Disputing a review

If you’re a franchisor, a franchisee, or anyone else who believes a review on this site is false and damaging, you can formally dispute it. We follow the process set out in Section 5 of the Defamation Act 2013, which exists specifically for situations like this — it protects both the person making a genuine complaint and the person who posted a genuine, honest review.

How it works, step by step

1. You submit a complaint.Tell us which specific statements you say are false, why, and what the true position is. General complaints (“this is unfair”) without specifics won’t start the process — we need the exact sentences in dispute.
2. We pass your complaint to the reviewer. We don’t take the review down at this point. We contact the reviewer using the verified email they registered with and give them five working days to respond.
3. The reviewer has two options. They can consent to being identified to you, in which case we pass on enough of their details for you to pursue the matter directly with them — at that point it’s a matter between you and them, not us. Or they don’t respond, or don’t consent to being identified — in which case the content comes down.
4. We keep records throughout. Every step is logged: when we received your complaint, when we contacted the reviewer, what they said, and what we did.

What this means in practice

We won’t remove a review just because a franchisor asks us to — that would defeat the purpose of an honest review site. But we also won’t leave up content that’s genuinely defamatory once a proper complaint has been made and the process has run its course.

Submit a dispute

Email disputes@franchisereview.co.uk with a link to the review, the specific statements you’re disputing, and your basis for saying they’re false. We respond to all complaints within five working days.