Spotted something that's against the rules? As part of a community that works together to maintain trust and integrity, you can easily let us know about problematic reviews.
We check flagged reviews to see if they breach our guidelines. And if they do, we'll take action.
Are you a business user? Head on over to your Trustpilot Business account to flag a review. Here's how.
Reasons for flagging a review
Each review can be flagged for one reason at a time. We assess the review for that reason only.
1. It’s harmful or illegal
What do we mean by that? Here are some examples:
- Hate speech or discrimination. We can remove content that attacks or uses derogatory or discriminatory language with reference to a person or a group on the basis of who they are, i.e., based on their religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, color, descent, gender, or other identity factor.
- Terrorism. We can remove content that intends to radicalize people, spreads harmful propaganda, mobilizes support for terrorist activities, or relates to violent extremism.
- Threats or violence. We can remove content that contains serious threats or threats of violence. For example, calls to target people or businesses with abuse or harassment online, and behavior that urges offline action such as physical harassment or destruction to property.
- Obscenity. We can remove content that contains graphic depictions of acts that are violent, sexual, or gory.
We don’t remove content just because you dislike or disagree with it, or it criticizes someone.
2. It includes your personal information
We can remove things like your name, phone number, address, and email address.
3. It’s advertising or promotional
We can remove content that includes a promotional code, a call to action, or advertises another business or an unrelated product.
We don’t remove content just because it mentions another business or you disagree with it.
4. It’s not based on a genuine experience
We can remove a review if the reviewer wasn’t eligible to write a review about the company. For example, if the reviewer is an employee, a competitor, or was paid to write a fake review.
We don’t remove reviews just because you had a different experience with the company, the review isn’t as detailed, informative or well written as you’d like, or because the company has a sudden influx of new reviews (this could be because they started asking for reviews).
You can only flag one review as not based on a genuine experience. There's no need to flag more, because we actually look for unusual patterns on the company's profile, not just the one review you flagged.
How do I flag a review?
- Find the review you want to flag and click on the flag icon.
- Confirm that you’re not from the reviewed company. If you do represent that company, you'll be asked to flag the review via your Trustpilot Business account.
- Choose the reason you’re flagging the review and click Next.
- You might be asked to choose a more specific reason why the review breaches our guidelines, and to select the problematic words.
- To submit your report, you’ll need to type your email address and confirm that the information you’ve provided is true and correct. Click Next.
- You’ll see a confirmation message that the review has been flagged. Click Finish.
What happens next?
- A ticket is sent to our Content Integrity Team, who assesses whether the review breaches our rules for the reason it was flagged. We continue to show the flagged review on Trustpilot and still count it in the company’s star rating and TrustScore.
- If the review doesn’t violate our guidelines, the report will be dismissed and the review stays online.
- If the review does violate our guidelines and it can be brought into line (e.g. if it includes personal information that can be removed), we'll ask the review's author to make the appropriate changes. If they don't, the review will be removed.
- If the review does violate our guidelines and it can’t be brought into line (e.g. if the reviewer wasn’t eligible to write the review), it will be removed.
Will I be told the outcome?
In general, we don't inform notifiers of the results of our investigations unless you flag harmful or illegal content in a review. But rest assured that we'll take action if we find reason to do so.
Misuse of the flagging tool
The flagging tool is an important feature in our review community. We ask that you only flag a review when you genuinely believe there's a problem. Don't flag a review just because you disagree with it or you don't like the company. Flagging a large number of reviews or re-flagging reviews without good reason can be considered misuse of the flagging tool.
How should business users flag reviews?
Business users can flag reviews via their Trustpilot Business account. Don't have an account? Sign up for free.
Up next How do we handle misuse of the review flagging tool for consumers?