Authenticity policy

This policy says which reviews we send to marketplaces, how we check them, and what we will never do. It applies to every seller, retailer and review on the platform.

What we send

• Only reviews from real buyers. Every review is matched to an order of that product from the same buyer, placed before the review. A review we can't match is held and not sent anywhere.
• Only for the right product. Every review is tied to the product's GTIN (UPC) or the marketplace's own item ID, checked before it's sent.
• Every rating. One-star and five-star reviews go through the same checks and out the same way. No seller, retailer or plan can filter reviews by star rating.
• With its origin. Every review says where it was first posted, for example "Originally posted on yourstore.com".

What we label

• Incentives. A review written after receiving free product, a discount, points, or a sweepstakes entry is labeled as such wherever it goes. A review that mentions an incentive without being labeled goes to a person to check.
• Connections to the brand. Reviews from a seller's staff, family or friends are labeled. Most marketplaces don't accept them, and we don't send them where they aren't accepted.

What a person checks

Automatic checks screen every review for strong language, personal information, spam and advertising, off-topic content, duplicate text, unusual patterns (bursts of reviews, one device used by many reviewers), signs of machine writing, and reviews the seller hid or marked as spam on their own site. Anything flagged waits for a moderator. Moderators approve, or reject for a stated reason:

• Not from a buyer of this product
• About a different product
• Contains personal information
• Hateful, threatening or obscene
• Spam or advertising
• Not about the product
• Written by someone connected to the brand, undisclosed
• Incentive not disclosed
• Machine-written, not a real experience
• Duplicate of another review

A negative opinion is never a reason to reject or remove a review.

Removals

Sellers can't delete or hide their own reviews. They, retailers, and anyone else can ask for a removal through the app or the report form, giving a reason. A moderator decides. When a review is removed after it was sent, every marketplace that received it is told to take it down.

Sellers may hide a photo attached to a review (for example, one that shows a face or a packing slip). The review's words and rating still go out.

Review requests

Sellers can send every buyer the same request to review their order. There is no way to ask only satisfied customers, or to send a different message based on what a buyer is likely to say.

What we keep private

Marketplaces receive the reviewer's first name and last initial, the review, the rating, the date and the product. Never the reviewer's email, address, phone number or order number. Buyer emails are stored encrypted, and verification matches on a one-way fingerprint of the email.

Enforcement

A seller found sending reviews that aren't genuine loses access to every marketplace, and the marketplaces that received those reviews are told. Every decision about every review is kept in an audit trail that can't be edited, and is available to the retailer that received the review.

This policy reflects the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's rule on consumer reviews and testimonials (16 C.F.R. Part 465, in effect since October 21, 2024) and the authenticity standards marketplaces set for review providers.