How Reporting and Moderation Works on Hellopeter

At Hellopeter, we are committed to maintaining a platform where consumers and businesses can engage transparently. To ensure fairness, we have strict moderation processes in place. Below is a guide on why reviews may be removed and how our reporting system works.

Why does Hellopeter remove some reviews?

Hellopeter may remove a review when it doesn’t comply with our content guidelines or could harm the integrity and usefulness of the platform.

Common reasons for removal include:

The review contains offensive, abusive, threatening, discriminatory, or defamatory language.
It includes unverified claims, hearsay, or false information that can’t be supported with first-hand experience.
The content is spam, advertising, or promotional rather than a genuine review.
Personal information (yours or someone else’s) is shared in a way that violates privacy rules.
Multiple duplicate reviews are submitted for the same experience.
It breaches Hellopeter’s policies (e.g., legal accusations or inappropriate content).

When a review is removed, the intent is to keep Hellopeter a trusted and respectful space where consumers can rely on accurate, honest accounts of real experiences.

Who can report reviews?

Anyone can report a review on Hellopeter, including reviewers, readers, and businesses.

Reviews are reported when they contain content that is in breach of our content guidelines. This usually extends to reviews that fall into one or more of the following categories:

Part or all of the information in the review is false.
The review is spam or a scam.
The review is defamatory.

What happens when a review is reported?

Every business on Hellopeter, paid or free, can report a review about themselves. The process is the same for every business. Paying us does not move a review up, down, or off the platform.

Here is the actual process, step by step.

1. A consumer posts a review. It goes live.

2. A report is submitted. Anyone can report a review: the business itself, another reviewer, or a member of the public.

3. If the review is defamatory or in breach of our content guidelines, it is removed. The reviewer can repost it in a non-defamatory form.

4. If the review is reported but is not defamatory, we contact the reviewer. We ask them to confirm the review is truthful and based on a real first-hand experience. If we do not hear back within 48 hours, the review is temporarily removed.

5. If the business continues to dispute the review, we ask the reviewer for a sworn affidavit. During this verification window, the review is temporarily unpublished while we complete our legal due diligence.

6. Once the affidavit is received, the review is republished and stays up.

Why the affidavit matters

The affidavit is not there to silence anyone. It is the mechanism that lets us republish a review with legal protection in place once due diligence is complete.

It cuts both ways. It protects legitimate consumers from businesses trying to silence honest complaints, and it protects legitimate businesses from false reviews, competitor sabotage, and coordinated campaigns.

In 25 years we have published millions of complaints, many of which businesses did not want published. The affidavit standard is the fairest threshold we have found for keeping the platform truthful and protecting both sides.

Impact on metrics

Reviews that have been removed do not count towards a business’s Hellopeter metrics and will not affect their TrustIndex or average star rating. If the reviewer has replied to their Net Promoter Score (NPS) email, this reply will also be removed.

How to report a review that breaches our guidelines

Below the review, there’s a “Report” button. Select this, and a form to report the review will appear.

You’ll be required to provide the following information:

The reason why you’re reporting the review.
Your contact information: full name, email address, and contact number.

Once you’ve completed this form, select “Report Review,” and the review will be flagged on our side for investigation.

Does Hellopeter have a whistleblower function?

Hellopeter is an independent review platform that sits between businesses and reviewers. Anyone can write a review about any business they've had an experience with.

However, we still try our best to detect any unusual review activity through manual verification checks and advanced customised software.

We also encourage our Hellopeter Community to only flag reviews that raise legitimate concerns and clearly violate one or more of our content guidelines.

Before we open an investigation, we ask whistleblowers to give as many details as possible about the situation, including evidence and supporting documents.