Review Guidelines for Vendors

This article covers the following topics:
Vendor Review Guidelines (for Vendors)
Review dispute process
Conditions under which a Review may be removed
Guidelines for responding to Reviews

Vendor Review Guidelines (for Vendors)

• Easy Event Planning LLC (EEP) encourages vendors to have former clients post reviews to their profiles. However, vendors are prohibited from paying anyone to write a review.  They are also prohibited from writing reviews for themselves. 
• Proof of payment or a signed contract may be requested by the reviewer if a request has been submitted to investigate a review. The purpose of the investigation is ONLY to confirm that the reviewer has, in fact, conducted business with the vendor.  The content of the review is not investigated in any way.  It is EEP’s role to remain an neutral party.
• The documentation supplied by the reviewer cannot be supplied to the vendor, as it would violate the reviewer’s privacy.
• Anyone can submit a request to investigate a review.
• Users must indicate their event date when writing a review.
• Vendors may reply to a review as the claimed manager of that business. Sign in to your account, go to any of your category profiles and click the Reply button below the review to post a reply. 
• All reviews and replies to reviews are first scanned by EEP’s Admin team. EEP does not verify content in reviews. Reviews are only scanned to ensure that they don’t violate our Terms of Service.  View details on our User Review Guidelines.
• Vendors cannot write reviews for other vendors unless they have conducted business with the vendor directly. To endorse another vendor at the site, click on the Connect button on their profile and choose your vendor Connection ID from the drop-down. Once the connection request has been approved by that vendor, the vendor will appear as a Connection on your profile(s), and you will appear as one of their connections as well.
• Vendors cannot pay to have reviews removed.
• If you are unhappy with your review score, EEP would encourage you to seek additional reviews from other past clients.
• All of your reviews appear on all of your category profiles.
• The reviewer is responsible for the content of his/her review (as the vendor is solely responsible for the content of their reply). EEP does not act as a publisher and has not “published” the content posted by users.  Under the Computer Decency Act (“CDA”), the provider of an “interactive computer service” (EEP) will not be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by a user of the computer service.  This means that the provider (EEP) will not be liable for any defamation caused by users of its service. 
• The term “interactive computer service” means any information service, system, or access software provider that provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server.
• You may not leave a review for your own business.
  
  

Review Dispute Process

1. If you believe a review is fraudulent, meaning it was posted by someone with whom you have not done business, please submit a ticket at support.easyeventplanning.com.
2. The review will temporarily be removed from your profile while it is being investigated. A notice that reads “This review is currently under review” will appear instead.
3. If EEP feels there is a sufficient reason to request documentation from the reviewer, an email will be sent to the reviewer within 15 business days, requesting proof in the way of a signed contract and/or proof of payment that s(he) did, in fact, do business with the vendor. The reviewer will have 30 days to supply that proof.
4. If the user fails to reply during the specified time period, the review will be permanently removed. Both the user and the vendor will be notified via email.
5. If the user supplies sufficient evidence that s(he) has, indeed, done business with the vendor, the review will be reinstated on the vendor profile(s) within 10 business days. Both the user and the vendor will be notified via email.

Conditions under which a review may be removed:

1. The user fails to provide proof within 30 business days of the request sent by EEP or the reviewer cannot be reached by EEP.
2. An order or ruling is issued by a court order or certified dispute resolution service. EEP is not involved in any legal proceedings related to reviews (or any other disputes between users and vendors), other than to provide the text of the review if requested by the court. 
3. It is a duplicate review by the same user for the same event.
4. The review appears to have been written on the wrong vendor profile.
5. There are multiple reviews for the same business from the same IP address (using the same or different EEP accounts). The first review will remain in place if this is discovered.  Please note that the same user can review a vendor multiple times – one for each event.  Removal would happen in the case of suspected fraudulence.  (the business owner/manager is writing review for their own business, etc.).  
6. The review references actions taken or assumed to be taken by any law enforcement organization or EEP.
7. The review violates EEP's Terms of Service.

Guidelines for responding to reviews

You can publicly respond to a review on your profile(s).  Your reply will appear below the review and will be visible to everyone visiting your profile(s).  Simply sign in and choose the business name from your User Menu and click on the Reviews link.

In responding to a positive review, a simple thank-you is advised.  Please refrain from offering any rewards for their reviews, as that is against our terms of service.

In responding to a negative review, we suggest you keep your reply professional.  Keep in mind that reviewers are people with feelings too and they may respond negatively to rude or disparaging comments.  You may be best served by thanking the reviewer for his/her feedback and by indicating any changes you have made or plan to make based on their feedback. If you feel the review is inaccurate you can express your impression of how the event unfolded.  Your professional reply may impact other people’s desire to do business with you and even earn you a second chance with your reviewer.  Your goal should be to rebuild trust with both the reviewer and others reading their review and your reply.  Users can change their reviews if they desire. Be careful not to offer incentives for them to remove their review.  You may also be best served by first contacting the reviewer personally to try to work out your differences before posting any reply.