Secret Shopper Guidelines

(Version – February 2011)

These guidelines help us ensure that the Secret Shopper reviews we publish are accurate, relevant, fair and legal. Please note that they may be amended from time to time so you should regularly check this site for the latest version.

All Secret Shopper reviews (and also any comments or responses posted on this site by retailers and others) must meet standards set out below.

We reserve the right to disallow or remove any reviews, comments or responses that do not meet the following Guidelines or which we, at our reasonable discretion, consider inappropriate.

Without prejudice to any other rights or remedies we may have under applicable law, we may suspend or terminate the access rights of any user that breaches these Guidelines.

Comment Standards

All reviews and other comments posted on the site must comply with the law and must not infringe the legal rights of others.
There must be no swearing, threats, prejudiced comments, hate speech, sexually explicit language or other non-family-friendly content. Harassment or bullying of other site users will not be tolerated.
Please use plain English when writing your review. Do not use ALL CAPS, excessive typographic symbols, HTML tags, slang or obscure acronyms.
You must never use the site to promote or encourage illegal, immoral, unethical or criminal activity.

Written by actual shoppers

Reviews must be genuinely based on the shopper’s own experience, and not second-hand information or hearsay from other sources (especially unverified information, rumours or quotations from other sources or the reported opinions/experience of others).
Reviews must be honest, fair, and constructive. While reviews can sometimes be negative, they must never be misleading, defamatory, offensive or obscene in nature.
Reviews must not personally name individual employees of a retailer or organisation being reviewed or contain other information that infringes on a person’s privacy.
Reviews must be genuine. You must not impersonate anyone or post a review which is intended to mislead the reader.
Any comments written by retail owners, managers or staff posing as shoppers will not be accepted. Likewise you must not post any content on the site which constitutes a commercial message, sales promotion or any form of advertising. We do not accept any retailers engaging in illegal or unfair trade practices on the site such as making misleading comments intended to damage a competitor. If you are a retail owner or manager and would like to respond to a specific comment, please email secretshopper@maryportas.com or see the Retailer Right of Reply Tool section.

Unique and independent

You may write one review on any given organisation. Secret Shoppers may submit subsequent reviews for additional retailer visits but not less than one month after the publication of your last review. We do not allow repeated or vexatious comments, which simply have the aim of causing annoyance or nuisance.

NB: If you’d like to update a review that you wrote, please contact webmaster@maryportas.com.

Reviews should contain only original content and no quoted content or material lifted or copied from other sources.
All email addresses, contact information and links to third party material are not allowed. We reserve the right to remove or reject any link or third party URL for any reason.
Please do not include questions for other reviewers or make comments about other shopper reviews or the persons making the comments.

Age requirement

All reviews must be written by persons over the age of 14.

Your personal details

The email address associated with your account must be valid and correct. We may need to contact you if there is a problem or issue with your review, so no fake email addresses, please.
We will never disclose your personal data or email address to anyone else without your express permission, and are happy for you to use an alias rather than your real name.

And finally…

We reserve the right to remove all or any part of a review or management response at any time for any reason.
The opinions and comments expressed on MaryPortas.com are the subjective opinions of their authors and not of Mary Portas Website LLP, Mary Portas, any companies associated with her or any of their personnel, representatives or agents.
We are not responsible for nor do we endorse any opinion expressed by any reviewer or retailer.