Frequently Asked Questions
- The information does not appear to be truthful
- The review is offensive in nature or contains abusive language
- The information is not helpful to the community and is not in the spirit of WOMOW
- The WOMOW community
To a certain extent, we rely on users to notify us whenever they see something that smells a bit fishy. You can easily do this by ticking the "Inappropriate or Suspect" box which appears after each review. When you tick this, please explain your reasons so that we can assess the review and either contact the reviewer to verify the details, or remove the review entirely if it breaches our Fair Play Policy.
- Smart Technology
Locked in an box, inside our most secure server, inside a hidden data centre, lies our "Secret Squirrel Lie Detection" code. We can't tell you exactly how it works, but we can tell you that if you try to submit an untruthful review, it's likely that we'll be in contact to verify it with you. This code looks at a number or different factors and combines them to trigger our "suspect review process".
- Member TrustFactorsTM
Reviews from users with low TrustFactorsTM do not have as much weighting as reviews from members with a high TrustFactorsTM. To build up a high TrustFactorTM, users have to provide verifiable contact details and gain a reputation on WOMOW. When a new member starts using WOMOW, their TrustFactorTM is quite low and their reviews don't carry much weight, but as their reputation builds, their TrustFactorTM grows and their reviews have more influence. This filters through to the user's past reviews as well. This system provides a high degree of protection.
- Only write about your personal, first-hand experience. Describe your experience in as much detail as possible, mentioning any unique qualities, and include any helpful suggestions you have for other WOMOW users or the types of people that might like or dislike the service. Being funny and cool is preferred but optional.
- Don't exaggerate the facts. Just tell us about your actual experience, avoiding inflammatory descriptors and generalisations. For example, if you're reviewing a restaurant and found a hair in your meal, rather than saying "this place is sloppy and unclean", just tell us that you found a hair in your meal. Or, if the service was slow, rather than saying "the waiting staff are inefficient and lazy", try something like, "our meals took 40 minutes to arrive and we had to ask for water 3 times before they brought it to the table". See the difference? This way you'll come across as a credible reviewer and WOMOW users can draw their own conclusions based on the facts you include. (Don't worry, they're a smart bunch!)
- Only review businesses if you are a paying customer. We don't need every business owner's mum reviewing them!
- Disclose any personal connections. If you are in some way connected to a business you review, you can still submit a review (provided you are also a paying customer), as long as you are explicit and open about your relationship in your review. Other WOMOW users should know when a reviewer's perspective may be influenced by personal connections.
- Only review businesses that you have used within the last 12 months. Your memory might not be as clear as you think it is.
- Disclose any special treatment. If a business you review has given you something for free, or a discount, or any special treatment (or if they are intending to give this to you later), you should always disclose this in your review.
- Avoid negative personal comments. We don't discourage negative comments or low ratings (provided they are legitimate), but these should be directed at the business, not a particular employee. If you experience bad service, describe what happened but please don't name the individual. On the other hand, if you had a good experience, you should feel free to mention the name of the person that looked after you.
- Don't offend. The use of offensive language or content that is offensive to WOMOW users, such as racist or prejudice comments, is not permitted.
- Report any suspect reviews. If you read a review that seems fishy, incorrect, offensive or in some way inappropriate, please flag this as "Inappropriate or Suspect" using the tick box below the review. This will prompt WOMOW to investigate and either fix, verify or remove the review if necessary.
- You should also review our full Conditions of Use.
- allowing WOMOW to pass their contact details onto the business so that the business can get in touch and attempt to resolve the issue,
- liaising with the business anonymously through WOMOW to resolve the issue, or
- in cases where the customer feels they have pursued all angles with the business, they can of course just post their review as it is.
Businesses are almost always added to WOMOW when they are first reviewed by a customer. We're all about quality, not quantity and we want to hear what actual customers think of businesses. There's enough advertising guff in other places.
Simple - just go to Review a Business. First you'll enter a small amount of information and we'll use this to check whether that business has already been entered. If not, then you get to enter as much, or as little, information about that business as you like. Then you do the actual review, telling other WOMOW users what you loved or didn't love about that business.
The short answer is; for the greater good.
The details are; because you want to help other people in your community find the best businesses and protect them from the worst. Because, if you review the businesses you use, you'll encourage your friends and neighbours to do the same, and before you know it you'll have a fantastic resource to draw from next time you need to find something great. And because you want to help those businesses that are doing a great job and deserve recognition, and because there are some businesses that don't deserve to be in business.
As a more direct benefit for you, when you review businesses, you also create a personal directory for yourself (under MyWOMOW). So the next time you're trying to think of where to eat dinner, or remember the name of that plumber that arrived within an hour of your call 2 years ago, you can see if all listed here. You can easily check what other people thought of these businesses too. And when someone asks for the details of your hairdresser or to recommend a dentist, you can just give them the link to your MyWOMOW. Plus you can store a favourites list, add personal notes, and print it to stick on the fridge or give to the babysitter.
Go on, show some community spirit - it won't cost you anything.
Reviews are submitted by everyday people like you. To post a review, you just need to be a paying customer of the business. It's the over-the-fence / email / coffee-break chat that you'd have with people to share your experience with businesses - but on the web.
There's a place for professional reviewers but personally, we think that all that free drink and wine clouds their judgment and we'd rather hear what the normal people think.
Nope, never.
No, and again, never.
The purpose of WOMOW is not to make squillions of dollars, but to provide a really useful resource that evens out the playing field for businesses, and gives more power to consumers.
However, we are hoping to cover our costs by charging businesses a small fee to add things like special offers to their listing and to include images and additional information about their services. We're on track to become profitable by 2035 :)
Basically any business that provide (or should provide) an element of service. A full listing of the types of businesses currently listed on WOMOW can be seen here, but users are always adding new categories.
That's up to you. By default, your Display Name and TrustFactorTM will show against your reviews and users can click through to your MyWOMOW page and see your suburb and other reviews you've done, as well as any other information you've included in your profile. You can choose your own Display Name - making it as identifying (by making it your real name), or as anonymous as you'd like (use DrWho, MickeyMouse, or a name that only your friends would know).
If you want to remain anonymous for a particular review, you can choose to "Post Anonymously" when you enter the review. We understand that sometimes you might want to use this - perhaps for your hair replacement specialist or gynaecologist (especially if your descriptions are graphic). But in general, if your review is true and fair, what's to hide?
You can change your Display Name, and any other registration or profile information, by going to the MyWOMOW tab. Any changes you make will filter through to the past reviews you've posted.
The WOMOW TrustFactorTM allows you to better gauge the reputation and reliability of other WOMOW members. In real life you don't necessarily trust everyone you know to the same extent, and WOMOW members are all different too.
Each member is assigned a TrustFactorTM score - this is based on a number of dimensions and is recalculated every night. TrustFactorTM scores range from 0 (extremely bad) to 100 (extremely good) and reviews from members with high TrustFactorsTM are given more importance than reviews from others.
It's not hard to build a high TrustFactorTM - just enter some key contact information (so that we can easily communicate with you if we need to verify anything), do your bit to contribute reviews and/or advice forum posts to the community, and ensure everything you post is an honest and fair account of your experience.
Member's TrustFactorTM scores are calculated as follows:
Member's reviews are retracted in situations where:
WOMOW investigates reviews whenever another member flags a review as suspect or inappropriate, or our own checking finds something to be suspicious about the review or member.
The following descriptors provide a rough guideline for interpreting TrustFactorTM scores:
100 - Leave them your house, you kids, your spouse - this person is super reliable
90 - What this person says, goes. You can definitely rely on their opinion
80 - Trust this person like you would a good friend
70 - Trust this person like you would an colleague or distant friend
60 - Trust this person like you would an acquaintance
50 - Showing signs indicating a trustworthy character
40 - No reason to doubt them, but then again, no real reasons to trust them
30 - Tread warily - trust this person like you would a used car salesman
20 - Not looking good and could be a shady character
10 - Wouldn't trust them as far as you could throw them. May have just gotten out of jail
There are basically three key aspects of WOMOW that help keep the reviews as dependable as possible.
As long as the reviews you enter are an honest descriptions of your experience and you stick to our Fair Play Policy and Conditions of Use, you should feel free to post whatever you want, whether positive or negative.
We are committed to keeping WOMOW a place for real word-of-mouth information so the integrity of reviews is our number one priority (well, number 2 if you count our morning caffeine fix).
Our Fair Play Policy asks you to;
Rarely. But if the review looks suspicious for some reason, if it is flagged by another WOMOW user as being suspicious, or if the business owner (or representative) contacts us and alleges that the review is false or inaccurate, we will investigate. If we cannot contact the member within a reasonable time, or if their contact details are incorrect, we will retract the review. If we can contact the reviewer, we will mediate and determine whether the review is fair, given the member's experience. In these cases, the review may be modified (sometimes toned down), or retracted. We will also remove or edit any review that contain inappropriate or offensive content.
The idea is to keep the reviews on WOMOW as dependable as possible. If we have to sacrifice a few, then so be it.
We like to recognise the people that help to kickstart WOMOW as it gains momentum in each local area. Founding Members are people who share the vision for WOMOW becoming a useful tool, far before there are many reviews in their area.
To become a Founding Member (for life), all you need to do is be one of the first 20 people in your suburb to review 10 or more businesses on WOMOW. Easy hey.
Businesses that are serious about customer satisfaction and are consistently receiving good feedback from customers on WOMOW are invited to participate in our Happy Customers Program. This program helps businesses keep their finger on the pulse and ensure their business continues to meet their customers' expectations.
When WOMOW users see the "Happy Customers" program icon, they can be sure that they are dealing with a business that makes customer service their first priority and goes out of their way to provide a fantastic customer experience. These are also the businesses that actively encourage an open dialogue on their business - indicating that they are confident in their service levels. You might notice that for businesses in the Happy Customers Program, all of their reviews show for all users, whereas for other businesses, only WOMOW members can see all of their reviews.
As part of the Happy Customers Program, we also provide a Problem Resolution Process. Despite the best of intentions, even great businesses experience problems from time to time. Misunderstandings happen, things go wrong, and yes, people do make mistakes. We understand that this is a fact of life. What's important though is that when things do go wrong, they get fixed. With the Problem Resolution Process, if a customer submits a unfavourable rating (less than 3 out of 5) on a business, we help resolve the issue by giving the customer the option of either;
Businesses that participate in the Happy Customers program are also provided with various promotional materials to help communicate to their customers that they are a business that is serious about customer service.
To be part of the Happy Customers program, businesses must maintain an overall rating of at least 3 out of 5.
If you are a business and are interested in joining our Happy Customers Program, there are more details in the "Business Owners" section which can be accessed in the last tab across the top of each page.
The integrity of the reviews on WOMOW is of utmost importance. One way we can tell that each reviewer is a real, unique person is by asking you to verify your email address, but verifying your mobile phone number provides us with added confidence. Plus, if one of your reviews is ever queried, we need to be able to get in touch with you, and a mobile phone number is usually the fastest way to do this.
It's not essential that you provide your mobile phone number though - although it does help to increase your TrustFactor.
However, to be eligible for most promotions we run, we will require you to have a verified mobile phone number. As you can appreciate, when we provide incentives for people to enter reviews, it's extremely important that we can validate those reviews by being able to contact each reviewer whenever necessary. The easiest way for us to do this is generally by verifying a mobile phone number.
Please note that WOMOW does not use mobile phone numbers for any marketing purposes and will not give your number to anyone.
All users can see all reviews for businesses that are part of the Happy Customers Program but for other businesses, only the most recent review shows until you log in. If you're not already a member, it's free to join. This helps recognise those businesses that are part of the Happy Customers Program, and encourages more people to join WOMOW. After all, the more people using WOMOW, the more useful it will be for all of us.
By default, we include the businesses that service the area that you are searching for. However, you can turn this off by un-ticking the box on the left hand side that says "Include businesses servicing this area?". Here you can also choose the distance from the area you wish to search as well.
Depending on the type of search you are doing, businesses are sorted by "Highest Rating", "Best Match", "Most Reviews", "Business Name" or "Most Recent". You can change how you want them sorted from the panel on the left-hand side.
When we sort by "Highest Rating", we look at the average overall rating and the number of reviews each business has. When we sort by "Best Match" we look at the best match for the key words you enter. These might be contained in the business name, categories the business is in, or reviews for that business.
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