Review Policy

1. Who we ask

• We ask every customer who received products from us for a review, by the same fixed rules set in advance — whether the order went well or badly. A return (full or partial), a refund or a complaint makes no difference: you get the same email as everyone else. We do not pick satisfied customers.
• The only customers we leave out are our own internal and test accounts and businesses connected with us (they may not post reviews — see section 6). Everything else below is a sending rule that applies to everyone in the same way.
• Usually 10 to 21 days after we dispatch the last part of an order (online shop, invoice or pro forma order), we send the buyer one email asking for an honest review — good or bad — of up to four products from that order. There are no reminders.
• We ask about the same product at most once every 2 years (that is how long we keep the record of a request), and we send at most one review request per order and at most one every 60 days to the same email address or company. We do not send review requests to people who have unsubscribed from our emails or to email addresses that bounce, and an order with no products from our online catalogue (for example services only) gets no request.
• Every request has a link to stop review requests. You do not need to review anything to receive support from us. You can review any product you bought from us on its product page at any time.

2. What “Verified purchase” means

A review marked Verified purchase was written using the personal link in the email we sent after an order, for a product that was in that order. Each link works only for the products listed in that email, only once per product, and for 120 days. Anyone may also write a review directly on a product page; those reviews are welcome but do not carry the badge and are checked by us before they appear.

3. What we publish

• We publish all genuine reviews, positive and negative. We do not edit what you write, hide low ratings or hold a review back because it is critical.
• Verified reviews are published straight away. If an automatic check finds a link, an email address, a phone number, HTML code or offensive language, a person reads the review before it is published.
• A negative review is not treated as a complaint and is not used to delay publication. If something went wrong with your order, reply to our email or contact us — and you can still leave your review either way.
• The rating shown on a product page is the average of the published reviews for that exact product code.

4. What we remove

We only remove or decline a review if it:

• is spam or advertising, or contains links to other websites;
• is offensive, abusive, discriminatory or unlawful;
• contains personal data (for example someone’s phone number, email or address);
• is not about the product or about buying from us;
• was not written by a genuine buyer or user of the product, or is a duplicate.

If your review was not published, email us and we will check it and reply. We do not keep a separate record of why a review was removed.

5. No rewards for reviews

We never pay for reviews and never offer discounts, free products, gifts or prize draws in exchange for a review. We never ask for a particular rating.

6. Reviews we do not accept

We do not accept or publish reviews written by our staff, their family or friends, by businesses connected with us, or by our suppliers.

7. Reviews from other shops

Some product pages also show a separate block “Reviews from other shops (via Google)”. These are reviews that Google has matched to the same product code (EAN), written by buyers on other retailers’ websites. They are not reviews of Smarter Production, are always labelled as such, are not included in our rating and are not sent to Google as our reviews. If Google shows exactly the same set of reviews for several of our different products, we do not show them at all, because we cannot tell which product they are really about.

8. Reviews of our business on Google

Our review email may also include a link to review Smarter Production on Google. Those reviews are published by Google under Google’s own rules; we cannot edit or remove them. If we show you an invitation to Google Customer Reviews (Google’s own survey) after an online order, it is up to you: Google sends its survey only if you agree in Google’s window.

9. Your data

• What we keep with a review: the name you enter, your rating, title and text, the date, the order number (only for reviews written from the link in our email) and the IP address the review was sent from. We publish only the name (a first name or initials is fine), rating, title, text and date, with the Verified purchase badge where it applies. We never show your email address, order number or IP address.
• Why: to publish genuine reviews and to protect them from spam and abuse — the IP address is used only for that, for example to limit how many reviews can be sent from one connection. Our legal basis is our legitimate interests.
• How long: a published review stays on the product page for as long as we show that product, or until you ask us to remove it; we then delete it together with these details. We delete the IP address 12 months after the review is submitted, and we delete reviews that we decide not to publish after the same period.
• Review requests: we send the one email after a purchase on the basis of our legitimate interests (asking our customers about products they bought from us). Every review request has a link to stop them. We keep a record of each request (email address, the name used in the greeting, order number, products and dates) and delete it after 2 years. If you ask us to stop, we keep your email address on a “do not contact” list with no time limit, so that we keep respecting your choice.
• Google Customer Reviews: if we show you the Google Customer Reviews invitation after an online order (only if you accepted advertising cookies), we pass your email address, order number, delivery country and estimated delivery date to Google so that it can show the invitation. Google sends its survey only if you agree in Google’s window, and Google’s privacy policy then applies.

For your rights and how we handle personal data in general, see our Privacy Policy, in particular its section Product reviews, review requests and Google Customer Reviews.

10. Contact

To report a review, ask for your own review to be removed, or ask about this policy, email office@smarterproduction.co.uk. We may update this policy; the date at the top shows the latest version.