Help Centre

Reviews and ratings

Let members rate listings and sellers with one to five stars, let sellers rate their buyers, keep reviews double-blind after a deal, and show earned trust badges.

Reviews build trust. Buyers are more willing to deal with a seller who has a row of good ratings, and sellers have a reason to behave well. With reviews switched on, members can give each listing one to five stars and a short text, and every seller gets an average rating across all their listings.

Switch reviews on

Reviews are an add-on:

  1. In the admin panel, click Add-ons in the sidebar.
  2. Click Reviews.
  3. Switch on Enable reviews.
  4. If only buyers who paid through your site should be able to review, also switch on Only buyers can review (see below).
  5. Click Save changes in the bar at the bottom.

Once reviews are on, a Reviews item appears in the sidebar, and Rating becomes one of the sort orders you can choose in Publishing options.

How members leave a review

  1. On a listing, the member clicks Leave a Review (or the star rating, if the listing already has reviews).
  2. On the reviews page they click Add New Review, choose a Rating, write their Review and solve the captcha.
  3. They click Post Review.

The rules:

Rule Detail
Signed in Only signed-in members can review.
Not your own Sellers can’t review their own listings (You can not review yourself.).
One per listing A member can review each listing once (You already added a review).
Length The text must be between 5 and 1,000 characters.
Buyers only (optional) With Only buyers can review on, only members who bought the listing through your site can review it (You can only add a review if you bought this product).

The review is published straight away, and the seller gets the ad-review email with the rating and the text.

Where ratings show

  • On the listing, as stars with the number of reviews, linking to its reviews page.
  • On the seller: their average across all their listings, shown with the seller’s details on listings (Nova) and on their public profile.
  • In search, if you or a buyer sort by Rating.

Reviews only from buyers

Only buyers can review makes reviews much harder to fake: a review needs a paid order for that listing. That only works if members can actually buy through your site, with the Buy Now button. Set that up first: Let members sell with Buy Now. Without it, nobody will be able to leave a review.

Sellers rate their buyers (two-sided reviews)

Reviews normally go one way: buyers rate sellers. With two-sided reviews, sellers can rate their buyers too, so a seller can see whether a buyer turned up, paid and was easy to deal with.

Newer sites have it on. To check, or to switch it on:

  1. Make sure reviews are on (above).
  2. Go to Settings › General.
  3. In Trust & safety, switch on Two-sided reviews.
  4. Click Save changes in the bar at the bottom.

Sellers rate buyers from Trust & verification in their account menu (in Nova; in the default theme, from the Manage your seller details and verification link on their own profile). Under Rate your buyers they see the buyers they can rate: members who paid for one of their listings, or who wrote to them about one and got an answer, in the last 6 months (with double-blind reviews on, only completed deals count). They pick one to five stars, write 5 to 1,000 characters and click Rate buyer. Each buyer can be rated once by each seller.

A member’s profile then shows their rating As seller and As buyer separately. Ratings as a buyer don’t change anyone’s seller average. In Reviews in the sidebar, these reviews are labelled Seller rated a buyer (no listing).

Double-blind reviews after a deal

When both sides can see the other’s review first, they tend to answer it: a bad review gets a bad review back, and honest feedback suffers. Double-blind reviews fix that, the way large marketplaces do: a review stays hidden until the other side has reviewed too, so neither knows what the other wrote.

It’s off until you switch it on:

  1. Make sure reviews are on (above).
  2. Go to Settings › General.
  3. In Trust & safety, switch on Double-blind reviews after a deal.
  4. Click Save changes in the bar at the bottom.

The switch only shows while reviews are on. With it on:

Rule Detail
Only after a completed deal A buyer can review a listing only after a completed order for it (marked as received, or paid at least 14 days ago) or a completed booking. Others see You can review this listing once your order or booking is completed. With two-sided reviews, sellers can only rate those buyers too, not people they only chatted with.
Hidden until both have reviewed A new review waits. When the other side reviews as well, both are published together. The reviewer is told It will be published when the seller has reviewed you too, or in 14 days.
Published after 14 days anyway If the other side never reviews, the review goes live 14 days after it was written.
One reminder 3 days after a deal is completed, each side that hasn’t reviewed yet gets one reminder email (for deals completed in the last 30 days).

When a held review is published, the ratings are recalculated and the seller gets the usual ad-review email. Until then, held reviews are listed as inactive in Reviews.

With the switch off, reviews work as described above: published straight away.

Earned badges

Badges show buyers at a glance who they’re dealing with. With Earned badges switched on in Settings › General › Trust & safety (on for newer sites), profiles and listings show the badges a seller has:

Badge When a seller gets it
ID verified, Verified business or Verified Their account is verified, with one badge for the highest level they hold: Verified business after you approved a business document, ID verified after an ID document (see Verification requests), Verified when you ticked their verified badge by hand.
Top rated Their average rating and number of reviews reach your thresholds (by default 4.5 stars from at least 5 reviews).
Fast responder Over the last 30 days, their typical first reply to a new conversation came within your limit (by default 2 hours, over at least 5 conversations). A conversation never answered counts as slow.
Member since Always shown, with the year they joined.

Top rated and Fast responder are worked out once a day. To change the thresholds, go to Add-ons and open Trust & safety, then Badge thresholds, and click Save changes.

Verification requests

With Verification requests switched on in Settings › General › Trust & safety (on for newer sites), sellers can ask to be verified instead of waiting for you to do it:

  1. Under Get verified on their Trust & verification page, the seller chooses ID document or Business document, uploads a photo or scan (JPG, PNG or PDF, up to 5 MB) and clicks Send for verification.
  2. You go to Add-ons › Trust & safety and click Verification requests. The link shows how many are waiting. Each request says which badge approving it gives (Badge if approved: …) and the badge the seller has now.
  3. Click Open document, check it matches the seller, then click Approve or Reject. When you reject, write a Reason: it is sent to the seller.

The seller gets an email either way, and the document is deleted as soon as you decide. Only administrators can open it. A seller can send up to 3 requests a day.

The document decides the badge: an ID document gives ID verified, a business document such as a registration certificate gives Verified business. A seller who is ID verified can still send a business document to move up; their Get verified card says which badge they hold and offers it. See Verified members for how the levels show across your site.

While verification requests are on, the check mark your theme shows next to a seller’s name also appears for sellers you approved, in every theme, with the level in its tooltip. If your site has the verifiedbadge user field from Verified members, approving a request also ticks it, and unticking it takes the verification away.

The trust details (badges, buyer ratings, business details) show in the Nova and default themes.

Moderate reviews

Click Reviews in the sidebar to see every review, with its rating, listing, author, date and status. You can filter by member, rating and status. Click a review to edit it; set its status to inactive to hide an unfair or abusive review. Hidden reviews no longer appear in the list of reviews. The star averages of the listing and the seller are recalculated the next time someone reviews that listing.

Hiding a review doesn’t email anyone. If you remove a review because it broke your rules, it’s good practice to tell the author why.

Updated 20 October 2026 · Suggest an edit