Every review is moderated
Nothing user-submitted appears on HushVerified without a person reading it first. There is no algorithm deciding what passes: software can catch obvious spam, but it can't judge context, tone, or whether a review is actually about the product it claims to review. Submitted reviews enter a moderation queue where we check them against our content rules, covering harassment, spam and off-topic content. Those three catch most of what gets rejected: a review that attacks a person rather than a product, a thinly veiled ad, or a comment about something else entirely.
Approved reviews may be given a scheduled publish date, so batches of collected reviews appear gradually rather than all at once.
What the Verified badge means
A review gets the verified badge only when the reviewer has shown evidence that they actually dealt with the company. We accept:
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A purchase confirmation email
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A receipt
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Documented communication with the company Including a bad support exchange, since a bad experience is a legitimate reason to write a negative review
Reviews without evidence can still be published. They just don't carry the badge, and neither state is misleading: an unbadged review is a legitimate opinion that hasn't been through verification, and a badged one proves only that the reviewer dealt with the company. The badge says nothing about whether the product is any good or whether you should share the reviewer's view.
What happens to the proof
Checking is a person reading the file and making a call. If the email, receipt or exchange shows a real interaction with the company, the review gets its badge.
A proof file can hold far more personal data than the bare fact of a transaction: a billing address, an account number, sometimes a third party such as a staff member named in the exchange. We therefore delete the uploaded file permanently the moment the verification decision is made, in either direction.
Ratings are never for sale
The final score combines user ratings (80%) with our own editorial rating (20%). Claiming a company profile is free and changes nothing about the score, the reviews, or how reports are decided.
What a claimed profile actually gets
A company claims its profile by confirming a code we email to an address on that product's own domain. Control of the domain is the whole check: if you run the domain you can claim the profile, and if you don't, you can't. A verified claim grants exactly two things:
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A public reply under any review. It publishes immediately, signed with the company's name, and we don't edit it. It is never counted in any score.
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The ability to report a review Companies can flag factual misinformation, or a reviewer who was never a customer. These grounds need more detail than a user report.
Reported reviews
Users and verified companies can report a review. A reported review stays live and unchanged while the report is open. Every report is resolved by a human, and only an upheld report removes a review.
The HushVerified business badge
Two different marks share the HushVerified name, and they mean different things. A rating badge just reports what our users scored a product. Any listed company can display it, and it says nothing about our opinion of them. A business badge, the one with the checkmark, means we checked the company itself.
The checkmark requires all three of the following. There is no partial badge:
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Reachable support. We contacted them through their own published channel and a human replied within five working days. An autoresponder does not count.
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Refunds that actually happen. A written policy is not enough, because a policy can say anything. We asked for a refund and got one.
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A real, traceable company. A named legal entity with a registration number we can look up in a public registry, matching whoever takes the payment.
Each badge is dated and expires after twelve months unless we re-check. Pricing and policies in this market change constantly. It is also withdrawn immediately if a report shows one of the three checks no longer holds. That reaches any other website displaying it, because the badge image is served from here rather than handed over as a file.
The badge is not for sale, and it is not an endorsement. It cannot be bought, and no company has ever paid for one. It says nothing about whether a product is any good. A low-scoring product can carry it, because answering your emails and honouring refunds is a different question from being worth your money.