Consumer Review Guidelines

What are the HomeStars posting guidelines?

HomeStars has sole discretion on what to post and in what form, but the following are useful guidelines for what we look at:

1. Reviews must be at least 30 words in length. We will not post reviews that are with no substance, such as "They are great."
2. Reviews must be based on a financial transaction between a homeowner and company. Reviews published on a company listing must relate to a household repair, improvement, purchase, or construction undertaking, completed by a written or verbal contract.
3. The content of a review must be family-friendly. If you know someone who would blush at what you have written, so will our readers! HomeStars will not post – or once posted, will remove – any defamatory or insulting language, profanity, threats, prejudiced comments, hate speech, personal attacks, or other content considered objectionable.
4. Reviews must be submitted from a valid email address and with a valid postal code. Our policy is to post your online name and neighbourhood of residence in association with a review, as well as the locality in which the work was done. Although we may use your email address to contact you if there is a problem with your review, we will never post your email address or postal code on the site. We value your privacy. Your email address and postal code are only required for verification purposes, and to ensure that we serve the best and most relevant results to users of the site. For more information, please see HomeStars' privacy policy.
5. Ensure your review is unique, independent, and accurate. You may submit one review of any given event. The review must concern a specific company you have worked with and a specific event, not hearsay. The review itself should focus solely on your experience with that company, product, or service. You should not refer to a company’s competitors by name if you are giving a comparison of your experience with two separate companies. As others may rely on your reviews, we urge you to make your comments helpful, reasonable, and above all, truthful to your experience. Ensure your content is as factually accurate as possible according to your knowledge and experience.
6. Ensure your review is legal and non-infringing. We will not post, and will remove from the site, any review that is or becomes illegal or infringing. Reviews may be removed and a marker showing the user name and date will be shown in any of the following cases:
   • Homeowner has requested their review be removed.
   • Review is currently being investigated. It will either go back up or rejected if it is not validated by the user.
   • Review is removed as not from a validated client. A suspicious review marker may also be shown on a company listing for a period of time if there is more than one instance of a review being written by a user other than a client of the company. Please see our Terms of Use for further details.
7. We will not post a review written by or about minors (under the age of 18). As per our Terms of Use, you must be at least 18 years of age to be eligible to use the site, as either a reviewer or as the representative of a company.
8. Company owners, management, or employees (past or current) may not pose as consumers and post reviews about their own company. This is considered to be fraudulent behaviour, and will be treated accordingly.
9. Do not respond to a review using a review. We allow representatives of parties or entities that were reviewed to respond to posted reviews by way of Respond to this Review. HomeStars will apply the same posting guidelines set out above to such responses. Please note that the identity of a representative that files a response to a review will be made known on the site. A company that violates our privacy guidelines may be suspended from using the site.
10. Reviews must be non-commercial. HomeStars will not post any web addresses, e-mail addresses, HTML code, or promotional materials of any kind.
11. Reviews must be written in English.