How reviews are published
A review written on Folks Told starts as pending. A moderator reads it against our review guidelines and either publishes or rejects it. Only published reviews appear on a company’s page or count toward its score.
- We check that the review describes a first-hand experience with that company: an order, a booking, a visit or a quote.
- We remove links, phone numbers, personal details about staff, threats and hate speech.
- We look for one person posting several times, and for reviews written by a company’s staff or competitors.
- A reviewer can post one review per company every 30 days.
Companies can reply to any review in public. They cannot edit, hide or remove a review, and they cannot pay to change how one is handled. Negative reviews are published on exactly the same terms as positive ones.
How we calculate scores
A company’s score is the plain average of the star ratings in its published reviews, rounded to one decimal. Nothing is estimated, weighted by payment or adjusted by hand.
Scores get a color once a company has at least 5 published reviews. Below that the number still shows, in grey, marked as new, because a handful of reviews can swing either way.
| Label | Score range | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Excellent | 4.5 – 5.0 | 4.7 |
| Great | 4.0 – 4.4 | 4.2 |
| Average | 3.0 – 3.9 | 3.4 |
| Poor | 2.0 – 2.9 | 2.5 |
| Bad | below 2.0 | 1.6 |
Purchase and service scores
Reviewers say whether they bought something, asked for a quote or used a service. When enough customers answer, we show a separate score for buying and for service, because a company can be great at one and poor at the other.
Details and price honesty
Reviewers can also rate communication, pricing and fees, speed and ease, and quality, and answer whether the final price matched the quote and whether there were surprise fees. Each of these appears only after 5 customers have answered it.
Rankings
Lists sorted by rating use a ranking that also accounts for how many reviews a company has, so three perfect reviews do not outrank forty excellent ones. Every company starts with 5 imaginary reviews at 3.5 stars, and its real reviews pull the ranking toward its true average as they add up:
ranking = (3.5 × 5 + sum of stars) ÷ (5 + number of reviews)
The ranking only orders lists. The score shown on a company’s page is always the plain average.
Where reviews come from
- Submitted on Folks Told: written by the customer on this site.
- Via the company's customer feedback form: collected by the company from its own customers and passed to us. We never accept feedback the company selected, edited or paid for.
- Reviews from other platforms: written by the customer on another review site and shown here as they were published there.
How listings work
Listings are built from business information we collect and check: name, address, phone number and website. When a company closes or a listing can no longer be confirmed, we hide it instead of deleting it, so its reviews are kept.
Companies can claim their listing for free to correct details and reply to customers. Claiming a listing does not change its score.
Reporting a review
Every review has a Report link. Use it if a review breaks our guidelines, is about the wrong company, or you believe it is not genuine. A moderator looks at every report; we may remove the review, keep it, or ask the reviewer for more detail. Reporting does not hide a review while we look at it.