Moderation Policy
How Vet Reviews checks reviews for authenticity, safety and usefulness while keeping moderation independent from practice management.
Claiming a practice does not change which reviews are published or how they are assessed. It simply gives a verified practice useful tools to keep its information accurate, reply publicly and raise genuine concerns for review.
Your Vet Reviews page exists independently of whether you claim it. Claiming your practice free gives you more ways to take part in the conversation; it does not make the moderation rules stricter or change how reviews are treated.
Our starting point is genuine experience
Vet Reviews exists so pet owners can share genuine first-hand experiences, whether positive, negative or mixed. Reviews are assessed against the same standards for claimed and unclaimed practices.
Keep your review truthful and first-hand
Write about what you genuinely experienced. Be as specific as you can about what happened, what was explained and how the experience felt to you. Do not knowingly include false information, exaggerate facts as certainty, impersonate someone else or submit a review for an experience that was not yours.
Criticise the experience, not the person
You can be critical of care, communication, pricing, waiting times, decisions or service. Do not use the review to personally attack, threaten, harass or abuse an individual vet, nurse, receptionist, customer or other person. Discriminatory or hateful content is not allowed.
When a review may be held or removed
We may hold a review for human review, reject it, or remove it where necessary. This includes content that is fake or manipulated; spam or advertising; unrelated to a genuine veterinary experience; threatening, abusive or discriminatory; invasive of someone’s privacy; clearly unlawful; or potentially defamatory or libellous. We may also act where a court order, legal obligation or serious platform-safety concern requires it.
We do not rewrite reviews
Moderation is about quality, authenticity, safety and legality. It is not an editorial process. We do not rewrite a review to make it nicer, harsher or more favourable to a practice. If a specific part of an otherwise genuine review creates a narrow problem, we may ask the reviewer to amend that part themselves before publication.
Claimed and unclaimed practices are treated the same
Claiming a profile, using appointments, buying optional services or having a commercial relationship with Vet Reviews does not affect moderation. A claim gives a practice management and response tools; it does not change the standards applied to reviews or ratings.
Practices can reply and ask us to review genuine concerns
A practice can publish a response and can report a review where it believes there is a genuine policy, authenticity, privacy or legal issue. A report prompts us to check the review against the policy. Vet Reviews makes that decision independently.
AI helps us monitor; it does not decide which opinions are acceptable
We use AI-assisted checks to help identify content that may need attention. These checks can look for abuse, spam, personal information, suspicious patterns or legal-risk signals. They are not used to remove a review simply because it is negative. Flagged reviews can be referred for human review.
Privacy and sensitive information
Do not publish private contact details, medical records, account information or other unnecessary personal information about staff, clients or third parties. Keep the review focused on the veterinary experience. Reviewer email addresses are used for confirmation, security and moderation and are not published.
Evidence and authenticity
We may use email confirmation, anti-abuse signals and, where available, optional visit evidence to help assess authenticity. A verified-visit signal does not mean Vet Reviews independently proves every statement in the review; it means we have additional evidence that a relevant interaction took place.
If we make a moderation decision
Where practical, we aim to take the narrowest action needed. A reviewer or practice can contact customer services if they believe a moderation decision has missed important context. We may review the decision again against the same policy and standards.
Related guidance
For tips on writing a useful review, see our Review Guidelines. To report a genuine concern, use the contact page or email customerservices@vetreviews.uk.