Glossary
The words that decide whether your review stays up
Twenty terms, each defined in one sentence you can act on.
- Defamation
- Defamation is a false statement of fact, published to someone else, that damages a person or business's reputation.
- Opinion privilege
- Opinion privilege is the rule that a statement which cannot be proven true or false — a subjective judgement — generally cannot be defamatory.
- SLAPP suit
- A SLAPP suit is a lawsuit filed mainly to intimidate a critic into silence rather than to win on the merits.
- Cease and desist letter
- A cease and desist letter is a private demand — usually from a lawyer — that you remove a review; it is not a court order.
- Consumer Review Fairness Act
- The Consumer Review Fairness Act is a 2016 US federal law that voids contract clauses attempting to ban or penalise honest customer reviews.
- Non-disparagement clause
- A non-disparagement clause is contract language forbidding you from criticising a business — generally unenforceable against consumers in the US.
- FTC endorsement guides
- The FTC endorsement guides require reviews to reflect genuine experience and any material connection to the business to be disclosed.
- Fake review
- A fake review is one posted by someone who was not a customer, or that misrepresents the experience — illegal to sell or buy under FTC rules.
- Review filtering
- Review filtering is a platform automatically hiding a review it judges unreliable, without deleting it or notifying you.
- Review gating
- Review gating is a business screening customers first and only inviting the happy ones to post publicly.
- Chargeback
- A chargeback is a card-issuer reversal of a payment when goods or services were not delivered as agreed.
- Small claims court
- Small claims court is a simplified civil court for money disputes under a state limit, typically $5,000–$12,500, where lawyers are often not required.
- Demand letter
- A demand letter is a dated written request for a specific remedy, sent before filing a claim.
- Consumer complaint
- A consumer complaint is a formal filing with a regulator — a state attorney general, licensing board, or federal agency — that the business is asked to answer in writing.
- BBB complaint
- A BBB complaint is a mediated filing the Better Business Bureau forwards to the business, which typically has 14 days to respond publicly.
- Licensing board
- A licensing board is the state body that issues a trade's licence — contractors, dentists, salons, plumbers — and can discipline or revoke it.
- Contractor surety bond
- A surety bond is money a licensed contractor must post that a wronged consumer can claim against when the contractor will not pay.
- Verifiable fact
- A verifiable fact in a review is a statement backed by a document, a date, or a photograph you actually hold.
- Conflict of interest (in reviews)
- A conflict of interest is any relationship — employment, competition, family, payment — that would make your review something other than a customer account.
- Right of reply
- Right of reply is the business's ability to respond publicly to your review, which most platforms grant automatically.