Terms for businesses

These terms apply when a business creates an account on GoldStarred, claims a profile, or uses our invitations, widget or badge. They are written in plain English on purpose. If anything is unclear, write to hello@goldstarred.com.

1. Who we are and what we do

GoldStarred is a review platform for online businesses. It is run by the company named at the foot of this page. We publish reviews of businesses and of their products, software, courses and services, and we give businesses tools to collect those reviews.

2. Your account

You must be at least 18 and authorised to act for the business you register. Tell us the truth about who you are and about the domain you own. We may ask you to prove you control the domain, for example with a meta tag or a DNS record. You are responsible for what is done through your account, so keep your sign-in code private.

3. Plans, billing and cancellation

We offer Free, Growth and Pro, with the prices and allowances shown on our pricing page. Free includes reviews of your business, a public profile and badge, and up to 75 review invitations a month. Growth adds reviews for up to 25 products, apps or courses with their own widgets and Google markup, up to 250 invitations a month with automatic reminders, social cards and CSV export. Pro adds unlimited products, apps or courses and unlimited invitations, up to 5 websites on one account, import from other platforms, the badge without the GoldStarred line and priority support. A product joins your account the first time its widget loads on your verified site. You choose a paid plan by email from Plan & billing; it is billed monthly with no annual contract, you can cancel at any time by emailing hello@goldstarred.com and it ends at the close of the month you have paid for, and the price you subscribe at will not rise while you stay subscribed. Prices exclude VAT and sales tax where they apply. We will tell you before anything on your plan changes in a way that affects you.

4. The rules about reviews

These rules are the heart of the service, and they apply to every business equally.

• You can never hide, delay, edit or reorder a review, and you cannot pay to make good reviews more prominent or bad ones less so. We never hide, delay or reorder a review because of payment, plan or sentiment. A review may be held briefly for a person to look at when fraud-risk signals appear, and those signals apply equally to positive and negative reviews. See our moderation page.
• Reviews are ranked by review data only, never by payment. If we ever sell paid placement, it will be clearly labelled as such.
• You may reply publicly to any review. You may flag a review you believe breaks our rules. Flagging never hides a review automatically. Our moderators decide, using the same process for free and paid businesses.
• Each review carries a label: Verified or Unverified, then Invited, Organic or Imported, then Incentivised if a reward was involved. Verified needs an order reference from you, so give one when you invite a customer you can tie to an order. Please read How we verify reviews, our fake review policy and our moderation page.

5. What you must not do

• Write, buy or ask others to write fake reviews, or review your own business or a competitor.
• Offer money, discounts or gifts in return for reviews without telling us, or ask only happy customers to review. If you offered an incentive, the review will be labelled Incentivised.
• Pressure, threaten or harass a reviewer.
• Send invitations to people who have not dealt with you, or to people who have asked not to be contacted.
• Interfere with the service or try to get around its limits.

If you break these rules we may remove reviews or invitations, suspend your account, or close it. We will tell you why unless the law stops us. When we remove a review on your page, we email you the reason.

6. Invitations and personal data

When you invite customers you give us their names and email addresses so we can send the invitation. You must have a lawful reason to contact them. For that data you are the controller and we are your processor, on the terms of our data processing agreement.

7. Widget and badge

You may display our widget and badge on your own site. They include a link back to GoldStarred. Do not alter the numbers or labels they display, and do not present a rating as yours when it comes from GoldStarred. Whether search engines show star ratings is up to them. We do not promise it.

8. Your content and ours

You keep the rights in your logo and descriptions. You give us a non-exclusive licence to display them on GoldStarred and in the widget. Reviews belong to their authors, who license them to us to publish. The service, its design and code belong to us.

9. Our responsibility

We provide the service with reasonable care and skill but cannot promise it will always be available or error-free. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, such as for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud. Subject to that, we are not liable for lost profit, lost sales or indirect loss, and our total liability to you in any twelve months is limited to the greater of what you paid us in that period and £100.

10. Ending and changes

You can close your account at any time by emailing hello@goldstarred.com. When we close it, we remove your team's access and delete your invitation data. Published reviews of your business stay on your public page unless they break our rules. We may change these terms; we will give you reasonable notice of material changes by email.

11. Law

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction, although a consumer or business in another part of the UK keeps any rights it has to use its local courts.

GoldStarred is operated by Harber Glaves Trading Ltd, company number 16605946, registered in England and Wales.

Registered office: Unit A, 82 James Carter Road, Mildenhall, Bury St. Edmunds, England, IP28 7DE.

Contact: hello@goldstarred.com