Editorial Policy

Independence

Review Racket is editorially independent. We do not accept payment from any review platform, badge scheme, accreditation body or reputation management company in exchange for coverage, placement, scoring, removal or amendment of editorial content.

We do not sell paid placement on our scoreboard, in our hub pages, or anywhere else on the site. We do not run affiliate links to the platforms we review. We do not run sponsored articles. If our funding model changes in any material way, we will publish that change on this page before it takes effect.

What we cover

We cover review platforms, trust badge schemes, accreditation directories and similar reputation infrastructure relevant to UK consumers. We do not review individual businesses listed on those platforms.

How we research a platform

For each platform page, we work from a consistent set of public sources:

1. The platform's own published terms of service, content guidelines and pricing pages.
2. The platform's own help centre, particularly definitions of “verified”, moderation rules and dispute processes.
3. Any published statements from UK regulators (notably the Competition and Markets Authority) and consumer protection bodies relevant to the platform.
4. Any published court decisions, formal regulatory findings or substantiated reporting from established media that bear directly on the platform's operating model.
5. Where relevant, the platform's parent company's filings, where these are publicly available.

We do not rely on anonymous tips for factual claims. We do welcome them as starting points for further research.

How we score

Every platform we cover is scored out of five on five criteria:

• Transparency — Are the rules, paid tiers and moderation policies easy to find and understand?
• Verification rigour — How well does the platform confirm that a reviewer is a real customer?
• Consumer usefulness — Once you strip out the marketing, does this actually help a consumer make a better decision?
• Independence from paying parties — How insulated is the moderation process from the platform's commercial relationship with the business being reviewed?
• Plain-English fine print — Can a non-lawyer understand the small print without a glossary?

The five scores are averaged to produce the Racket Score. The methodology is the same for every platform. The scores are editorial opinion based on the criteria above; reasonable people may disagree with any individual cell.

How we keep the scores up to date

We re-check each platform page on a rolling basis, and at least annually. We also update a page when a platform makes a material change to its pricing, moderation rules, verification model, or other policies central to our scoring.

Tone and language

Review Racket combines plain-English consumer reporting with editorial satire. Each platform page distinguishes the two with explicit “serious bit” and “funny bit” sections. Our editorial guardrails:

• We comment on systems and incentives, not on specific named individuals.
• We do not allege fraud, dishonesty, illegality or rigging unless we can point to a documented public case with a citation. Where we discuss commercial complexities, we use language such as “incentive structure”, “commercially complicated”, “paid tier”, “trust signal”, “fine print”, “review economy” and “reputation infrastructure”.
• We avoid defamatory phrasing. We are happy to be sharp about a system. We are not interested in being sued over a sentence we could have written better.

Use of AI

We use AI tools as part of our research and drafting process. All published content is reviewed and signed off by a human editor before publication. AI is not used to fabricate quotes, sources or citations.

Conflicts of interest

We declare any conflict of interest at the top of any page where one exists. As at the date of publication, the editor of Review Racket has no commercial relationship with any platform we cover.

Right of reply

Any platform we review can ask us to publish a right-of-reply statement. We will publish accurate, on-the-record statements of position from the platform alongside our coverage, at our editorial discretion as to length and placement.

Complaints and corrections

See our corrections policy. Editorial complaints are handled by the editor; if we cannot resolve a complaint to your satisfaction, we will say so on the record.