Review policy

Who can review

Any signed-in DogFolk member can leave one review per business, with a rating from 1 to 5 stars and an optional comment of up to 1,000 characters. Your review shows your DogFolk display name and links to your profile. You can edit or delete your own review at any time.

People who own or help manage a business on DogFolk can't review it. Reviews are free and have nothing to do with advertising: paying for an advert, a featured listing or anything else never adds, removes, hides or reorders reviews.

Genuine experiences only

• Only review a business you have genuinely used or visited yourself.
• Don't post fake reviews, review your own business, a competitor's or one you're connected to, or post on someone else's behalf.
• Don't offer, accept or ask for payment, discounts, gifts or anything else in return for a review, or for changing or removing one.
• DogFolk doesn't check purchases or bookings, so reviews aren't marked as "verified". Each reviewer confirms their review is based on their own genuine experience.

What not to include

No personal information about anyone (names of staff beyond what's public, phone numbers, addresses, health details), no abuse, threats or discrimination, and nothing that breaks our Community Guidelines. Be honest and fair, including when your experience was poor — negative reviews are welcome when they're genuine.

Business replies

A business that has claimed its listing can post one public reply to each review, clearly labelled as from the business. Businesses can't edit, hide or remove customer reviews. If they think a review breaks this policy, they report it like anyone else.

Reporting, moderation and appeals

Signed-in members can report any review or reply with a reason. Moderators check reports against this policy and apply it in the same way whether a review is positive or negative. They may leave it up, hide it or remove it, and every decision is recorded. Text is also automatically screened for some high-confidence prohibited content; this screening is limited.

If your review or reply was hidden or removed and you think that was wrong, or you want to raise a concern about a review, contact us at gary@dogfolk.co.uk or through Contact. We'll look at it again.

How the average is calculated

A business's rating is the simple average of the star ratings in its currently published reviews, rounded to one decimal place, shown with the number of those reviews. Hidden, removed and deleted reviews don't count. Businesses with no published reviews show no rating at all (never zero stars), and appear after rated businesses when you sort by rating.