Consumer Review Policy

Policy on banned, false or misleading consumer review information

Ratings & reviews

At Waitrose & Partners, we believe in honest and helpful reviews and by sharing what you think, you'll help other customers find the right products and help us improve our products for you too. We also know how important reviews are for you to make informed choices. This policy explains how we manage reviews on waitrosecellar.com and what we do to ensure they are fair, transparent and accurate.

Review Guidelines

To ensure we're able to publish your review, please:

Ensure your review contains a minimum of 50 characters.
Keep your review focused solely on the product.
Avoid mentioning other retailers or the specific price you paid.
Do not include any personal information, such as full names or addresses.
Ensure your review is based on your genuine experience.

So that we can resolve any issues as quickly as possible, if you are experiencing issues with our website and the review process, please contact us directly - we'll be happy to help.

Suspected fake/banned reviews

Suspected fake/banned reviews can be reported directly in the review, or by contacting our Customer Services Team (waitrosecellar@waitrose.co.uk or 0800 188 881).
Fake/banned reviews will either be blocked from publication or removed, with sanctions, such as account removal, taken for serious policy violations.

How we handle reviews

Consumer reviews are listed chronologically by default, and with consistent formatting. There is no prominence awarded to favourable reviews.
The Waitrose complaints process is independent from consumer reviews, and there is no interference or blocking of customers from leaving negative consumer reviews, or from making a complaint.

We use a specialist independent company (Bazaarvoice) to manage and moderate all reviews on our websites, with their Trustmark appearing alongside the review. They help us to:

Check for Authenticity: Their Authenticity Policy lays out the requirements under which content published on our websites (e.g. ratings, reviews, etc) is considered authentic, and sanctions taken for policy violations.
Moderate Reviews: Moderation Processes are applied to user-generated content, to detect and remove fake reviews, and to ensure reviews are only edited under strictly controlled conditions.
Label incentivised reviews: Sometimes, a customer might receive a product for free or at a discount in exchange for an honest review. These reviews are called “incentivised reviews” and when we publish these reviews, we will always label them as being “sponsored” or similar labels so you know they were left as part of an incentive.
Label syndicated reviews: We may also publish reviews that originally appeared on other brands' websites and are shared with us by our third party service provider. These reviews must also meet our authenticity and moderation standards before we publish them. They will clearly be identified with a label.
Summarise reviews: Review summaries produced by Artificial Intelligence state how they are generated.

Reviews that do not meet our Ratings and Reviews Policy and our Terms of Use outlined below will not be published and/or will be removed, and any such decision will be at our sole discretion.

Your Role in Writing Reviews (Terms of Use)

These Terms of Use explain what we expect when you use our/Waitrose's Customer Ratings and Review service (the "CRR Service"). To the extent of any conflict between Waitrose's Privacy Notice and these Terms of Use, these Terms of Use shall take precedence with respect to the CRR Service. You may only use the CRR Service if you agree to the following terms and conditions. Your use of the CRR Service demonstrates your acceptance of these terms and conditions and you agree to be bound by them.

By submitting your email address in connection with your rating and review, you agree that Waitrose and its third party service providers may use your email address to contact you about the status of your review and other administrative purposes.

By submitting any content to Waitrose, you represent and warrant that:

You are the sole author and owner of the intellectual property rights thereto;
All "moral rights" that you may have in such content have been voluntarily waived by you;
Everything you write in your review is accurate and your honest opinion about the product;
You are at least 18 years old;
Use of the content you supply does not violate these Terms of Use and will not cause injury to any person or entity; and
You are not using the website for any commercial purpose.

You further agree and warrant that you will not submit any content:

You know to be false, inaccurate or misleading;
That infringes any third party's copyright, patent, trade mark, trade secret or other proprietary rights or rights of publicity or privacy;
That violates any law, statute, ordinance or regulation (including, but not limited to, those governing export control, consumer protection, unfair competition, anti-discrimination or false advertising);
That is, or may reasonably be considered to be, defamatory, libellous, hateful, racially or religiously biased or offensive, unlawfully threatening or unlawfully harassing to any individual, partnership or corporation;
For which you were compensated or granted any consideration by any third party;
That includes any information that references other websites, addresses, email addresses, contact information or phone numbers;
For advertising purposes;
That is repeatedly submitted and/or vexatious; and/or
That contains any computer viruses, worms or other potentially damaging computer programs or files.

How we may use your review

By submitting your review, you understand and consent to Waitrose using the content submitted for any advertising and/or marketing purposes, which may include, but is not limited to, the use of your nickname, location, overall rating, review title, review and recommendation in any marketing and/or advertising in-store and in any social media channels, online, emails, Waitrose publications, magazines and editorials.

For any content that you submit, you grant Waitrose a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, transferable right and license to use, copy, modify, delete in its entirety, adapt, publish, market, advertise, translate, create derivative works from and/or sell and/or distribute such content and/or incorporate such content into any form, medium or technology throughout the world without compensation to you.

All content that you submit may be used at Waitrose's sole discretion. Waitrose reserves the right to change, condense or delete any content on Waitrose's website that Waitrose deems, in its sole discretion, to violate the content guidelines or any other provision of these Terms of Use. Waitrose does not guarantee that you will have any recourse through Waitrose to edit or delete any content you have submitted. Ratings and written comments are generally posted within two to four business days. However, Waitrose reserves the right to remove or to refuse to post any review that does not meet our moderation standards.

You acknowledge that you, not Waitrose, are responsible for the contents of your submission. Your views do not represent the views of Waitrose. None of the content that you submit shall be subject to any obligation of confidence on the part of Waitrose, its agents, subsidiaries, affiliates, partners or third party service providers and their respective directors, officers and employees.

We reserve the right to amend these Terms of Use from time to time.