I would like to ask why the negative reviews (including mine) were removed from this thread?
Happy to reply.
In addition I did email explaining what I was doing but that may not have reached you, apologies if it didn't.
We remove posts for the following reasons:
1. false positive (new businesses who pretend to be a customer but recommend themselves). These are usually pretty easy to spot as the poster joins and then posts only one or two comments all about how brilliant they are. Whenever we see these we delete them but *sometimes* they are genuine and if we have an email exchange with the user and decide it's real we'll let it stay as a "repost"
2. false negative: same as above but a competitor who is looking to harm a rival
3. disproportionate posts: these are harder to call and actually quite rare. Every now and again we'll get someone who'll admit that they want to "destroy" a business and we feel that the damage incurred from their experience is actually disproportionate to the damage they are looking to cause. I can't remember if we'd had one of these in the last year (they are that rare) but one that does stick in my mind is a user who wanted to "take down" a local business. The business had taken an order, failed to deliver, apologised and then refunded the money. At every opportunity the poster went on with really negative and unpleasant comments. We spoke to both the retailer and the consumer and explained that we'd be happy hosting negative comments but not to host an ongoing "war" against the local shop (who was NOT an advertiser). I really don't like these situations as there is an implied judgement on our part. Thankfully they are very very rare.
4. posts that cause legal action. About once every six months we'll receive a "take down" notice from a firm (usually builders) who threaten to sue if we don't remove a comment that they believe is untrue. At this stage we contact the poster and explain we've been served and ask if they're prepared stand by their comments. NVN is not liable but the original poster is AND if the post is to remain (i.e. the poster does not wish his / her comments to be deleted) we have to pass on the OP's contact details (we ask them to supply us with them) to the firm looking to pursue. 50/50 the poster asks for the comments to be taken down. We do NOT pass on details without explaining to the OP that we will need to do so if they wish for their post to remain.
Hope that answers your questions - please shout if any more.
A