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Trading Standards Accredited Member Reviews

We welcome feedback on Trading Standards Accredited (TSA) members, good or bad. Simply search the TSA website for the trader that you would like to review and complete the ‘submit review’ section. You can give the member a star rating and provide further information on the service you received.

Member reviews are very helpful in assisting individuals to choose which member to employ and Trading Standards monitor all reviews for standards of service.

If you want to make a formal complaint about a TSA member please go to How to Complain

Feedback from customers is a key part of the TSA scheme. It helps other customers find reliable traders and tells us how well each member is doing. 

There are two elements to customer feedback on the website:

  • a satisfaction 'star' rating
  • more detail in the form of feedback comments from customers who have used the trader

By using customer feedback we aim to ensure that those TSA members who provide the best service are recognised.

There are many things to consider when choosing a trader and the online feedback is merely intended as a guide. Any comments are the opinions of other people. You need to be sure that the trader you choose is right for you. We are not responsible for any loss you may suffer as a result.

How we deal with customer feedback

National guidance issued by the Competition and Markets Authority (opens in a new window) in 2016 requires us to have procedures in place which allow the publication of all genuine, relevant and lawful feedback, regardless of whether any comments made are positive or negative.

Genuine

We can't accept anonymous feedback. We need your name and some way of contacting you (phone number or email address) in case we have to verify your feedback. Only your first name and comments will be published on the TSA website, your surname and phone number/email address will remain confidential.

Relevant

The feedback has to be about your experience with the TSA member. This can include using them to do work in your home or to buy goods or services from. You can also give feedback if you tried to contact a member and weren't happy with their response, if they failed to keep appointments, or didn't return calls. Your feedback must represent your genuinely held opinion about the service you received.

Lawful

Feedback comments which are offensive, contain abusive language or defamatory remarks will not be published.

To safeguard the reputation of the scheme, we reserve the right not to publish any comment, in whole or in part, which is regarded as inappropriate in any way. Our decision in such cases is final.

How feedback ratings are developed

There are two parts of a customer's feedback.

Firstly, the customer's overall satisfaction with the TSA member they used. This is based on a star rating system: 5 stars if a customer is ‘very satisfied’ down to 1 star in the rare cases where a customer is ‘very dissatisfied’.

The level of satisfaction reported by the customer is their own opinion of the service they got from the member they used.

The overall star rating for a TSA member is an average of the individual satisfaction scores they've received from each customer giving feedback.

Secondly, we consider any additional customer comments. Customers are invited to give additional comments. Provided the comments are genuine, relevant and lawful they will be published on our website for others to see. This applies to both positive and negative comments. They may be checked and edited for spelling.

Trading standards checks on feedback

We carry out checks on selected customer feedback to make sure that it is genuine, relevant and lawful.

Positive feedback is very much in the majority. It is not possible to verify each submission individually. We do periodic spot checks on positive feedback and reserve the right to speak to the person submitting it if we need to.

If we get negative feedback, we'll contact the person submitting it to verify that it is genuine, relevant and lawful. If it is, the national guidance we operate under requires us to publish it.

If we can't make contact with the person submitting the negative feedback we will not be able to establish that the feedback is genuine, relevant and lawful consequently it will not be published. 

When a negative comment is received from a customer, the TSA member concerned will be informed of the comment before its publication. They are asked if they want to submit a response. Any response must be submitted within seven days and will be published with the customer's comment.

Responses from members which don't comply with our published rules on feedback will not be published. If no response is submitted by the member, the customer's comment will be published in accordance with our feedback rules.

Members of the scheme do not have the right to block reviews that they do not agree with.

The process of inviting a response from the member concerned can't be open ended. It will be limited to consideration of the customer's original feedback and one response from the member. We will not accept additional feedback submissions or responses.

Fake reviews

If we find out that feedback we have published is not genuine, relevant or lawful, it will be removed.

Any TSA member who abuses the feedback system by submitting fake positive reviews for their business, or submitting fake negative reviews for a competitor, will have their membership revoked.


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