Community guidelines

These guidelines keep BBR useful for everyone: the people who read reviews before they spend their money, and the businesses that earn good ones. They apply in the same way to praise and to criticism. If something breaks them, report it and our team will take a look.

Share your own experience

Review a business only after you have used it yourself: eaten there, bought from it, been treated there or had something repaired. Say what happened, what was good and what wasn’t, and roughly when.

• Opinions are welcome. Present them as your experience: “The biryani was too oily for me” helps more than “Worst restaurant in Dhaka”.
• Stick to what you saw and what happened to you. Don’t pass on rumours, or what others told you, as fact.
• Review the branch you visited. A different branch is a different listing.
• Things change. Update your review after a second visit, or after the business fixes a problem.

No conflicts of interest

A review must come from a customer, not from someone with a stake in the business.

• Don’t review a business you own, manage or work for, or one run by your family or friends. Don’t review a competitor.
• The owner of a business, and anyone whose claim to own it is waiting for a decision, can’t review it, upvote it or vote on its reviews.
• When a member’s claim to own a business is approved, their review of it, their upvote and their votes on its reviews are taken off, because they now have a stake in it.
• Nobody may post reviews or votes for someone else, whether an agency, a marketing company or a friend doing a favour.

Nothing in exchange

Reviews and votes only mean something when they are freely given.

• Don’t offer, ask for or accept anything for a review, a rating, an upvote or a helpful vote: money, discounts, free items, gifts or a place in a prize draw. This applies even when the review would be honest anyway.
• Don’t buy, sell or trade reviews, upvotes or accounts.
• Don’t use a review, or the threat of one, to get a refund or anything else from a business.

Keep personal information out

Everything you post on BBR is public, so keep private details out of it, whether they are yours or someone else’s.

• No phone numbers, e-mail or home addresses, or national ID, passport, bank or mobile-wallet numbers.
• No full names of staff or other customers. Describe people by their role: “the cashier”, “the doctor on duty”.
• Nothing about another person’s health, religion, politics or private life.

Be respectful

Criticise the service, not the people.

• No hate speech, harassment, threats, insults or sexual content, and nothing that targets anyone’s religion, ethnicity, gender, disability or other personal traits.
• Don’t accuse a named person of a crime. Describe what you saw and what happened, and let readers draw their own conclusions.

Keep it relevant and your own

• Keep it about the business and your experience of it. Views on politics or the news that have nothing to do with the business belong elsewhere.
• No advertising, promotions or spam, and no links or contact details for other businesses.
• Use your own words. Don’t copy reviews or text from other websites or other members, and don’t post the same review on several businesses.

Photos

Photos show the next customer what to expect.

• Post photos you took yourself, of the business: the place, the food, the product, the work done.
• No photos in which other customers or staff can be recognised without their permission, and no screenshots of private messages.
• Cover personal details before you post a photo of a receipt, a bill or a document: names, phone numbers, card or account numbers.
• Nothing sexual, violent or shocking, and no photos taken from other websites.

We remove the hidden data that phones store in photo files, such as the place where a photo was taken, from every photo you post on BBR: in reviews, on listings and profiles, and in blog posts. Documents you send with an ownership claim are kept exactly as you send them, hidden data included: only our team sees them, and they are deleted 90 days after we decide on your claim.

Blog posts

Members can write longer posts for the BBR blog: guides, stories and tips about local businesses and places. The rules above apply to posts too.

• Write about what you know first-hand, and say so if you have any connection to a business you write about.
• Don’t write about a business in return for money, free items or discounts, and don’t use posts for advertising or affiliate links.
• Use photos you took yourself, or have permission to use.

Posts by newer members are checked by our team before they appear on the blog. Once your account is at least 14 days old and you have at least 2 published reviews, with nothing of yours removed, your posts appear as soon as you publish them.

Owner replies

Once our team has approved an owner’s claim on a business, they can post one public reply under each review and edit it later. A reply shows as a response from the business, and never changes the rating or the order of reviews.

• Good replies thank the customer, apologise where it’s due, explain what happened, or say what has been fixed.
• Replies must not reveal the reviewer’s personal details, or details of their visit they didn’t share themselves. They must not threaten the reviewer, legal action included, or offer anything to change or delete a review.
• No insults, accusations or advertising. An owner who thinks a review breaks these guidelines reports it like anyone else; arguing in a reply doesn’t help.

Upvotes and helpful votes

• An upvote says “I’d recommend this place to a friend”. Each member can upvote a business once, and take the upvote back.
• Mark a review “Helpful” when it helped you decide. Nobody can vote on their own review, and owners can’t vote on reviews of their own business.
• Don’t trade upvotes or votes, ask for them in return for anything, or use more than one account. Upvotes from brand-new accounts count less towards trending, and an account suspended for breaking these rules loses all its upvotes and votes.

How trending works explains how upvotes, reviews and visits add up.

Your account and profile

• BBR accounts are for people aged 18 and over: one account per person, used by that person only.
• Use your own name, or a public name that doesn’t pretend to be someone else, a business or BBR.
• Your username, photo, headline, bio and links follow these guidelines too: nothing offensive, misleading or hateful.
• Don’t open a second account, to get round a limit or a suspension or for any other reason.

For business owners

Reviews help good businesses stand out. These rules keep them fair for everyone, your competitors included, and they apply whether or not you have claimed your listing.

Asking customers for reviews

You may ask your customers to review you on BBR: in person, on a receipt, on a sign or in a message. Keep it fair:

• Ask every customer, not only the ones you expect to be happy. Don’t sort them first, for example by asking satisfied customers for a review and the others for private feedback. That is review gating, and it isn’t allowed.
• Keep the invitation neutral: ask for an honest review, never for a good one or for five stars.
• Offer nothing in return: no discounts, free items, gifts or prize draws, even for an honest review.
• Don’t review your own business, and don’t ask your staff, family or friends to. Never write, or pay for, reviews of a competitor.
• Don’t buy upvotes or votes, or ask for them in return for anything.
• Never pressure or threaten a customer over a review, and never offer anything to change or delete one.

What owners can and can’t do

Claiming your listing

• If you own or manage a business listed on BBR, claim it from its page (“Own this business? Claim it”). Tell us your role and how we can check: a call to a phone number the business itself publishes, an e-mail to your address at the business’s own website, or a document such as a trade licence.
• Our team checks every claim by hand, usually within a few days. We check through the business’s own channels, never only through details you give us, and we may contact the business to confirm.
• Once your claim is approved, the listing shows the Owner verified badge and you can manage it from your dashboard.
• Only our team sees the documents you send, and they are deleted 90 days after we decide on your claim. Cover any national ID number before you scan a document.
• We may suspend the account of anyone who files a false claim. If someone else manages your business’s listing, report the listing, choose “Other” and tell us why: our team can end that ownership so that you can claim it.

Reports, flags and removals

Any member can report a review or a business listing that breaks these guidelines. Every report reaches our team, and reports never hide anything on their own.

• Flagged: once 3 members have reported a review, it is flagged and our team checks it first. It stays on the page and keeps counting towards the rating until we decide, so a wave of reports can’t silence a fair review. Reports from the business’s owner, or from anyone claiming it, don’t count towards this.
• Removed: we remove content that breaks these guidelines or the law, such as spam, fake or misleading reviews, conflicts of interest, personal information, hateful, harassing or threatening content, and illegal content. It disappears from BBR and no longer counts. The author of a removed review or post is told why, and so is the owner of a listing we take down; an owner’s reply our team deletes goes without a notice.
• Suspended accounts: we suspend accounts that break these rules badly or again and again, for example with fake or paid reviews, a false claim or harassment. A suspended member can’t sign in, their reviews and posts come off BBR, and their upvotes and votes stop counting.
• Daily limits: every member has daily limits on what they can post (reviews, photos, reports, new businesses, claims, blog posts and upvotes) so that no single account can flood BBR. Most members never reach them.

We don’t remove reviews because they are negative, because a business disagrees with them, or because anyone pays us.

How reviews work explains how reports are handled, and how to ask us to look at a decision again.

Questions about these guidelines? Write to us.

Contact the BBR team