Hushbrink Business Policy OUR PROMISE Hushbrink is an open directory where anyone can share feedback about any local business, free and anonymously. The public speaks for free. Businesses subscribe to listen well: to read, understand, and respond to what their customers say. This policy explains what a business can and can't do on Hushbrink. By claiming a listing or subscribing, a business agrees to it. WHAT NO BUSINESS CAN DO These rules apply to every business, free or paid, with no exceptions. - No paying to hide or remove feedback. No plan, fee, or request removes a customer's post. - No reordering. Businesses can't move posts up or down or choose which ones show first. - No editing customer posts. A business can respond, but never change what a customer wrote. - No fake feedback. Businesses, their staff, and anyone paid by them may not post feedback about their own business or a competitor. - No pressure or rewards for posts. Businesses may not offer discounts, gifts, or payment in exchange for feedback, or ask customers to change or remove a post. - No identifying customers. Businesses may not try to find out who wrote an anonymous post, or name a customer in a response. Violating these rules can lead to responses being removed, loss of the claimed listing, and account suspension. CLAIMING YOUR LISTING Claiming is free. It links your business's listing to your Hushbrink account so you can read and respond to feedback. 1. Find your business in the directory and choose Claim it. 2. Create an account or sign in, then give your name, your role, and a business phone number. 3. Prove you own or manage the business, for example with an email address on your business's website domain. 4. Hushbrink reviews the claim, usually within a few business days, and approves or declines it. Each listing has one approved owner. If someone else has already claimed your business, contact us and we'll review it; a new claim never replaces an owner automatically. Claiming a listing doesn't give you control over what customers post. PUBLIC AND PRIVATE FEEDBACK Customers choose who sees their feedback. - Public: anyone can see it on your listing. Hushbrink reviews it for rule violations before it appears. - Private: only you can read it, once your listing is claimed. It is never posted publicly. - Customers stay anonymous. Their name is never shown, and no account or email is required to post. - A customer may choose to share an email or phone number with you. You'll see it only if they ticked "Share my contact info with the business." Use it only to follow up on their feedback, never for marketing, and never share it. - Hushbrink never contacts customers on your behalf. - A rating of 1 to 5 stars is optional. Hushbrink doesn't show average star scores on listings. RESPONDING TO FEEDBACK A claimed business can post one public response to each public post. Your first 10 responses are free. After that, a subscription is needed to keep responding. - Your response appears under the customer's post, marked as coming from your business. It never changes or hides the post. - Responses are reviewed by Hushbrink before they appear, using the same rules as customer posts. - You can edit your response later. Edits are logged. - Be respectful. Don't argue, threaten, insult, or reveal anything that could identify the customer. - If you stop subscribing, your past responses stay visible. You can post new ones again once you resubscribe. - Approved and pending responses count toward your 10 free responses. Rejected ones don't. SUBSCRIPTION The subscription is $79 per month, with a 14-day free trial. Cancel anytime from your dashboard; you won't be charged if you cancel before the trial ends. Free (claimed listing): - Claim your listing - Read public and private feedback - Your first 10 public responses Subscription (everything in Free, plus): - Unlimited public responses - Feedback dashboard with themes and trends - CustomersSpeak(TM) feedback card and your own QR code - Resolution rate on your listing - Email alerts for new feedback A subscription never buys removal, hiding, or reordering of feedback, and never changes how customer posts are reviewed. RESOLUTION RATE Subscribers' listings show how often they respond, for example "Responds to 80% of feedback." - It's the share of public posts from the last 90 days that received a response from your business. - It appears only once you have at least 5 public posts in that period. - It's calculated automatically and can't be edited or bought. REPORTS AND MODERATION Hushbrink removes feedback only when it breaks our rules, never because a business disagrees with it. We don't decide who is right. A public post or response can be removed if it: - shares someone's personal information, - contains threats, harassment, or hate speech, or - is spam or not a real experience. Anyone, including a business, can report a post with the Report button. Reports are anonymous and never remove anything automatically. A Hushbrink administrator reviews each one and either keeps the post or unpublishes it, with a recorded reason. A negative opinion, a low rating, or a story the business remembers differently is not a reason to remove a post. DATA, CHANGES, AND CONTACT - Feedback and responses are stored securely. Hushbrink keeps a record of moderation decisions and the reasons for them. - Contact information customers choose to share is used only to pass to the business they wrote about. Hushbrink doesn't sell it or use it to contact them. - Hushbrink may update this policy. We'll post the new version here with its date and tell subscribers by email before major changes take effect. - Questions about this policy or a moderation decision: Support@hushbrink.com How long we keep records. A rejected post was turned down at review and never appeared publicly. An unpublished post was public and later taken down for breaking a rule. Rejected and unpublished posts, along with any contact details a customer shared on them, are kept for 6 months and then deleted automatically. The record of the moderation decision (date, business, and reason) is kept without the post's text.