How feedback works

All genuine feedback, good and bad. We never hold back, hide or remove feedback because it’s critical, and neither can the business it’s about. That’s the law as well as our rule.

Each piece of feedback shows:

• what you wrote, exactly as you wrote it — we never edit it
• the job it’s about, if you chose one
• the date it went up
• your first name and the first letter of your surname, if you ticked the box for it — otherwise A customer
• how many out of 5 you gave, if you chose a number — your own rating and never a score for the business
• a note saying you were given something for it, if you told us so (section 3)

Your email address is never shown — not on the website, and not to the business. If anyone needs to contact you about your feedback, it’s TradeEasy.

Feedback is shown newest first. A rating is one person’s own number and is never added up: there’s no average, no score for the business and no count anywhere on the website, and nothing is picked out as a favourite.

Feedback isn’t an enquiry. Feedback is for publishing on the website. To contact the business privately instead, use the website’s enquiry form, which goes only to them. Neither form sends you to the other.

Anyone writing about their own genuine experience of the business: a customer, someone the work was done for, a landlord or a tenant, a neighbour who watched the job through. You don’t have to be the person who paid.

These are never allowed:

• Fake feedback — anything that isn’t based on a real experience of this business, whoever wrote it.
• Feedback from the business itself — its owner, its staff, their families, or anyone writing for it.
• Feedback somebody was rewarded for, without saying so (section 3).

A business must not offer anything in return for feedback — money, a discount, a gift or a place in a prize draw. Our terms for businesses forbid it.

If you were given or offered something anyway, tick the box on the form that says so. Your feedback is still published if it passes the checks, with a note beside it saying the writer was given something in return, and we look into the business. Feedback that was rewarded and doesn’t say so is misleading, and we remove it when we find out.

Before anything appears:

1. You confirm it by email. We send a link to the address you give us. Nothing is published until you open it and press Publish my feedback. If you haven’t within 7 days, it’s deleted.
2. A pattern check looks for web addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, full postcodes, and bank card, National Insurance and bank account numbers, and for swear words. If it finds any, we ask you to take them out and send it again. We don’t keep what you sent, and the business never sees it.
3. An AI model reads it — Claude, made by Anthropic. It looks for:
   • anything about somebody’s health, and other people’s addresses or full names — we ask you to take those out;
   • threats, harassment, hate, sexual content, support for terrorism, or encouraging suicide or self-harm;
   • insults aimed at a person rather than at the work;
   • feedback that isn’t about this business at all — an advert, spam, or something meant for another company;
   • feedback that reads as though the business wrote it;
   • messages written to the checker rather than about the business.
   The AI can’t publish anything, and it never sees your email address. It’s told never to flag feedback for being negative, for the language it’s written in, or for swearing.
4. Limits. A website takes at most 20 pieces of feedback an hour for checking, and one internet connection can have 5 checked in a day. We also check that the form is being sent by a person rather than a program.

Feedback is also held for a person to look at when it comes from the business’s own email address, or when the AI couldn’t read it.

What no check ever looks at: whether your feedback is positive or negative, how long it is, what your complaint is about, the language you write in, or anything about you.

A computer never decides that your feedback won’t appear. It can ask you to change something, or pass your feedback to a person, and a person decides everything that’s held.

Held means waiting for a person, not refused, and the link in your email says so.

A business deciding feedback held for it can only show it, or hide it for one of the reasons in section 6.

Held feedback is decided within 14 days. If the business hasn’t decided feedback held for it by then, we do.

A business can hide published feedback about it for one of these reasons only, and has to say which:

• It isn't about this business
• It's abusive
• It shares someone's personal information
• It's a repeat

A business can never hide feedback because:

• It's negative, or you disagree with it
• The problem has since been put right
• The job was cancelled or wasn't paid for
• The person who wrote it wasn't the one who paid
• It's old, but it's still true

Feedback attached to the wrong job is moved to general feedback, not hidden.

Every hide is recorded — who hid it, when, and the reason — and we look at how often each business hides feedback.

If your feedback is hidden, the link in your email shows that it was and the reason given. If you think that’s wrong, tell us at help@tradeeasy.uk and we’ll look at it. If we agree, we show it again.

A business can report these to us, but can’t decide them, because it’s the one being reviewed:

• feedback that isn’t genuine (section 2);
• feedback somebody was rewarded for without saying so (section 3);
• feedback that’s illegal.

We remove feedback we find is fake, rewarded without saying so, or illegal. When a business is behind it — writing its own, getting others to, rewarding feedback, or hiding criticism — we can switch feedback off on its website for 6 months, and our terms let us do more. If we find you wrote fake feedback, we check anything else you send from the same email address before it’s published, for 12 months.

Every piece of published feedback has a Report link, and anyone can use it. Tell us which of these it is:

• It isn't genuine
• They were given something for it and didn't say so
• It's illegal — for example, untrue and damaging to you.
• It's abusive, threatening or hateful
• It shares someone's personal information

TradeEasy looks at every report, and takes down anything illegal as soon as we know it is.

The person responsible for how we deal with reports, and for keeping illegal content off the feedback on our websites, is Sean Burtenshaw, who runs TradeEasy.

If you’re unhappy with how we dealt with a report, tell us at help@tradeeasy.uk or on our help page.

The link in your email removes your feedback at any time, and it’s deleted. You can’t change feedback once it’s sent; to change it, remove it and leave it again. Lost the email? Ask us at help@tradeeasy.uk with the website’s address and roughly when you left it.

There’s one exception, and it’s the only one. If we’ve taken your feedback off a website ourselves (section 7), you can’t delete it — we have to keep a record of what we took off and why. Nobody can see it on the website meanwhile, we delete it 12 months after we took it off, and if you think we got it wrong, write to us at help@tradeeasy.uk. Everything else on this page about your information still applies to it (section 10).

The business and TradeEasy are jointly responsible for what you give us with your feedback. TradeEasy looks after it and answers any request about it — to see it, correct it or delete it, with the one exception in section 9. You can ask the business instead, and they’ll pass it to us.

What we collect when you leave feedback, and why:

• Your feedback and the job it’s about — to publish on the website, once you’ve pressed Publish my feedback. The same link takes it down at any time.
• Your name — shown with your feedback only if you tick the box, as your first name and the first letter of your surname. The business sees it in full.
• Your email address — to send you the link that publishes your feedback and removes it, and to contact you if somebody reports it. Never shown on the website and never given to the business.
• What our checks found — so the person deciding held feedback knows why it was held.
• Who hid or showed your feedback, when, and why — the record consumer law expects of whoever publishes reviews.
• A scrambled code made from your internet address, the website and the day — to limit how much feedback one connection can send. It means nothing the next day, and it’s deleted within a day.

Who else handles it. Each of these handles information only to do a job for us, under a contract that requires them to protect it, and each is based in the United States.

How long we keep it:

To ask to see, correct or delete anything here, write to help@tradeeasy.uk.

When we change this page, we’ll change the date at the top.