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Why do we ask for reviewer documentation?

Why do we ask for reviewer documentation?

Documentation showing a genuine experience is one of the ways we verify reviews, which helps us enhance the trustworthiness of our community.

Documentation is used for clarification

Anyone who has had a recent, genuine experience with a business can write a review — as explained in our guidelines.

We're confident that the vast majority of reviewers write about real experiences. However, where there is uncertainty about the legitimacy of a review, we'll attempt to verify it by asking the reviewer for documentation that clearly shows they've had an experience with the business. That's why in our guidelines we ask reviewers to hold onto proof of their experience.

We accept all kinds of different documentation — we've got some examples and more info in our article "Which documents help us verify your review".

When do we verify reviews with documentation?

The two main scenarios when we'll ask for reviewer documentation are:

Reviews flagged by our automated software

Every review on Complete-Reviews is screened by our automated fraud detection software, which has been developed over many years to identify and remove reviews with unusual features or patterns. But sometimes our robots get it wrong. To correct a false positive, we can ask the reviewer to send documentation of their experience so that we can verify their review and put it back online.

Reviews flagged by companies

When a company doesn't believe that a reviewer has had a genuine experience with them, they can use our Find Reviewer tool to ask the reviewer for further information. If that doesn't solve the mystery, the company can then flag the review to our Content Integrity Team, who will request documentation from the reviewer.

All businesses have the right to do this, regardless of whether they subscribe to Complete-Reviews's paid services or not. And they must only flag a review to request documentation where there is doubt that the reviewer has had a genuine experience with them.

We respect your privacy

Any documents you provide will not be forwarded to the business and will not be visible to other users. However, if your documentation includes a reference number (order ID, customer ID, or similar) we'll share that reference number with the reviewed company unless you tell us you don't want it shared.

Want to know more?

Get in touch to find out more about what we do to build trust and promote transparency in online reviews.