A fair account of a real experience stays up, including when we could have filed it and billed you for the work.
Every firm in this category keeps a list of reviews it says it cannot touch. Ours works differently. When we hand a review back, the filing was available to us and we turned it down.
This is standing policy, applied the same way on every profile.
A review has to contain an obvious falsehood that projects unfairly on you. Both halves carry weight.
An opinion cannot be false, and a matter of interpretation is not obvious. What qualifies is a specific factual assertion. A charge you never made. A visit that never happened. A person who was never your customer. Much of what settles those is already public: the review itself, the rest of the profile, your own reply to it. Where a review turns on something only your records can settle, we ask you for that one thing and tell you why.
Where the review comes down to your account against theirs and there is genuinely no way to tell from outside, it is contested. Contested reviews get declined.
Correct the false part, read the review again, and see whether it still does the same damage. If the damage survives, their real complaint was doing the work all along, and their real complaint stands. If correcting it guts the review, it qualifies.
A review can be true throughout and still qualify on one line. A largely accurate account carrying a single false statement that makes you look worse than you were will do it, and those are common.
Five pairs. Within each pair the two reviews sit close enough that only the rule separates them. These are constructed examples. We do not publish client matters.
We decline
“Worst pizza I’ve ever had.”
Pure taste. Neither we nor you can disprove it, and nobody should try.
We take it
“Worst pizza I’ve ever had, and they charged me twice.”
One transaction on file.
The opinion opens it. The billing claim behind it is false, and partial falsehood counts.
We decline
“Waited 45 minutes.”
And they did.
True.
We take it
“Terrible. I waited three hours.”
Your records show forty minutes.
A partly true review where the false figure does the damage.
We decline
“Came in Tuesday, the tech was rude.”
It was Wednesday.
Fix the day and the complaint reads exactly the same.
We take it
“Charged me $4,000 and never showed up.”
The invoice reads $500 and the job was completed.
The false claim is the entire complaint.
We decline
“They damaged my floor.”
You say they didn’t. No way to tell from outside.
We don't arbitrate one person's word against another's.
We take it
“Never used them, a friend told me about this place.”
It describes no experience at your business at all, which every platform we work treats as a content violation.
We decline
“Rude staff, felt overpriced, wouldn’t go back.”
Nothing in it is false. An honest impression, and they are entitled to it.
We take it
A cluster of one-stars posted in the same week, from accounts with no transaction history with you.
Same basis as the pair above, at volume.
Usually the contested one. The review you are certain is a lie, where it comes down to your account against theirs. We doubt the reviewer more than we doubt you, and we decline it anyway, because neither of us can tell from the outside and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
Where something would change the answer we say so. Now and then a record turns a contested review into a clear-cut one. More often the honest answer is that this one stays up.
Because it is the part you can check. Anyone can claim to be selective. The test is whether they hand you back reviews they could have billed you for, in writing, before you have paid anything.
That is the audit: every review on your profile, the ones we would take, the ones we won't, the reason for each, and what your displayed rating does at each step. You keep it whether or not you hire us.