When You Ask Us to Remove a Review: What We Will and Won't Take Down
Receiving a negative review is hard. We take every removal request seriously, but we also have a responsibility to the customers who rely on Floom reviews to choose a florist. If we removed reviews simply because they were unflattering, the system would lose its value for everyone. So we apply the same standard to every request.
Here's where the line sits.
What we'll consider removing
- Abusive or discriminatory content: profanity aimed at staff, slurs, threats, or harassment
- Personal or confidential information: addresses, phone numbers, payment details, or naming a recipient who hasn't consented
- Reviews left against the wrong order. Every Floom reviewer is a verified customer, but customers with multiple orders sometimes mix them up. We'll cross-check and either reattribute or remove
- Content unrelated to the order: personal disputes, social media spats, or anything that isn't about the goods and service received
- Reviews solely about Floom's customer support. If the complaint is about how we handled a refund, response time, or resolution rather than the flowers and service you provided, that's on us, not you. We'll untag your shop from the review so it stays on Floom as feedback for us, but doesn't affect your rating
- Demonstrably false allegations of serious wrongdoing: accusations of fraud, theft, or scamming customers when there's no basis in fact
What we won't remove
- Negative reviews. A customer is entitled to share a poor experience, even one you disagree with
- Reviews where you dispute the customer's account. "Delivery was late" when your records say otherwise is the most common request we receive. Both UK and US law protect a customer's good-faith account of their own experience, even if they're mistaken on the detail. Send us your evidence and we can post a public reply on the review with the facts
- Reviews from "difficult" customers: hard-to-please isn't the same as unfair
- Reviews where we've since resolved the complaint. The original review stands as a record of the experience, but once we've sorted things with the customer, we'll ask them whether they'd like to edit or update it
- Personal taste and judgement. If a customer felt the bouquet was underwhelming or didn't match the photo, that's their honest take on what they received
A note on the legal position
In the UK, the Defamation Act 2013 protects honest opinion and honest belief. In the US, the First Amendment protects opinion outright, the Consumer Review Fairness Act prohibits suppressing honest reviews, and anti-SLAPP laws in most states can leave a business paying the reviewer's legal costs. In both countries, only false statements of fact about serious wrongdoing are actionable, and that's a high bar.
A customer's account of their delivery, their flowers, and their experience is theirs to give. Our job is to host that feedback honestly, not to adjudicate between two versions of events.