite: among the most-saved businesses on this site in the period shown.
• Quick Responder: the owner typically replies to enquiries through this site within an hour.
• Verified Business: our team has checked the business's ABN or other identifying details and that the person managing the listing is connected to the business. It does not mean we have checked the quality of their work, licences or insurance.

Badges are reviewed periodically and can be removed if the business no longer meets the criteria.

7. Your rights as a reviewer

You can delete your own review at any time from the business page while signed in, and write a new one if you wish. If you close your account, your reviews stay published without your name unless you ask us to remove them. See our Privacy Policy for how we handle your personal information.

8. Contact