Who owns the reviews

This is the question that decides whether a review platform is worth reading, so it gets its own page rather than a clause buried in terms nobody opens.

Reviews are submitted by consumers to VouchRate and form part of an independent review network. Businesses receive licensed access to tools for managing their profile and engaging with customers. They do not acquire ownership of the reviews, nor any right to have them removed.

What a subscription buys

You are buying

Tools to invite customers and collect reviews
Analytics on what your customers are telling you
Widgets, API access and integrations
The ability to reply publicly and privately
The ability to raise a dispute for a moderator to decide

You are not buying

Ownership of the reviews on your profile
The right to delete, hide or reorder a review
A higher rating, or a higher Trust Score
Position in search results or category listings
Any influence over a moderation decision

If a business leaves

Subscription cancelled
        ↓
Business tools switched off
        ↓
Profile stays public
        ↓
Reviews remain

A business can stop paying us at any time and we will say so on its profile. What it cannot do is take the reviews with it. If cancelling deleted the record, then every unflattering profile would eventually be cancelled away, and the remaining data would be worthless to the consumers it exists for.

The same applies to a business that never subscribed at all. An unclaimed profile carries the same reviews, the same rating and the same Trust Score as a paying one.

Advertising is kept separate

Where VouchRate carries advertising, it is labelled, it sits outside the results, and it has no effect on ranking, rating or Trust Score. A business cannot buy its way up a category listing, because the moment placement is purchasable the listing stops being information and becomes inventory.

Stated as a rule we hold ourselves to: advertising ≠ reviews ≠ ranking.

What reviewers keep

Reviewers retain the rights in what they wrote and grant VouchRate a licence to publish it. A reviewer can edit their review, and the history stays visible rather than the text being silently replaced. A reviewer can also delete their own review, or ask us to erase their account and everything in it — that right belongs to the person who wrote it, and to nobody else.

Your data rights

This page describes how the product is built and operated. It sits alongside, and does not replace, the contractual terms — which say the same thing in the language a court would need.