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TrustFinance

Action We Take

We're a platform that allows anyone to write a review for a business with which they've had a real experience, and we want to ensure that everyone trusts the reviews they see on TrustFinance.

As an open platform, we must strike a balance between being transparent and ensuring that TrustFinance reviews accurately reflect the true experiences of real customers. Fortunately, the majority of businesses and customers use TrustFinance as intended. Constructive criticism assists businesses in listening, engaging, and improving their service experience, which benefits everyone.

However, a small minority will always try to manipulate our systems and damage the integrity of our platform in order to influence people's thoughts. That is why we have a dedicated team of enforcement officers and investigators that identify, investigate, and take action using cutting-edge automated technologies and data analysis.

Here you may learn more about the types of misbehavior and misuse we encounter, the steps we take to avoid it, and the repercussions for anybody who violates our Guidelines.

Fake review

When we talk about fake reviews, we mean reviews that do not reflect a genuine service or purchasing experience with a business and were intentionally left to manipulate consumer perception or behavior. Fake reviews include the following:

  • where a business leaves a review on its own TrustFinance profile;
  • reviews that have been paid for in an attempt to manipulate a business's TrustFinance rating;
  • reviews left on a competitor's TrustFinance page in a deliberate attempt to undermine their TrustFinance rating;
  • advertising or promotional messages of any kind disguised as reviews

Fake reviews have no place on TrustFinance. Where we find fake reviews, we will delete them and take appropriate action.

Unfair review collection

TrustFinance is a free service that allows businesses to invite clients who have had a positive experience. If you're requesting feedback, make sure your invitation procedure and phrasing are fair, neutral, and unbiased.

We will take action if we notice, or have cause to think, that a business is not collecting reviews in a fair, neutral, or unbiased manner. Unfair collection examples include:

  • Requesting a review from a family member, friend, employee, or anybody with a conflict of interest;
  • Inviting clients to post reviews selectively to enhance the probability of obtaining favorable feedback;
  • Offering customers incentives, such as discounts, money-off future purchases, gifts, referral bonuses or any other value in exchange for a review;
  • Pressuring or requiring clients to leave a TrustFinance review for you, or to remove or amend their current review;
  • Requesting that clients post a review for you while they are in store (this is only permitted if we have agreed to it in advance) or using a business device (this is never permitted);
  • Requesting the reviewers remove or amend their reviews in return for a service (such as a refund or support request), discount, or other incentives.

Reported Reviews

Any company or user on our site can complain or flag a review that they believe violates our Recommendations. Users can flag a review by clicking the flag symbol that appears on every TrustFinance review. Businesses can report a review using their TrustFinance Business Account, or if they do not have a Business Account, they can contact our Content Integrity team.

Reviews can be reported in the following places:

  • contain harmful or illegal content;
  • contain personal information;
  • contain advertising or promotional information;
  • are not based on a genuine experience;
  • are about a different business (only businesses can report for this reason).
  • Where a review is reported for one of the reporting reasons, and the report is valid, we’ll remove the review because it breaches our Guidelines.

If a review is reported for one of the reporting reasons and the report is correct, we will delete the review since it violates our Recommendations.

Reporting Misuse

All companies and users of our site can report a review that violates our Recommendations. On rare occasions, we notice our reporting features being abused by inconsistent reporting or unfairly reporting reviews that do not violate our Recommendations. Here are some examples of how our reporting features have been abused:

  • Rapidly reporting reviews; this would indicate that the reviews are not being properly considered or assessed;
  • Reporting a large proportion of genuine negative reviews in an effort to get these removed from their profile;
  • Reporting the same review over and over again to try and get it removed from their profile

Bad-Fit Businesses

We are dedicated to conducting our company in accordance with the highest ethical standards; we discuss this more in our Code of Ethics. Trust, transparency, and integrity are values that are important to us.

TrustFinance, being an open review platform, allows anybody to build a profile for a business. We feel that this is the greatest method to ensure that clients have a voice and a safe space to share their real experiences.

However, if a company is introduced to TrustFinance that does not meet our ethical standards, we will take action to remove and prohibit them from our platform. These companies are referred to as a 'bad-fit' for TrustFinance.

A bad-fit company might cause or create harm, and they do not share our values and basic beliefs; we simply do not want them on TrustFinance for these reasons.

Businesses that we do not want on TrustFinance and consider to be bad fits are those that:

  • assist companies or people in manipulating news, reviews, documents, and outcomes
  • encourage hatred, violence, terrorism, xenophobia, or any other kind of prejudice against any person or group;
  • provide illegal products and services; illegal drugs and prescription drugs sold on the illegal market;
  • provide or facilitate escort services, mail-order brides, prostitution, or any other kind of forced labor or human trafficking;
  • provide or create any sexual abuse or graphic imagery, as well as any content that depicts children or animals in a sexual or criminal manner;
  • illegal animal fights or sell items containing endangered animal parts
  • facilitate any type of illegal activity, especially those carried out via computers or the Internet;
  • are involved in financial scams such as pyramid schemes, credit card fraud, and mortgage scams; or, otherwise operate unlawfully, such as selling counterfeit or dangerous products and services, or mis-selling in general.

When a suspected bad-fit business is reported to us, we investigate and, if necessary, take action. If we agree that the company is a bad-fit, we will remove them from TrustFinance. If you come across a business on TrustFinance that you feel is a bad-fit, please report it to us.

Brand Misuse

Businesses that have joined up to TrustFinance may use TrustFinance Designs, such as our logo, stars, and Trustboxes, on their websites and promotional materials, as long as they do so in accordance with their subscription, our Terms of Use for Businesses, and our Brand

Guide. Businesses who use TrustFinance Designs appropriately in their communications and products demonstrate to the world that they genuinely care about their clients.

We will take action if a business displays the TrustFinance Designs in a misleading or deceptive manner. Examples of brand misuse include:

  • Misleading consumers by displaying an old, or out of date, TrustScore or Star Rating instead of using our dynamic Trustboxes or including up to date information;
  • Displaying reviews or other TrustFinance Designs on a business’ website, in advertising or on another domain without our permission.

Profile Misuse

When a company claims their TrustFinance profile, they may modify their profile description for everyone to view. The majority of businesses take advantage of this chance to include relevant and valuable information, such as a description of their services, opening hours, location of premises, and contact information.

If we discover that a company is updating their profile to add material that is false, misleading, illegal, or hurtful, or otherwise undermines the integrity of the profile, we will delete the content and prevent future access to the profile.

Abuse towards the TrustFinance community

We will not allow any form of abuse, aggression, or threat aimed against our employees, reviewers, or anyone else in the TrustFinance community. When we become aware of abusive or disrespectful behavior, we will respond immediately to avoid harm and, if necessary, take additional measures to prevent this behavior from being repeated in the future.

How do we stop misbehaviour and misuse?

Our objective is to be recognized as a worldwide symbol of trust. When we detect attempts to undermine the integrity and trustworthiness of TrustFinance reviews and companies, our dedicated team of enforcement professionals will investigate and take some or all of the following actions:

Warnings

When we notice misbehaviour, we will send a warning to a company or a reviewer, requesting that they stop and explain why they have received a warning. We will also take corrective actions, such as deleting reviews that have been discovered as being fake. If we suspect the misbehavior is exceptionally severe, or if we believe there is a genuine threat to clients or the integrity of our platform, we may proceed directly to any of the enforcement procedures listed below.

Formal Notice

If a company continues to engage in misbehaviour after getting a warning, we will issue a formal notice requesting that they stop. If the action persists after a formal notification is received, we shall terminate our partnership with the company.

If a company receives a formal notification for violating our Recommendations, we record it in our internal systems and prevent them from signing up for a paid membership on TrustFinance until the behavior that caused the breach stops

Businesses with paid subscriptions will have their accounts restricted so they cannot change plans, upgrade, or renew a subscription until violations of our Recommendations stop.

Ending our relationship

If a company has a paid TrustFinance membership and continues to violate our Recommendations after we've written them a formal warning, we'll cancel their subscription.

At this time, we'll also limit the functionality of their accounts to responding to and reporting reviews; they'll still need this ability because we don't monitor reviews and rely on our community, including companies, to identify reviews that violate our Recommendations. We do this for all companies, whether or not they have a paid membership with us. These businesses are unable to submit review invites using our platform, and they are unable to show the TrustFinance Designs or utilize our Trustboxes.

Client Warnings and Alerts

As part of our commitment to consumers, if a company violates our Recommendations and does not discontinue the activity that caused the breach, or if the behavior continues to threaten the integrity of our platform, we will publish a Client Warning on their business profile page.

A Client Warning is a visible message informing you that a business has been misusing TrustFinance, and we'll explain why.

We'll store Client Warnings on a profile page for a specified period of time and then examine them to see whether a company is still abusing our platform. We don't delete a Client Warning until all misbehavior has stopped and a sufficient length of time has passed: this helps to ensure that clients are aware of a company's attempts to mislead clients or otherwise misuse our platform.

We also use Client Alerts when we believe there is material that users should be aware of but there hasn't been any misuse. For example, if a company has received major media attention or is under investigation by a regulator.

Client Alerts are shown on a business's profile page for as long as required to promote awareness.

Block search engine data

When we publish a client warning on a company's TrustFinance profile page, we stop sharing any information about that business with search engines. This means that we will no longer provide data such as the TrustScore, star rating, and other review data that search engines may use to index and rank companies in search.

Blocking Reviewer accounts

We will suspend or block access to a reviewer's TrustFinance profile if they persistently violate our Recommendations for Reviewers, such as writing fake or harmful reviews or threatening companies in any manner.

Further action

Depending on the type and level of the misuse and conduct that has caused us to act, as well as the danger to our community, we may additionally take the following action(s) to protect clients' faith in our platform:

Legal action, including court actions; sharing information with law enforcement, regulatory entities, or the media to raise awareness; and sharing information with other parties if appropriate and proportional.

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