1.               Introduction and Purpose

This Consumer Reviews Policy explains how WhichPad UK Ltd collects, manages, and moderates reviews submitted by students concerning properties, landlords, letting agents and accommodation services listed on the site following the creation of a WhichPad account. Our aim is to ensure that students can rely on reviews that reflect genuine experiences and that the information shared on our site is accurate, trustworthy and useful.

WhichPad UK Ltd operates www.whichpad.com (“our site”) a student-focused property and room-finding platform. We enable students to share their personal experiences with specific properties, hosts and agents so that other students can make informed housing decisions. For reviews to be meaningful and reliable, they must be based on genuine interactions and comply with the rules set out in this Policy.

Reviews submitted on our site are not anonymous. You must have a verified WhichPad account and may be asked to provide evidence of your experience. We may decline to publish, remove, or restrict the visibility of any review that does not comply with this Policy, or that we reasonably consider to be misleading, unfair, inaccurate or harmful to our users or to the integrity of the platform.

This Policy applies to all reviews submitted through our site. If we show reviews sourced from third-party sites, those reviews will also be subject to the third party’s rules and moderation processes.

2.               Reviews submitted through our site Who can submit a review

You may submit a review on our site if you have had a genuine and recent experience with a property, host, agent or service listed on our platform. A genuine experience includes viewing a property, staying in a property, entering into a tenancy or licence agreement, communicating with a host or agent, or otherwise engaging with a listing or service in a meaningful way.

To submit a review, you must be over the age of 18 and hold a verified WhichPad account. Reviews are not anonymous. We may ask you for proof of your experience, such as viewing confirmation, written correspondence, a tenancy document, or other reasonable evidence. If you do not provide this when asked, your review may be removed or not published.

You must not submit a review if you are connected to the property or business being reviewed. This includes circumstances where you are the host or property owner, a letting or managing agent involved in the listing, a member of their immediate family, an employee, a shareholder, a contractor, or a competitor. You must not submit reviews on behalf of someone else or use more than one account to submit reviews.

We welcome honest feedback whether positive or negative. However, all reviews must comply with this Policy and must reflect your own genuine experience. If you have a question or require assistance with a listing or service, you should contact our support team directly, rather than submitting a review.

How to leave a review

To leave a review on our site you must log in to your verified WhichPad account and complete the review submission form available on our website. Reviews are not anonymous. You must provide your legal name, your university email address, and any other information requested on the form. This helps us verify that reviews come from genuine members of the student community, as reflected on our current review pages.

When completing the form, you must select the relevant property or letting agent, provide a review title and write a clear and detailed account of your experience. Reviews should contain enough information to be meaningful to other users. Reviews that are vague, incomplete, false, or lacking substance may be declined or removed.

We require reviewers to use their university email address to support our verification process. If you do not use a university email address, or if we cannot verify that you have had a genuine interaction with the property or agent you are reviewing, your review may be removed and/or not be published.

Your review must reflect your own genuine experience of a viewing, stay, tenancy, licence, communication with a host or agent, or other direct interaction with a listing on our site. Before submitting your review, you will be asked to confirm that it is truthful and that you are not connected to the property or business being reviewed in a way that gives rise to a conflict of interest. You will also be asked to confirm whether you received any form of incentive to write the review. If you have received an incentive, you must clearly disclose this within the review.

We may request further information to verify your experience, such as viewing confirmations, written correspondence with a host or agent, tenancy documentation or any other reasonable evidence. If you do not respond to a verification request, or if you cannot provide sufficient evidence of your experience, we may remove your review or decide not to publish it.

You may update your review if your circumstances change or if an issue is resolved. Only your most recent review will appear on the website. You must not submit multiple reviews about the same property or agent unless your experience has materially changed.

Rules for reviews

All reviews submitted to our site must comply with these Rules. They ensure that reviews published on our website are genuine, accurate and helpful, and that the platform remains safe and fair for our users, hosts and agents.

  1. Genuine and recent experience

Your review must be based on a genuine and recent experience with a property, host, agent or service listed on our site. You must have had a direct interaction, such as arranging or attending a viewing, communicating with a host or agent, staying in the property, or entering into a tenancy or licence agreement.

Reviews must reflect your own first-hand experience. You must not submit a review based on hearsay, assumptions, third-party recollections or information found online.

2. Verification and identity

Reviews on our site are not anonymous. You must provide your legal name, a valid university email address, and any other information requested on the review form. If we cannot verify your identity or your connection to the listing, we may remove your review or decline to publish it.

We may ask you to provide further information to verify your experience, including viewing confirmations, written correspondence, tenancy documents, or other reasonable evidence. If you do not respond or cannot provide adequate information, your review may be removed.

3. No conflicts of interest

You must not submit a review if you are connected to the property or business being reviewed. This includes circumstances where you are the host or property owner, a letting or managing agent, a contractor, a member of their immediate family, an employee, a shareholder, or a competitor. You must not submit a review on behalf of someone else.

4. One review per experience

You may submit one review per property or agent for each tenancy or significant interaction. If your experience changes or if an issue is resolved, you may update your existing review. Only your most recent review will appear on our site.

You must not post repeated or duplicate reviews and must not attempt to influence ratings by coordinating reviews with others or using multiple accounts.

5. Accuracy and fairness

Reviews must be honest, accurate, fair, and represent a genuine user experience. You may express opinions, but your review must not:

  • Mislead other
  • Exaggerate or distort what
  • Omit essential
  • Unfairly damage the reputation of an individual or
  • Harass any third
  • Misuse any third party private

Your review must contain meaningful detail. Reviews that are vague, generic or lacking substance may be declined.

6. Prohibited content

Your review must not include:

  • Any material which is defamatory of any
  • Contain any material which is obscene, offensive, hateful or
  • Promote sexually explicit
  • Promote violence
  • Promote discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or
  • Infringe any copyright, database right or trademark of any other
  • Be likely to deceive any
  • Be made in breach of any legal duty owed to a third party, such as a contractual duty or a duty of
  • Promote any illegal
  • Be threatening, abusive or invade another’s privacy, or cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety.
  • Be likely to harass, upset, embarrass, alarm or annoy any other
  • Be used to impersonate any person, or to misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any
  • Give the impression that they emanate from us, if this is not the case; and/or
  • Advocate, promote or assist any unlawful act such as (by way of example only) copyright infringement or computer misuse.

We may remove a review if any part of it breaches these requirements.

7. Incentivised reviews

You must not submit a review that has been incentivised unless the incentive is fully disclosed in the review. You must never accept or offer incentives to write a positive review or manipulate ratings.

8. Using reviews for customer support

If you need help with a property or agent, or if you have an unresolved issue, you should contact WhichPad UK Ltd’s support team directly. Reviews must not be used to pressure hosts, agents or WhichPad UK Ltd’s staff into taking action.

9. Our right to remove or restrict reviews

We may decline to publish, remove or restrict the visibility of any review that:

  • Breaches these
  • Cannot be
  • Contains inaccurate or misleading
  • Is unfair or
  • Is irrelevant to the
  • Is harmful to users, partners or WhichPad UK
  • Appears fraudulent, malicious or part of a coordinated
  • Poses legal, safety, or reputational

We may also suspend or restrict accounts that repeatedly breach these Rules.

Where and how we display reviews

Reviews appear on our website under the relevant city, property or letting agent. Reviews for a specific property or agent are grouped together so that users can view previous students’ experiences in one place, as shown on our existing city and agent listing pages. We arrange and display reviews in the way we consider most helpful for users and appropriate for the platform.

We publish reviews that comply with this Policy. We may display the most recent reviews first or use another ordering method that we consider fair and useful. We may also group reviews by type of experience, by date or by relevance. We may exclude certain reviews from aggregated scores if they are under investigation or if we reasonably consider them unreliable.

A user reading your review will be able to see your name and review content. We may also display your other reviews on our site where this helps users understand your experience. If you update your review, only your most recent version will appear on the website.

We may use technology, internal verification processes or manual review to check reviews for authenticity, accuracy and compliance. Where a review is undergoing verification, we may delay publication, restrict its visibility or temporarily remove it.

We may include extracts, summaries or representative parts of reviews when displaying content within the website, provided we do not change the meaning of the review. We may also use reviews, or part of them, in promotional materials, provided that we do not identify you beyond the information you have chosen to provide publicly.

If a review is removed, restricted or flagged during investigation, it will not contribute to any aggregated score or rating on our website.

Please report suspicious reviews to us

If you believe that a review published on our site is false, misleading, inappropriate or otherwise does not comply with this Policy, you may report it to us using the reporting option available on the review page or by contacting our support team through the website.

You may report a review if, for example, you believe that:

  • The review has not been written by a genuine student or
  • The reviewer did not have a real or recent interaction with the property or
  • The review contains abusive, harmful, discriminatory or threatening
  • The review includes false or misleading
  • The review contains Personal Data or confidential
  • The reviewer appears to have a conflict of interest or a connection to the property or business being
  • The review is part of coordinated activity or review

When reporting a review, you should provide as much information as possible to help us investigate. We may ask you for further details if required.

We take all reports seriously. While we do not intervene in disagreements over subjective opinions, we will investigate reviews that appear to breach this Policy, that raise questions about authenticity or fairness, or that pose legal, safety or reputational risk.

How We Investigate and Deal With Suspicious Reviews

When a review is reported to us, or when our own checks indicate that a review may not comply with this Policy, we will carry out an appropriate investigation. Our aim is to ensure that all reviews displayed on our site are genuine, accurate and compliant with our rules, while treating all parties fairly.

We may take the following steps during an investigation.

a.     Initial assessment

We will review the content of the review to identify any clear breaches of this Policy, including abusive language, personal data, confidential information, conflicts of interest, or indications that the reviewer has not had a genuine experience.

Where a breach is obvious, we may remove the review immediately or decline to publish it.

b.     Verification requests

If a review raises questions about authenticity, accuracy or fairness, we may contact the reviewer and request evidence of their experience. This may include:

  • Confirmation of a viewing or
  • Written correspondence with a host or
  • A tenancy or licence
  • Screenshots or documents showing a genuine
  • Your university email address if not already
  • Any other reasonable information supporting the

If the reviewer does not respond or cannot provide adequate evidence, we may remove the review or decline to publish it.

c.     Temporary restrictions

While a review is under investigation, we may restrict its visibility, delay its publication or temporarily remove it from our website. Reviews under investigation are not included in any aggregated ratings.

d.     Determining outcome

After completing our investigation, we may:

  • Remove the review
  • Decline to publish the
  • Reinstate the review if it complies with this
  • Remove or restrict other reviews from the same reviewer if patterns of concern are
  • Suspend or restrict the reviewer’s account where there are repeated breaches or attempts to manipulate ratings.

e.     Coordinated or harmful activity

Where we identify coordinated, malicious or harmful activity, including review manipulation or targeted abuse, we may:

  • Remove all affected
  • Suspend or restrict the accounts
  • Block further reviews linked to specific accounts, email domains or IP
  • Take any other steps reasonably required to protect WhichPad UK Ltd, its users and its

f.       Our ultimate discretion

We may remove or restrict the visibility of any review that we reasonably consider to be misleading, unfair, unreliable or harmful to our users, partners or to WhichPad UK Ltd, even if the review is not clearly unlawful.

This ensures that the reviews shown on our website remain genuine, trustworthy and useful.

If You Disagree With a Moderation Decision

If your review has been removed, restricted, or not published and you believe this decision was incorrect, you may contact us through our website to request a review of the decision. When contacting us you should clearly identify the review in question and provide any information or evidence that you believe supports your position.

We will consider your request and reassess the review in light of the information provided. We may ask you for further details where this is necessary to complete our assessment. Once our review is complete, we will inform you of the outcome.

We aim to treat all users fairly, but we are not required to publish or reinstate any review. We may uphold our original decision where we reasonably consider that:

  • The review breaches this
  • The review cannot be
  • The review contains misleading, unfair or inaccurate
  • The review poses legal, safety or reputational
  • The reviewer has not provided adequate evidence when
  • The review forms part of repeated or coordinated

Our decision after reassessment will be final for the purposes of publication on our site. You may still update your review in future if your circumstances genuinely change or if new information becomes available.

Use of Reviews in Our Marketing

We may use reviews submitted to our site, or extracts from those reviews, in our marketing materials. This may include displaying reviews or short quotations on our website, on printed materials or in digital communications that promote WhichPad UK Ltd. When we do this, we will not identify you beyond the information that is already visible on your public review.

 

We may edit reviews for length, clarity or formatting when using them in marketing materials, provided that we do not change the meaning or sentiment of the review. We may also group similar comments or use representative extracts where it is helpful to present user feedback in a clear and accessible way.

By submitting a review, you agree that we may use your review in this manner. If you update your review, we may continue to use earlier extracts unless you ask us to stop. If you withdraw or delete your review, we will stop using it in new materials, although materials already produced may continue to include it.

Breaches and Account Restrictions

If you breach this Policy or if we reasonably believe that your activity on our site poses a risk to users, hosts, agents or to WhichPad UK Ltd itself, we may take steps to protect the integrity of our platform. The steps we take will depend on the circumstances and the nature of the breach.

We may:

  • Remove or restrict the visibility of any review that breaches this
  • Decline to publish reviews that appear unverifiable, misleading or
  • Temporarily suspend your ability to submit reviews while concerns are
  • Request further information from you before allowing you to continue using our review
  • Remove all reviews submitted by you if we identify repeated breaches or attempts to manipulate
  • Restrict, suspend, or permanently close your WhichPad account if there are serious or repeated breaches, or where we identify coordinated or harmful activity.

We may also take action where we reasonably suspect that you have:

  • Used more than one account to submit
  • Impersonated another individual or misrepresented your
  • Submitted reviews about properties or agents with whom you have a financial, personal or professional connection.
  • Attempted to pressure hosts, agents or WhichPad UK ltd staff through reviews or coordinated
  • Submitted fabricated or malicious

Where appropriate, we may block further reviews linked to particular accounts, email addresses, university domains or IP addresses if this is necessary to prevent continued misuse.

If we take action under this section, we will do so to maintain the reliability, authenticity and fairness of the reviews published on our site.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this Review and Moderation Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, our services or our legal and regulatory obligations. If we make changes that materially affect your rights or responsibilities, we will take reasonable steps to notify you, which may include posting an updated version on our website or contacting you using the details associated with your WhichPad account.

 

The version of this Policy published on our site at the time a review is submitted will apply to that review. By continuing to use our website or by submitting, updating or responding to reviews after any changes come into effect, you agree to be bound by the updated Policy.

You should check this page periodically to ensure that you are aware of the current version.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Review and Moderation Policy, or if you wish to report a review, request a reassessment or raise any concerns about the review process, you may contact us through the contact form on our website.

When contacting us, please include your full name, your university email address, and any information that will help us identify the relevant review, property or agent. We will respond as soon as reasonably possible.